Chapter 3 - The Price of Abandonment
For several suffocating seconds, nobody moved. Leo was half an inch taller than Ethan, his posture slightly more defensive, his gaze fixed on my face with an unsettling intensity. Ethan, on the other hand, held his tournament binder against his chest, his eyes scanning my face with the quiet detachment of a scientist observing a specimen under glass.
"Mom?" Leo asked, his voice calm but layered with quiet protection. "Is this gentleman bothering you?"
Gentleman. The word was a scalpel sliding between my ribs. He looked directly at me and saw nothing more than a stranger in a tailored tuxedo.
"No, sweetheart," Elena answered smoothly, placing a gentle, reassuring hand on Leo’s forearm. "He was just leaving."
"Wait," I blurted out, taking an instinctive step forward before catching myself. "Please. Just... give me two minutes. Leo. Ethan. I’m..."
"We know who you are, Mr. Vance," Ethan interrupted softly.
The air vanished from my lungs. "You know?"
"Of course we know," Ethan replied, adjusting the strap of his messenger bag. "We run algorithmic facial recognition on academic sponsors and board members before every national debate. We've known what you look like since we were nine."
"You... you knew and you never reached out?" The desperation in my voice was humiliating, but I couldn't stop it. "I had no idea. Elena, you never told me it was twins. You never contacted my office—"
"Contact your office?" Elena's composure cracked for a fraction of a second, revealing the burning steel underneath. Her eyes narrowed into icy slits. "You had your lawyers draft a restraining order before my second trimester, Julian. You had an NDA sent to my hospital room while I was in labor, offering fifty thousand dollars if I promised never to attach your name to the birth certificates."
A cold sweat broke out across my hairline. "I didn't... Victoria handled the legal clean-up back then. I didn't read every document—"
"You signed them," Elena said plainly. "Your signature was right at the bottom of the page in black ink. Don't play the ignorant puppet now just because your stepson turned out to be an empty vessel and our sons took first place without a single cent of your blood money."
"Mom, let's go," Leo said, his jaw clenching in a way that mirrored my own habit when enraged. "The Dean from MIT is waiting at the press table. We shouldn't waste time in the hallway."
Leo didn't look at me with hatred; he looked at me with profound indifference, and that was infinitely worse. Hate meant there was still an emotional connection that could be manipulated, pleaded with, or bridged. Indifference meant I was already dead to them.
"Leo, please," I pleaded, reaching out a hand, though I didn't dare touch him. "I made terrible mistakes. Unforgivable mistakes. But I am your father. I can give you everything now. Full funding, access to any laboratory in the country, venture capital for whatever you want to build—"
"We don't want your money, Mr. Vance," Leo said coldly, stepping between me and his mother. "We built our neural network framework from scratch in a public library. We received full venture backing three weeks ago from Vanguard Capital. We don't need your name, your guilt, or your handouts."
Before I could process the mention of Vanguard Capital—one of the largest tech investment firms in the country—the sound of rapid, furious heels clicked violently down the marble hallway.
"Julian! What the hell is taking you?"
Victoria rounded the corner, her diamond necklaces catching the fluorescent lights, her face flushed with incandescent rage. Preston dragged behind her, slumped and sullen. But the moment Victoria's eyes landed on Elena, she skidded to a dead halt.
Her eyes widened in vicious recognition.
"You," Victoria sneered, her voice dropping into a venomous register as she looked Elena up and down. "The little charity case from the east side. I should have known. You crawled out of the gutter just to humiliate my son?"
Elena didn't blink. She turned toward Victoria with the quiet poise of a queen looking at a barking dog.
"Your son humiliated himself, Victoria," Elena said, her voice smooth and entirely unbothered. "Money can buy you front-row seats and private tutoring, but it can't buy an intellect. Now, if you'll excuse us, we have a press conference to attend."
"You think you've won?" Victoria shrieked, taking an aggressive step forward, her finger pointed like a weapon. "I will have this entire competition audited! I will call the Chancellor tonight! Julian, tell security to escort these freeloaders off the property immediately!"
May you like
I stood between them, looking at Victoria's distorted, arrogant face, and then at Elena and my two brilliant sons. A profound, terrifying clarity washed over me.
"No, Victoria," I said, my voice echoing off the marble walls with deadly authority. "You're the one who needs to leave."
