Until it is resolved, you will have no access to this floor.”
Nick’s face reddened.
“You cannot keep a father from his children.”
Adeline finally spoke.
“You were not calling yourself their father this morning.”
Her voice was quiet, but it stopped him.
She remembered the cold office, the rain, the blocked cards, and the terror on the bus.
She remembered believing she had failed her babies because she had not been strong enough to fight him.
Now she saw the truth more clearly.
Signing while frightened had not made her weak.
Surviving what came afterward had required every piece of strength she possessed.
Nick walked toward her bed.
The security chief stepped between them.
“Stay back, sir.”
“Adeline,” Nick said, ignoring him.
His tone softened into the voice he used for investors and cameras.
“You are exhausted.
You do not understand what these people are trying to do.
Come home with me.
We will handle this privately.”
Adeline looked at the man who had once promised to protect her.
“Which home? The apartment you took from me or the hotel where Sienna was waiting?”
One of the nurses turned away to hide her reaction.
Nick lowered his voice.
“Do not humiliate yourself.”
Lucien’s restraint broke by only a fraction.
His jaw tightened.
“You abandoned a pregnant woman and arrived with lawyers when you discovered the number of heirs had changed.
Humiliation has already entered the room, Mr.
Drayke.
It simply does not belong to her.”
The elevator doors opened at the far end of the corridor.
Sienna Vale emerged wearing a cream coat over an evening dress.
Her makeup was streaked beneath one eye.
In her hand was a second phone.
Nick froze.
“What are you doing here?”
Sienna looked past him toward Adeline’s room.
“Saving myself.”
She handed the phone to Evelyn Shaw.
The device contained messages Nick had sent during the previous week.
In them, he described the unborn baby as a financial liability.
He ordered his assistant to obtain Adeline’s latest scan before the divorce became public.
He instructed a consultant to determine how a child might affect control of the Drayke family trust.
Then, minutes after learning that Adeline was carrying triplets, his language changed.
He called the babies “three guaranteed voting blocks.” He discussed placing them under a trust administered by him.
He told Sienna that Adeline could be declared unstable if she resisted.
Sienna had discovered the messages when Nick left the phone in her car.
“He told me the pregnancy was fake,” she said.
“Then he said it was one child from a marriage that was already over.
Tonight he told me there were three, and that once he controlled them, no one on his board could remove him.”
Nick lunged for the phone.
Security restrained him before he reached it.
“She stole private property!”
“You can make that complaint later,” Evelyn said.
“After investigators finish examining the messages concerning medical-data theft, financial coercion, and a plan to make a false mental-health allegation against your wife.”
