Chapter 4 - The In-Laws Take Note
"Is this true?"
The question didn't come from Dennis, nor from Eleanor. It came from the far end of the long head table.
Arthur Vance, patriarch of the Vance Financial Syndicate and Julian’s father, slowly stood up. He was a man of sixty-five with silver hair clipped with military precision, wearing a bespoke Brioni suit that made Dennis’s rented tuxedo look like cheap tissue paper. Arthur had sat through the entire scene in utter stillness, his sharp gray eyes observing every twitch of Dennis’s jaw, every lie on Eleanor’s tongue, and every line of my posture.
"Arthur, please," Dennis sputtered, frantically smoothing his lapels, his face slick with sweat. "Don't listen to this nonsense. The girl has always had severe psychiatric delusions. She’s an absolute disaster. We cut ties with her years ago for our family’s safety—"
"I didn't ask you, Dennis," Arthur Vance interrupted. His voice wasn't loud, but it possessed the natural gravity of a man who moved billions of dollars with a single phone call.
He stepped away from the table, walking slowly down the length of the ivory linen until he was standing three paces from me. He didn't look at Dennis. He didn't look at Kayla, who was clutching Julian’s sleeve so hard her knuckles were bone-white.
Arthur looked at my stained navy blazer, then up at my face.
"Ross," Arthur said softly, testing the name. "David Ross’s daughter?"
My breath hitched slightly, but I kept my chin high. "Yes, Mr. Vance. David Ross of Ross Cold-Chain Engineering was my father."
Arthur Vance let out a long, slow exhale. A look of deep, bitter realization washed over his features. "David was my roommate at Northwestern forty years ago. When he died suddenly eight years back, I reached out to Caldwell Logistics to offer support for his surviving daughter. I was told by your stepfather that you had taken your father’s death so hard you chose to enter a private residential facility in Switzerland and requested no contact from the outside world."
Eleanor let out a tiny, choked squeak and clutched her throat.
"Switzerland?" I let out a soft, humorless laugh. "I was scrubbing the burnt grease out of the pans at a truck stop in Gary, Indiana, Mr. Vance. I didn't see the inside of an airport until I was twenty-two."
Arthur turned his head slowly, fixing Dennis with a gaze so frigid it could have frozen boiling water. "You lied to me. For eight years, Dennis. When you approached my venture firm six months ago asking for a twelve-million-dollar capital injection to save your overextended fleet, you told me that David’s old intellectual properties had been legally assigned to your holding company with the full consent of his estate."
Dennis looked as though he were about to vomit. "Arthur... it was an internal family arrangement! David left debts—massive debts! I had to liquidate—"
"David Ross never held a penny of unsecured debt in his entire life," Arthur Vance snapped, his voice ringing across the chandeliered room like a thunderclap. "I looked at his books myself when we were young men. He was the most meticulous engineer in the Midwest. The only debt David had was the trust he foolishly placed in the woman he married before his final stroke."
Julian Vance suddenly pulled his arm away from Kayla’s grip.
"Julian?" Kayla gasped, her eyes wide with shock as she reached for him again. "Julian, honey, what does this have to do with us? This is between them! This has nothing to do with our wedding!"
May you like
Julian looked down at his fiancé as if seeing her true face for the first time. "Nothing to do with us? Kayla... you told me your stepsister died of an overdose in college. You cried on my shoulder on our third date telling me how much you missed her."
***
