Chapter 13 - Sign or Lose Your Child
Victoria emerged from the service passage into the master bedroom.
Damian stood beside the desk.
Serena entered behind her and locked the main door.
For the first time, neither of them pretended to care.
Damian threw the transfer documents onto the desk.
“You’ve made this much harder than it needed to be.”
Victoria’s necklace was already recording.
She kept her voice unsteady.
“You locked me in a room.”
“You’re emotional,” Serena said. “We needed to protect the guests.”
Victoria looked at Damian.
“Are you sleeping with her?”
He did not deny it.
Serena smiled.
The cruelty of that smile told Victoria the affair had never been about love alone.
It was about replacing her.
Damian moved closer.
“Sign the company over. You’ll keep a house, an allowance and full medical care.”
“My company?”
“Your father’s company,” Serena corrected. “And Edward never intended for an exhausted pregnant girl to destroy it.”
Victoria’s jaw tightened.
“I am thirty-two years old.”
“Then act like it,” Damian snapped.
He shoved a pen into her hand.
When Victoria refused, he produced the unfinished medical declaration.
“One call from Dr. Pierce and the board will believe you’re unstable.”
Serena stepped between Victoria and the door.
“And once the baby is born, we’ll petition for guardianship if necessary.”
Victoria’s breath stopped.
“You would take my daughter?”
“We would protect her from an unfit mother,” Serena said.
That was the confession Victoria needed.
But she needed them to connect it to the transfer.
She looked down at the papers.
“If I sign, you leave Grace with me?”
Damian answered immediately.
“If you cooperate, there’s no reason to involve the child.”
Victoria picked up the pen.
She signed the final page with a variation of her legal signature that automatically flagged the document for fraud review.
Damian did not notice.
He grabbed the papers and kissed Serena.
“Vale Holdings is ours.”
Victoria pressed the sapphire on her necklace for three seconds.
May you like
Somewhere below them, every ballroom screen turned black.
👉 Damian believed Victoria had surrendered, never realizing her signature had triggered one safeguard while her necklace activated another.
