Chapter 11: The Secret Motion
Two days later, the rain hammered against the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Vance estate study, casting a moody, gray light across the polished mahogany desk.
I was sitting in a plush leather armchair, going over baby name lists, when my father walked into the room, holding a freshly printed legal document. His face carried a strange, complicated expression—part amusement, part irritation.
"Vivienne," my father said, walking over and handing the document to me. "It looks like Dominic’s defense attorney is getting desperate. They just filed an emergency petition for spousal asset protection and temporary reconciliation."
I frowned, scanning the legal jargon on the paper. "Reconciliation? After he’s sitting in a federal holding cell?"
"Not just reconciliation," my father noted, pointing a finger at section four of the motion. "Look at the supporting affidavit submitted by Dominic himself. He’s claiming that your marriage was built on fraud because you concealed your true identity and financial background from him during courtship."
I let out a short, incredulous laugh. "Fraud? He thinks I committed fraud by not handing him my family tree on our first date?"
"He’s grasping at straws," my father said, sitting down in the opposite chair. "His legal team is trying to argue that if he had known you were a Vance, he would have acted differently, therefore making him a victim of deception."
"That is the most pathetic excuse I have ever heard," I shook my head in disbelief. "So what happens next?"
"Our legal team is already moving to have the motion thrown out of court with prejudice," my father replied smoothly. "Judge Miller has zero patience for frivolous filings, especially from defendants facing federal money laundering charges. But there is..." My father paused, hesitating slightly. "There is a complication mentioned in the annex of their filing."
I looked up, noticing the shift in my father’s tone. "What kind of complication?"
My father sighed, leaning forward. "Dominic’s attorney attached a copy of an old pre-nuptial agreement draft that Dominic apparently kept in his personal safe at their apartment. It was drawn up three years ago, right before your wedding."
I frowned, trying to remember. "We didn't sign a pre-nup. We decided against it."
"Not exactly," my father corrected, sliding a second document across the desk. "Dominic didn't sign it either. But according to this draft, Dominic’s mother, Eleanor, secretly hired a private investigator three weeks before your wedding to look into your background."
My breath caught slightly. "A private investigator? But she thought I was nobody!"
"That's just it," my father said grimly. "The investigator didn't find your father's true identity because our family office keeps our primary holdings under shielded corporate trusts. But the investigator did flag a minor banking discrepancy—a trust fund set up in your name by your maternal grandmother when you were born."
I stared down at the document. The trust fund was real—a modest inheritance completely separate from Vance Global, left to me by my late grandmother.
"Eleanor saw the trust fund paperwork," my father continued. "And instead of telling Dominic, she and Dominic decided to keep it quiet—not because they thought you were poor, but because they planned to use it as leverage to force you into signing away your inheritance rights once you were legally married."
The room seemed to grow ten degrees colder.
For three years, I had believed that Dominic genuinely loved me despite my apparent lack of wealth. I had believed that his family simply looked down on me because they were snobs.
But reading those black-and-white pages of emails between Eleanor and Dominic, I realized the horrifying truth.
They hadn't just tolerated me as a poor outsider. They had plotted to trap me, exploit me, and steal what little they thought I had, all while calling me "cheap trash" to my face.
"The hypocrisy is breathtaking," my father whispered, his eyes flashing with suppressed rage. "They spent three years abusing you for being poor, while secretly scheming to rob you of the only independent asset you brought into the marriage."
I slowly closed the document, my hands steady, though my heart was beating with a cold, fierce fire.
"They thought I was weak," I whispered. "They thought my silence meant I wouldn't fight back."
"What do you want to do, Vivienne?" my father asked quietly, watching me with absolute trust. "Do you want us to bury them legally? We can ensure they never see daylight outside of a federal penitentiary."
May you like
I looked out the window at the heavy rain lashing against the glass. Then I placed my hand gently over my swollen stomach.
"No, Dad," I said, a slow, resolute smile forming on my lips. "Don't bury them yet. Let them dig their own graves a little deeper. Because I want to be sitting in the front row when they finally hit rock bottom."
