Chapter 3 - Facing the Mistress While the Ice Freezes Chicago Solid
The penthouse at the Waldorf Astoria smelled of expensive lilies, champagne, and the suffocating perfume of Sylvia Vance.
Sylvia, the thirty-one-year-old daughter of one of Chicago’s most prominent real estate tycoons, was sitting on her ivory sofa wearing a silk robe when the door to her suite was literally kicked off its hinges.
The heavy oak door splintered with an explosive crack, slamming against the foyer wall. Sylvia screamed, spilling her porcelain coffee cup across the white rug as two armed security men entered, followed immediately by Victor Rinaldi.
"Victor!" Sylvia gasped, clutching her robe to her chest, her perfectly styled blonde hair falling over her shoulders. "What is the meaning of this? Are you insane? You could have knocked!"
Victor walked into the room without removing his snow-dusted coat. The air around him seemed ten degrees colder than the room. He didn't look at her face; he looked around the suite, his eyes scanning the opulent furniture, the empty crystal glasses from the night before, the velvet box from Cartier sitting open on the console table containing the sapphire necklace he had given her two weeks ago.
Everything in the room made him want to vomit.
"Where is she, Sylvia?" Victor asked, his voice deathly quiet.
Sylvia blinked, caught off guard by the sheer hostility radiating from him. A petulant pout formed on her glossed lips. "Where is who? What are you talking about? You left here barely two hours ago! You said you had to go home and deal with the screaming brats before the board meeting—"
Victor closed the distance between them so fast Sylvia didn't even have time to flinch. He didn't touch her, but he leaned down, his face inches from hers, his eyes wide and unblinking.
"Do not speak about my children," Victor whispered. The sheer venom in his tone sucked the air from Sylvia's lungs. "Nora took Leo and Mia and left at three this morning. She knew everything. Every hotel. Every dinner. Every wire transfer to your boutique. She had files."
Sylvia’s expression shifted instantly from annoyance to a smug, barely concealed triumph. She leaned back against the cushions, crossing her long legs.
"Well," Sylvia sighed, inspecting her manicured nails. "I suppose the little mouse finally grew some common sense. Why are you upset, Victor? Isn't this what we wanted? You’ve been complaining about how pathetic she became after the birth for months. She’s boring, Victor. She smells like baby vomit, she doesn't go to galas, and she looks like a ghost. Now she’s gone, and she saved you the trouble of a messy divorce. Let her run back to whatever dirt-poor Midwest town she crawled out of. We can finally make this official."
Victor stared at the woman he had spent the last five months sleeping with.
In the dim light of the suite, the illusion shattered completely. He didn't see an intoxicating, glamorous socialite who made him feel powerful and free from the suffocating pressure of his new fatherhood. He saw an empty, parasitic shell. He saw a monster who viewed two sick, struggling infants as an inconvenience to be discarded.
He remembered Nora three months ago in the NICU.
Nora had spent seventy-two continuous hours sitting on a hard plastic chair, refusing to sleep, holding Leo’s tiny, translucent hand through the porthole of an incubator while the monitors beeped erratically. Nora had cried until her capillaries burst around her eyes, praying to a God she wasn't sure existed to let her keep her babies.
And Victor had left that hospital room to drink bourbon with Sylvia Vance because he “couldn't handle the stress.”
A profound, sickening wave of self-hatred washed over him.
"You told her," Victor said, the realization settling in his chest with terrifying clarity. "You sent her the pictures."
Sylvia didn't deny it. A cruel smile touched the corners of her mouth. "She needed a push. She was clinging to you like a parasite. I sent her the photos of us in Miami last month. I sent her the receipts from Aspen. I told her that if she stayed, I would make sure your lawyers took those sick twins from her and put them in a private institution so we wouldn't have to look at them."
The silence in the suite became absolute.
Marco, standing by the doorway, instinctively reached for his weapon, knowing what Victor was capable of when pushed past his limits.
Victor didn't draw a gun. He slowly stood up to his full height, stepped back, and looked down at Sylvia as if she were a stain on the sidewalk.
"Marco," Victor said without breaking eye contact with Sylvia.
"Yes, sir?"
"Call the city building commissioner. Revoke the commercial permits for Vance Tower on Wacker Drive. Call our portfolio managers in New York; short every stock connected to Vance Enterprises by noon. Call the District Attorney and deliver the unredacted files on Sylvia's father's offshore bribery scheme in Panama."
Sylvia’s face went chalk-white. She sprang up from the couch, her hands trembling violently. "Victor! You can't do that! That would bankrupt my family! You promised my father that merger!"
"I am a man who broke every promise he ever made to the only woman who truly loved him," Victor said, his voice flat, dead, and final. "You think I give a single damn about your father's company?"
He turned toward the door.
"Victor! Victor, please!" Sylvia shrieked, running after him, but Marco stepped into her path, blocking her with the immovable force of an iron wall. "You loved me! You said she meant nothing to you!"
Victor stopped at the threshold of the shattered door, looking back over his shoulder one last time.
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"She was everything," Victor said, the words cutting through the room like a razor blade. "And you were just the garbage I used to blind myself. If my children freeze in this storm, Sylvia... there is no corner of this earth where your family will be safe."
He walked out into the corridor, leaving her screaming into the cold air.
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