part 2
The city bus arrived with a sharp, heavy screech of its air brakes.
Climbing the high metal steps was absolute torture. Every single upward movement pulled violently at my stitches. The driver offered a brief, passing glance at my pale face and the newborn infant tucked beneath my cashmere shawl, but he said absolutely nothing. I took a seat by the window, shielding my son from the vibrations of the road.
As the bus rattled through Manhattan, the last two years of my silence replayed in my mind.
Dominic possessed absolutely no idea who I truly was. He genuinely believed my father was a retired contractor with “a few decent plots of land” upstate and a modest local construction firm. I had intentionally allowed him to believe that narrative, completely convinced it would ensure he loved me for who I was, rather than the heavy leverage of the Brooks surname.
In the beginning, Dominic had been incredibly attentive. Devoted. Ambitious, yes, but remarkably charming. But the exact moment his technology startup began securing substantial seed capital from major institutional funds, his nature inverted. He became insufferably arrogant. His mother began calling me a “dependent burden,” and Natalie routinely hinted that I had struck gold by marrying “a man destined for the tech elite.”
They never possessed the foresight to realize that those major institutional funds had opened their vault doors for one singular reason: they knew I was the sole heiress of Charles Brooks, the founder of Brooks Global Corp, one of the most powerful infrastructure conglomerates in the country.
The bus ground to a halt at a major intersection.
Beside our window, our black luxury SUV pulled up in the adjoining lane. Inside, the Vance family was laughing together on their way to the restaurant. Dominic didn’t even turn his head to look at the transit line beside him.
Something fundamental snapped completely inside my chest. It wasn’t a wave of sadness. It was an absolute, blinding clarity.
With a steady hand, I pulled my phone from my bag and dialed a priority line I had spent years avoiding for my personal affairs.
“Dad,” I said the moment the line cleared.
“Audrey?” My father’s deep voice answered on the very first ring.
I swallowed hard, looking down at my sleeping son, and spoke with a terrifying calmness. “Dad, I need you to dispatch a security detail to my apartment immediately. Dominic just sent me home on a city bus with Leo five days after my C-section. I am leaving him permanently.”
An immense, freezing silence deadened the line. When Charles Brooks spoke again, his voice was a low, terrifying growl.
May you like
“Give me your exact coordinate marker. And listen to me very carefully, Audrey: you are never crossing the threshold of that apartment again. Neither you nor my grandson will endure a single fraction of his disrespect for the rest of your lives.”
I closed my eyes tightly as the bus surged forward. My previous existence was officially left on the curb. And Dominic Vance had absolutely no idea what kind of leviathan he had just awakened.
