Chapter 3 - The Reality Check
Ten miles away, in the penthouse suite of the Grand Plaza Hotel, Ryan Vance was adjusting his silk cuff links in the gilded mirror.
He checked his reflection, admiring the imported Italian suit he had charged to Maya’s credit card three days ago under the pretense of "emergency wedding expenses." He smiled. The suit looked exquisite. It was the suit of a man who belonged in the stratosphere of high finance, not trapped in a modest brownstone in Queens with an ICU nurse who smelled like antiseptic and talked about shift rotations.
On the mahogany dining table sat a silver ice bucket holding a bottle of Dom Pérignon, flanked by two crystal flutes and a plate of fresh oysters.
“Isabella should be back from the powder room any minute,” Ryan muttered to himself, checking his Rolex—another gift to himself on credit.
He felt a tiny prick of guilt about Maya, but he quickly smothered it with cold logic. His mother was right. Maya was sweet, but she was background noise. She didn't have connections. Her father had been a high school history teacher; her mother had run a community library. They had left her nothing but work ethic and morals—two things that were completely useless on Wall Street.
*She’ll recover,* Ryan thought, pouring a splash of champagne. *She’s tough. She works in trauma. She’ll cry for a week, Danielle will buy her some ice cream, and she’ll find some resident doctor who drives a Subaru. We were never meant for the same world.*
The heavy double doors of the suite clicked open.
Ryan turned, flashing his practiced, multi-million-dollar smile. “There you are, darling. I was thinking we should order the Beluga caviar before our flight to—”
The smile died on his face.
The woman who walked into the room was not wearing the emerald evening dress she had stepped out in. She was wearing a tailored navy blazer, dark trousers, and an FBI lanyard hanging from her neck. Flanking her were two federal agents in windbreakers and four NYPD detectives.
Ryan froze, the champagne glass hovering inches from his lips. “Isabella? What... what is this? Is this a joke?”
“My name is Special Investigator Sarah Vance, Ryan,” the woman said, her voice completely stripped of the breathy, sultry accent she had used for the last two months. “And no. It’s not a joke.”
Ryan let out a nervous, breathless chuckle. “Okay, look, if this is some kind of role-play thing Margaret set up, it’s a little intense—”
“Put the glass down, Mr. Vance,” one of the federal agents barked, stepping forward with a pair of steel handcuffs. “Hands behind your back.”
“What? On what charges? Are you insane? Do you know who I am? I’m the Senior Vice President of Acquisitions at Titan—”
“You were fired approximately forty-seven minutes ago by executive order of the Board of Directors,” Sarah said, pulling a laminated document from her folder and slapping it onto the table. “And you are under arrest for eighteen counts of wire fraud, grand larceny, attempted corporate espionage, and illegal trafficking of restricted biomedical data.”
Ryan felt the room tilt. The walls seemed to pulse inward. “No... no, no, no! Isabella, you told me Arthur Sterling wanted those files! You told me your father’s holding company would pay five million dollars in escrow the moment I left Maya!”
Sarah looked at him with an expression of such pure, clinical disgust that it burned worse than a slap.
“Arthur Sterling died in 2009, you pathetic narcissist,” she said coldly. “Every text, every encrypted email, every flash drive you handed me over expensive dinners was cataloged and submitted directly to the United States Attorney’s Office. Julian Thorne authorized every single dollar spent on this sting operation.”
*Julian Thorne.*
The name hit Ryan like a high-speed locomotive.
“Julian?” Ryan stammered, his knees suddenly turning to water as the agent grabbed his wrist and ratcheted the cold steel cuff around his bone. “Julian did this? Why? Why would Julian care about my personal life? I made him millions!”
“You stole six hundred thousand dollars from his European accounts last quarter alone, Ryan,” Sarah said, crossing her arms. “You didn't make him anything. You were a parasite. But Julian didn’t set this trap because of the money.”
Sarah stepped closer, leaning down until she was eye-level with Ryan, who was now being forced to his knees by the arresting officers.
“He did it because of Maya Lin.”
Ryan blinked, his mind utterly incapable of processing the sentence. “Maya? What does Maya have to do with the CEO of Titan Corporation? She’s an ICU nurse! She works nights at St. Augustine! She’s nobody!”
Sarah pulled her phone from her pocket and turned the screen toward him.
A live broadcast was playing on the screen. The banner at the bottom of the news channel read: **BREAKING: TITAN CORP CEO JULIAN THORNE MARRIES ICU HERO MAYA LIN IN SURPRISE CEREMONY AT ST. JUDE’S.**
On the screen, Ryan saw his cathedral. He saw the guests he had invited. He saw his mother being escorted into the back of an NYPD squad car, weeping hysterically while reporters shoved microphones into her face.
And then the camera zoomed in on the steps of the church.
There stood Julian Thorne. Imposing. Magnificent. His arm was wrapped possessively, protectively around a woman in a wine-splashed gown who looked transformed. Maya wasn’t crying. She wasn’t broken. Her chin was held high, her eyes burning with an icy, lethal elegance that Ryan had never seen in all their eighteen months together.
On her finger, catching the midday sun, was the Thorne family crest ring—a piece of jewelry worth more than every asset Ryan had ever touched in his entire life.
“No...” Ryan choked, a horrifying, suffocating realization clawing at his throat. “No, that’s my wedding! That’s my life!”
May you like
“No, Ryan,” Sarah whispered as the agents hauled him roughly to his feet. “That was the life you threw away for a lie.”
***
