Maddie did not even have to pick up her phone to contact Grant, because he arrived at her front door exactly two hours later.

He stepped smoothly into her beautiful home without an invitation, looking incredibly smug and dangerously powerful in a bespoke black suit.

He looked down at Maddie’s tear-stained face with a horrifying, deeply twisted look of fake, perfectly manufactured sympathy in his cold eyes.

Grant softly and cruelly told her that he was incredibly devastated to hear about the tragic, sudden illness threatening her precious babies.

He smoothly reminded her that his pharmaceutical company owned the exclusive, heavily protected patents to the exact experimental drug the twins desperately needed.

Maddie practically begged him on her shaking knees, offering to give him every single dollar of the massive trust fund Vance had established.

Grant laughed a bitter, incredibly hollow laugh that sent a terrifying, icy shiver violently down Maddie’s trembling spine.

He coldly informed her that he already had more money than God, and he absolutely did not want her pathetic, leftover financial scraps.

He leaned down aggressively, his face mere inches from hers, and delivered his terrifying, non-negotiable, and deeply sinister ultimatum.

He demanded that Maddie publicly sign away full legal custody of the children to him and legally marry him by the end of the week.

If she completely submitted to his absolute control and ruined Vance's legacy, the children would miraculously receive the life-saving drug entirely for free.

If she dared to refuse or tell Vance, Grant promised to completely bury the experimental medication in years of legal bureaucratic red tape.

He arrogantly straightened his expensive tie, giving her exactly twenty-four hours to make the ultimate, horrifying sacrifice for her innocent children.

Grant walked out of the house, leaving Maddie completely shattered and drowning in a deep, agonizing ocean of impossible, agonizing choices.