The sprawling, multi-million dollar penthouse felt exactly like a silent, suffocating tomb when Vance finally walked through the heavy double doors shortly after midnight.

He had already sent Lila home in a separate black car with a brief, entirely emotionless text message permanently ending their superficial relationship.

He walked mechanically to his private bar and poured himself a heavy glass of scotch that cost more than most people's cars, but the amber liquid tasted like absolute ash in his mouth.

Vance picked up his encrypted mobile phone with trembling fingers and immediately dialed the direct number of his ruthless head of private security.

He coldly ordered a complete, relentless, and invasive background check on every single second of Maddie Rowan's life over the last three agonizing years.

He specifically demanded every single hospital record, every cheap apartment lease, every bank statement, and every single connection she had ever made to Grant Ellison.

By the time the sun began to rise over the East River, a thick, heavily encrypted digital file was waiting quietly in his private email inbox.

Vance sat alone in his dark office and stared at the glowing computer screen, his heart pounding a heavy, sickening rhythm against his bruised ribs.

The chronological timeline presented on the screen was a brutal, undeniable, and deeply horrific list of his own monumental failures as a human being.

Maddie had tragically discovered she was pregnant with twins exactly three weeks after Vance callously walked out of her quiet hospital room.

The phone records showed that she had desperately tried to call his private, unlisted office line exactly six different times in one week.

Vance remembered with a wave of profound self-hatred that he had strictly instructed his executive assistant to block her phone number permanently.

The file meticulously detailed how Maddie had been forced to move out of their luxury apartment with absolutely nothing but a single suitcase of her clothes.

She had exhaustingly worked two grueling jobs on her feet while heavily pregnant with twins just to barely afford a tiny, unheated studio apartment in Queens.

The medical records were the hardest part to read, revealing that she had nearly died from severe hemorrhaging and massive complications during the terrifying premature delivery.

Vance pressed the heels of his shaking hands deeply into his burning eyes, desperately trying to stop the dark room from violently spinning around him.

He had been arrogantly sipping champagne and closing a multi-billion dollar corporate merger in Tokyo while the only woman he ever loved was bleeding out on a cold operating table.

The private investigator's notes revealed that Grant Ellison had smoothly entered the tragic picture exactly one year later.

Grant had conveniently met Maddie at a low-income charity clinic where she was working exhausting hours as a front desk receptionist just to pay for diapers.

Grant had aggressively swept in, moved her into a highly secure, elegant brownstone in Brooklyn, and hired a team of top-tier, expensive nannies to ease her burden.

Grant was perfectly and effortlessly playing the exact role of the devoted, loving father that Vance had so violently and selfishly thrown away.

Vance suddenly slammed his clenched fist violently onto the polished mahogany desk, completely shattering his expensive crystal glass into a thousand sharp pieces.

He did not care about the blood dripping from his knuckles, because he was absolutely not going to let another man raise his own blood.