Within ten seconds, the heavy oak doors of the St. Regis ballroom clicked shut, sealing two hundred stunned wedding guests inside.
Camilla dropped immediately to her knees on the white carpet, clutching at the hem of Julian’s tuxedo trousers as black mascara ran down her cheeks.
“Julian, please!” she sobbed, her voice trembling with desperation. “Lucas forced me into this! He told me if I didn’t fake the pregnancy and marry you before Monday, he would leak false accounting records and ruin your merger with the European board!”
“Shut your mouth, Camilla!” Lucas snapped from near the side marble pillar, his calm, polished facade finally cracking. “You came to my apartment the night after the crash! You were the one who said Julian was too broken over Elena to ever notice a forged signature!”
Julian ignored them both.
He stepped past Camilla’s grasping hands, took the thick manila envelope directly from Elena’s bodyguard, and broke the red wax seal. Inside was a stack of high-level bank transfers, Swiss clinic nondisclosure agreements, and hospital discharge papers.
At the bottom of the third page—authorizing a four-million-dollar wire transfer to an untraceable offshore account in Zurich just forty-eight hours after Elena’s accident—sat Julian’s own signature.
Julian stared at the dark blue ink, his jaw clenching. “I never signed this.”
“I know,” Elena said softly, resting a protective hand on Sofia’s shoulder as the little girl pressed closer to her coat. “Look at the stroke on the final letter. It’s angled upward. You always slant yours downward when you write with your left hand. Only someone who practiced copying your signature from old household checks in your study would make that mistake.”
Julian’s dark eyes narrowed sharply as he turned back to Camilla. “You went through my private desk.”
“I was only trying to help you organize your bills while you were grieving!” Camilla cried, scrambling backward across the carpet as Julian took a slow, deliberate step toward her. “Julian, look at me—we were minutes away from being husband and wife! Everything I did, I did because I loved you!”
“You loved the Vance name,” Julian corrected, his voice dropping to a lethal, quiet calm that made the front row of guests shrink back in their chairs.
He pulled his phone from his inner jacket pocket and dialed his head of legal counsel on speaker.
“Marcus, freeze every personal and corporate account linked to Lucas Sterling and Camilla Hayes effective immediately,” Julian ordered. “Revoke their security clearances, cancel their credit lines, and bring the state prosecutor to the St. Regis ballroom within twenty minutes.”
Camilla’s breath hitched in her throat. “You wouldn’t dare. If you arrest us here in front of the press and the board members, the scandal will destroy Vance Enterprises’ stock price tomorrow morning!”
“Let it burn,” Julian said without blinking.
He walked past her without sparing a second glance and stopped directly in front of Elena, his expression softening for the first time all afternoon as he looked at the cast on her leg.
“Where have you been hiding for six months, Elena?” Julian asked quietly, his voice rough with emotion. “And how did you survive that crash?”
Elena glanced briefly toward the back of the grand ballroom, where a tall man in a dark charcoal overcoat stood quietly beside the sealed double doors—a man Julian hadn’t seen or spoken to in five years.
