He had no idea that six months earlier, Eloise had managed to track down and open a sealed adoption file that had been buried for decades.
He had no clue that she had successfully discovered the identity and the name of her biological father.
She had learned that the man who gave her life was actually Harris Campbell, the owner of Campbell Insurance Group, which was one of the most powerful financial empires in all of the United States.
Damien was even less aware that the fifty million dollar life insurance policy he had so greedily taken out on her was, through a strange twist of fate, underwritten by a subsidiary company linked to that very same group.
Eloise had not told him the truth yet because she still did not feel emotionally ready to look a total stranger in the eye and call him father.
But now, as the heavy mountain snow began to cover her up to her chest, she finally understood that this terrifying secret was the only thing that could save her life.
Hidden deep inside the heavy lining of her coat was a small, high-tech emergency locator device.
Harris had sent it to her anonymously weeks earlier, after his private investigators informed him that she was living with a dangerously controlling man.
“Only press this button if you are ever in immediate, life-threatening danger,” he had told her in a brief, encrypted note.
Eloise moved her numb, shaking fingers under her coat, desperately searching for the small, hard plastic button.
She finally found it.
She pressed it with all the strength she had left.
Then, she simply closed her eyes and waited for the darkness to take her.
When she finally woke up, she realized she was not dead, but instead lying in a quiet, sterile private hospital room. She was connected to a series of rhythmic monitors, her face was covered in heavy bandages, and she could feel a constant, comforting weight resting on her swollen belly.
The steady, rhythmic sound of her baby’s heartbeat filled the silent room.
She was alive, and so was her child.
A tall, distinguished figure with shock-white hair and a bespoke tailored suit was standing right beside the bed. His eyes were red, but they were not filled with the weakness of grief, but rather with a terrifying, cold fury.
“Eloise,” said Harris, gently taking her limp hand in his. “My precious daughter, you need to tell me exactly who did this to you.”
She slowly looked out the window, where the relentless snow was still falling over the quiet, hidden medical facility.
Her split, swollen lips barely managed to move as she spoke.
“First, I need you to let me bury myself,” she whispered.
Harris did not respond with words, but his facial expression shifted into something predatory.
It was in that moment that Eloise realized Damien had made the mistake of provoking a man who would never, under any circumstances, forgive a betrayal committed against his own blood.
Chapter 2: The Widower’s Performance
Damien Finch acted the role of a grieving widower long before there was ever an actual corpse to bury.
He wept openly in front of the television cameras, lowered his gaze at the local funeral home, and allowed himself to be hugged by weeping women who kept repeating, “You poor man, you lost both your wife and your unborn child in one terrible blow.”
He pressed his lips together, pretended he was too overcome with emotion to speak, and covered his face with a clean, white handkerchief.
Wendy was always nearby, though she was careful to never stand too close. She introduced herself to everyone as a close family friend, dressed entirely in black and wearing diamond earrings that Eloise had unknowingly paid for with her own savings.
“My wife was my entire world,” Damien told the aggressive reporters gathered outside the cathedral in the city of Blue Ridge. “And my daughter, my poor daughter, she didn’t even get the chance to take her first breath in this world.”
Some of the onlookers sobbed openly at his words.
