Part 3: The Cold Motivation
Leo stepped up behind his mother, his face turning a sickly shade of gray as he read the clinical text. "Why?" he whispered, his hands clenching into fists. "Why would Dad do this to his own blood?"
Oliver stood at the edge of the mahogany room, looking at the luxury around him with a profound, quiet exhaustion. "Because of the trust," he said softly.
Eleanor turned around, her eyes wide. "What do you know about the trust, Oliver?"
"The woman who raised me... Nurse Gallagher," Oliver explained, his voice flat, drained of tears. "When the cancer started taking her mind, she began talking. She said Richard Vance didn't want a split legacy. She said the Vance family trust had a strict grandfather clause from the 1920s."
Oliver stepped closer to the desk, his bare feet leaving faint dust prints on the Persian rug.
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"The empire had to pass undivided to a single, first-born male heir to maintain absolute voting control of the holdings. If there were twins, the board would have fractured the stock into competing trusts. Your husband didn't want a family, Mrs. Vance. He wanted a perfect, uncontested transition of power."
To Richard Vance, a child wasn't a miracle; it was a liability on a corporate balance sheet. He had selected Leo—the infant who weighed a mere four ounces more at birth—and paid a desperate nurse a fortune to make the other one vanish into the system.
