Free Web NovelChapter 257: The same Leo Vance
"What are you doing here?" Yvette asked suddenly, tilting her head. "You never answered me properly."
"I’m here to meet someone," Julian said, but his mind was already somewhere else. "Yvette." He looked at her steadily. "You said you got pregnant for a man named Leo."
"Unfortunately, yes."
"Leo Vance?"
She blinked. "Yes. Leo Vance." A small frown formed between her brows. "How do you know Leo?"
Julian sat very still.
"The same Leo Vance," he said slowly, "who is currently in prison and was married?"
Yvette’s frown deepened. Something moved across her face, surprise first, then a flash of something that wasn’t quite shock because some part of her had perhaps always suspected that Leo Vance would eventually end up somewhere like that.
"In prison," she repeated.
"Yes."
She stared at him for a second. Then she let out a short breath and looked away briefly. "Of course he is," she said quietly. Not dramatic. Just tired in the specific way of someone who had made a mistake and had long since accepted it.
The thread in Julian’s mind pulled tighter.
Leo Vance. He turned the name over. The connection was there, he could see the shape of it forming, but he needed the next piece before he could be certain.
He leaned forward slightly.
"Yvette." His voice was careful now. Deliberate. "Your baby." She looked back at him.
"Where is your baby?"
Something changed in her face. The ease that had been sitting there since she spotted him across the café, the familiar banter, the old dynamic they had fallen back into so naturally, shifted. Just slightly. Like a door opening onto a different room.
She looked at him for a long moment.
"Why are you asking me that?" she said. Quiet. Watching him.
Julian held her gaze and didn’t look away.
"Where is your baby, Yvette?"
"She’s at the hotel with a nanny."
Yvette said it easily, picking up her cup again. "I’m looking for apartments, actually. Been living out of hotels for a week, which is exactly as exhausting as it sounds."
Julian nodded slowly.
"And the person who called me," she continued, her voice shifting slightly, "the one who wanted to meet about my baby..." She set the cup down and looked at him with something more serious underneath the casualness now.
"He’s not here. Obviously. But Julian..." She leaned forward just slightly. "Can you look into him for me? Something about it felt wrong. The call, the questions he was asking." She paused. "I know you have people. You always had people." freeωebnovēl.c૦m
Yvette had kept talking.
"I know I wasn’t exactly ready to be a mother," she said, and the breezy tone softened around the edges in a way it hadn’t before.
"I’ll be the first to admit that. But losing two babies in a hospital," She stopped. Looked down at the table briefly. "That’s a little heartbreaking. Even for someone like me."
Julian looked at her. "Two babies," he said carefully.
"I was carrying triplets." She said it simply. The way you say things, you have had to say enough times that the shock has worn off, but the weight hasn’t.
"Three girls. Only one survived." She shook her head slightly. "I can’t believe a hospital, a proper hospital, not some back-alley clinic, could just let that happen. Let two babies just..." She pressed her lips together. "Anyway."
Julian sat forward.
"When did this happen?"
"Last month." She looked up at him. "Between the second and third of June."
The words hit him like cold water.
He didn’t move. Didn’t let it show on his face; years of boardrooms had made him good at that. But something inside his chest locked into place with a click so loud he was surprised she couldn’t hear it.
The second and third of June.
The same hospital. The same window of time. Amara in one room, Yvette somewhere in the same building, and somewhere in between, babies moved, records altered, lives rearranged by hands that knew exactly what they were doing.
Yvette was the third mother.
She was sitting right across from him in a purple dress, drinking coffee she wasn’t really drinking, and she was the third mother and the baby at her hotel right now.
He breathed. Steady. In and out.
"Julian?" She was watching him now. Reading his face the way she always used to, she had always been better at that than he gave her credit for. "What is it? You’ve gone very quiet and not in your normal insufferable quiet way."
He looked at her directly.
"Yvette." He kept his voice level. "I need you to listen to me."
She stilled.
"There was a mix-up at the hospital." He chose each word carefully, the way you carry something that could break.
"A serious one. Deliberate." He paused. "I believe you have our baby. Mine and my wife’s."
Yvette stared at him.
Then, a short sound. Almost a laugh but not quite.
"The irony of that," she said softly, almost to herself. Then she shook her head and looked back at him.
"No. Julian, no. I have my baby girl at that hotel right now. She is mine. I know she’s mine." She pressed a hand briefly to her chest. "I can feel it. A mother knows."
"Yvette..."
"No." Her voice was firmer now. The amusement completely gone. "I lost two babies already. Two. I am not sitting here and letting you tell me that the one I have left is not mine." Her eyes held his. "I’m sorry, but no. That’s not... no."
"I understand," Julian said. And he meant it. He did. "I understand exactly what I’m saying is not easy, and I know how it sounds." He leaned forward.
"But you need to understand what I’m telling you. This wasn’t an accident. Someone did this deliberately, moved babies, switched records." Yvette was quiet.
For the first time since he had walked through that door, she was completely, utterly quiet.
She looked at him, and he watched the thing behind her eyes move through several stages at once.
Denial, then the particular terror of someone who has started to consider that you might be telling the truth, then something that looked very much like a woman who had been through enough already and was furious about being asked to go through more.
