Chapter 4 Cruel Reflections

~DONOVAN~

Three long, agonizing years away. Now, I was finally back home. I stood motionless in the dead center of the lavish, meticulously designed penthouse suite, letting the heavy, suffocating silence of the room wash over me. I was back in the very place I had sworn on my life never to return to. The plush imported rugs, the gilded fixtures, the vaulted ceilings—it all reeked of my father’s oppressive legacy. My jaw locked tight, grinding my teeth together as my mind homed in on my singular, unbreakable objective. I was going to leave my destructive mark on this empire. I would rip it apart from the inside out, piece by piece, until my despised father’s legendary name became nothing but a pathetic, faded memory in the minds of the elite.

I stared out through the massive floor-to-ceiling glass at the sprawling New York skyline. The city lights flickered to life in the gathering dusk like distant, hungry fires. They mirrored the cold burning in my own chest. I didn't even bother turning my head when the heavy oak double doors of the suite groaned softly on their hinges. I recognized the hesitant, weak footsteps shuffling across the floorboards.

“I’ve carried out your precise instructions, sir,” Mr. Benson, the hotel manager, stammered to my back. His voice was thick with palpable fear, trembling over the syllables. “Miss Hayes has been officially fired and escorted off the premises.”

Ah, yes. Valerie Hayes.

The fragile young mother with the unruly child. I kept my eyes locked on the glittering skyscrapers, but the vivid image of her hopeless, wide, terrified eyes burned vividly into the back of my mind. She had looked at me in that hallway as if I were a monster stepping out of the shadows to devour her whole. She possessed a weakness I despised, a raw vulnerability that I had eradicated from my own soul a long time ago.

But it wasn’t her that bothered me. She was just another face in a sea of incompetent employees.

It was the boy who truly haunted my thoughts.

That brief, grating moment in the hallway kept replaying in my head on a dark loop. Staring down into that small child's face felt like taking a brutal, unexpected blow right to the center of my chest. It knocked the wind out of me. His facial structure, the stubborn, defiant tilt of his chin, and those specific, piercing blue eyes peering up from under a mess of dark hair. It was too close. His face served as a flawless, terrifying mirror of my own reflection as a broken, neglected child trapped in this very same cutthroat world. I hated it. I hated being abruptly dragged back into that pathetic past, reminded of a time when I was small, powerless, and at the mercy of a cruel man who valued money over his own flesh and blood.

Slowly, deliberately, I turned around.

I locked my icy gaze onto Benson. The manager stood near the doorway, clutching a clipboard to his chest like a useless shield. He looked pale, sweating profusely under the soft ambient lighting of the penthouse.

“Who exactly authorized her employment in my hotel?” I demanded, keeping my voice lethally calm. The quietness of my tone only seemed to terrify him more, hanging in the air like a blade waiting to drop.

“S-sir?” Benson choked out, taking half a step back.

“You heard me,” I said, taking slow, measured steps toward him. I stalked him like prey. “This is a pristine, high-class establishment. We cater to the top one percent. The Elysium brand stands for flawless execution. I want to know who thought it was a brilliant idea to hire a woman who brings a rogue child to wander the premises. Do you have any concept of the massive PR scandal this could easily cause among our elite clientele? A child running loose in the service corridors? Tripping over luxury luggage? Interrupting confidential boardroom meetings?”

Benson’s face drained of all remaining color. He looked as though his knees might give out right there on the carpet. “Sir, I swear to you, it was a terrible oversight—”

“A liability,” I cut in sharply, my voice echoing off the high ceilings. “You invited a walking lawsuit into my pristine empire.”

Benson practically dropped to his knees. His entire body trembled as he hunched his shoulders, desperately trying to shrink under my unyielding gaze. “I blame the hiring department, Mr. Vance! I had no idea! I swear on my life I had no idea she would ever dare bring a child to work! She kept it a secret from me!”

A cold, mocking smirk slowly formed on my lips. I looked down at the groveling man, feeling a familiar, dark emptiness expanding in my chest. “So, let me get this straight. That weak, pathetic thing actually outsmarted you?”

Benson looked up, his eyes shining with unshed tears of panic. “No! I mean—she bypassed the protocol—”

Watching Valerie Hayes’s raw fear in the hallway had initially brought me a twisted, perverse sense of satisfaction. I liked seeing the weak realize their place in the food chain. But right now, looking at the sweating, sniveling manager on my floor, that satisfaction evaporated. It wasn't nearly enough to fill the void inside me.

“Incompetent, spineless workers have no place in my empire,” I stated, my tone final and sharp. “You’re fired.”

Benson gasped, his mouth dropping open. “No! Please, Mr. Vance! I have a mortgage! I have kids in college! I did nothing wrong!” He lunged forward, crawling toward my custom Italian leather shoes, desperate to grab my ankles.

I stepped back, disgusted by the display. “You allowed a disease into my flawless machine. Get the hell out of my sight before I have security physically drag you onto the street and toss you into the gutter.”

“Please, sir! Just one more chance!” he sobbed loudly, his wails echoing pathetically in the grand, empty room.

“Out.”

My single word cracked like a whip. Benson scrambled backward, finally recognizing the lethal finality in my eyes. He hauled himself to his feet, crying openly now, and stumbled blindly out the heavy double doors. The doors clicked shut behind him, plunging the penthouse back into heavy silence.

Alone again in the rapidly darkening room, the shadows seemed to stretch and curl around the antique furniture. I walked over to the massive gilded mirror hanging near the entryway. I stood before it, staring intensely at my own reflection. The sharp jawline, the cold eyes, the tailored suit. But superimposed over my own face, I saw the ghost of that little boy in the hallway.

I slammed my fist onto the marble console below the mirror. The dull thud grounded me. I hated that little boy. I hated Valerie Hayes. I hated them both for daring to exist in my space and disrupt my mental focus. I turned my back on the glass, looking around the opulent cage my father had built. I wouldn't stop until every single thing my father once held dear was entirely mine to destroy.

~VALERIE~

A grueling, exhausting week had slowly dragged by since the day I was so ruthlessly fired from "Elysium."

Seven straight days. Seven days of desperately dragging a tired, fussy Leo across the concrete maze of the city. We rode crowded subways that smelled of rust and stale sweat, walked blocks in the sweltering heat until the soles of my cheap flats wore thin, and sat in stiff, uncomfortable waiting rooms. I handed over my resume to countless hotel managers, begging for a chance, a trial shift, anything to keep a roof over our heads. Every single interview ended in the exact same polite, crushing rejection. They saw the gap in my employment, they saw the dark circles under my eyes, and worst of all, they saw the heavy burden of a mother carrying a child she could not afford to put in daycare.

Now, my legs finally gave out. I collapsed into a worn, vinyl chair at a small, dingy café. It was located right around the corner from my best friend Beatrice’s sleek corporate workplace. The contrast between my current grim reality and Beatrice’s shiny world was a bitter pill to swallow. I sat there defeated, my shoulders slumped forward, my muscles aching with a deep, bone-weary fatigue that sleep could never fix.

My fingers tightly clutched a lukewarm, cheap cup of coffee I could barely afford. The paper cup was flimsy, the heat barely registering against my chilled palms. I stared blankly at the scratched, sticky surface of the table, watching a stray drop of dark liquid slowly slide down the side of my cup.

Beside me, Leo was perched on his chair, aggressively zooming his plastic toy truck back and forth. The truck bumped over a pile of sugar packets, making a crinkling sound that usually made me smile. Today, I just felt hollow and numb.

“Your son is adorable,” a cheerful, overly talkative voice suddenly chirped over the noise of the diner.

I blinked, pulling myself out of my dark spiral of thoughts, and looked up. A young waitress wearing a stained blue apron had paused by our table. She held a coffee pot in one hand and a damp rag in the other, watching fondly as Leo smashed his truck into the sugar packets again.

“Thank you,” I muttered softly, trying to force a polite, passable smile onto my exhausted face.

“He has such striking features,” the waitress continued, leaning in a little closer. She squinted at Leo, studying his messy dark hair and bright blue eyes with intense curiosity. Then, she slowly turned her head, looking out the large, smudged window of the café. “He really reminds me of him. Is he the father?”

She lifted her hand, pointing her index finger straight out the window.

Following the trajectory of her pointing finger, my gaze landed outside. My breath suddenly hitched in my throat. My lungs seized up, refusing to draw in air, and a cold sweat broke out across the back of my neck.

Positioned directly across the busy street, towering over the intersection like a modern gargoyle, was a massive digital billboard. The screen glowed with an ultra-high-definition advertisement for the Vance hotel empire. Displayed front and center was the smug, arrogant, and flawless face of Donovan Vance.

He wore a tailored midnight-blue suit, his piercing gaze seemingly looking right down into the café, right at me. It was the exact monster who had gotten me fired. The man who had brutally stripped away my last shred of hope with a simple snap of his expensive fingers.

Staring up at his towering image, the waitress's casual words echoed loudly in my ears. *Is he the father?*

The horrific thought of that cruel, soulless billionaire somehow being Leo's father hit me like a physical blow. My stomach churned with sickness and raw disgust. I looked from the massive billboard down to my sweet, innocent boy. They shared the same stubborn tilt of the chin. The same sharp jawline developing under baby fat. The same shade of piercing blue eyes. The physical resemblance was a terrifying coincidence, a cruel joke played by a merciless universe.

“I don’t know him,” I stated bluntly, my voice coming out hard and defensive. I grabbed Leo’s truck and pulled it slightly closer to me, a fierce protective maternal instinct flaring up in my chest.

Caught completely off guard by my sudden, sharp hostility, the waitress took a quick step back. She nervously stammered, twisting the rag in her hands as she tried to backpedal and justify her innocent observation. “Oh, I… I’m sorry. I just thought… you know, the jawline. It’s an uncanny resemblance between the boy and the billionaire on the screen. It was just an observation—”

“He is not the father,” I cut her off aggressively.

My voice rose in pitch. I couldn't control the sudden spike of adrenaline, the desperate need to sever any invisible tie between my son and that monster. The words carried loudly across the quiet café, bouncing off the peeling wallpaper before I could stop myself. Several patrons at nearby tables turned their heads, their forks pausing mid-air as they stared at me with wide eyes.

“A cold, heartless man like him could never, ever be a father,” I spat out, my chest heaving with unspent rage. “He destroys people. He doesn't care about anyone but himself.”

The waitress’s face flushed a deep crimson. “I am so sorry, ma'am. I didn't mean to offend you,” she whispered rapidly, her cheerful demeanor entirely shattered. She immediately spun around and hurried quickly away, disappearing behind the diner counter to escape the uncomfortable tension radiating from our booth.

I sat there, my hands shaking uncontrollably around my coffee cup. My own face flushed with hot anger and deep, burning embarrassment. I realized people were still looking at me, judging the crazy mother shouting in a cheap diner. I ducked my head, letting my untamed curls fall forward to shield my burning cheeks from their prying eyes.

Taking a long, shaky, deep breath, I closed my eyes. I forced myself to mentally calm down. I had to keep it together. If not for my own sanity, then for Leo’s sake.

I opened my eyes and looked at my son. The little boy happily played on, picking up his truck and smashing it against the sugar packets once more, completely oblivious to the suffocating tension radiating from my rigid posture. He hummed a happy little tune, safe and protected in his own tiny world.

I leaned my elbows on the sticky table and stared down into the dark, murky abyss of my coffee cup. A crushing realization slowly washed over me, chilling my blood and settling deep into my bones.

I realized that no matter how desperately hard I tried to run, no matter how many interviews I went to, or how far across the city I dragged us to escape, Donovan Vance's massive, dark shadow constantly loomed ominously over me. He owned the skyline. He owned the hotels. He owned the very fabric of this city.

He had utterly destroyed my life with a single, careless, arrogant decision in that hallway. And he had simply walked away smiling, leaving me to drown in the wreckage while his perfect face watched me from high above.