Chapter 12: The Gilded Cage
The return to the Sullivan estate was not a homecoming. It was an occupation.
Silas's town car, the same one that had whisked me away in shame weeks before, now brought me back in a grotesque parody of a victory parade. Levi stood waiting at the top steps, his face a perfect mask of butlerly neutrality. If he was surprised to see me return, he didn't show it.
"Dr. Vance," he said with a slight bow. "Welcome. Your things have been taken to the east wing suite."
My things. The few bags of anonymous clothing I'd accumulated. They would be hanging in a walk-in closet next to couture I hadn't chosen.
The east wing. Silas's wing. Far from Kaelen's old rooms. The message was clear: I was under his protection, and his dominion.
The suite was obscenely luxurious. A sitting room with a fireplace, a bedroom with a canopy bed that could sleep six, a marble bathroom with a sunken tub. Everything was tasteful, cold, and impersonal. A beautifully decorated prison cell. A single, stunning bouquet of white orchids sat on the mantelpiece—a welcome gift that felt more like a funeral arrangement.
The first test came within the hour. A knock on the door revealed a severe-looking woman in a crisp, white dress that was not quite a nurse's uniform.
"Dr. Vance, I am Clara," she said, her voice devoid of inflection. "Mr. Sullivan has asked me to oversee your prenatal care. I am a certified midwife and nutritionist. If you'll come with me, we have a examination room prepared."
An examination room prepared. In the house. Of course.
I followed her to a sunlit room that had been converted into a state-of-the-art medical suite. It was more advanced than some clinics I'd worked in. Silas was leaving nothing to chance.
Clia was efficient, thorough, and as warm as the stainless steel speculum she used. She took blood, did an ultrasound, her face revealing nothing as the grainy image of the baby—the heir—flickered on the screen. The tiny, galloping heartbeat filled the silent room.
"Everything appears satisfactory," she stated, wiping the gel from my stomach. "Your diet and schedule will be provided to you. You are to follow it precisely."
I was no longer Dr. Vance. I was a vessel. A national treasure to be managed.
The isolation was immediate and absolute. My phone—my real one—was returned to me, but I had no one to call. Ben? Alex? I could never drag them into this gilded nightmare. I was surrounded by staff, by Clara's constant monitoring, but I had never felt more alone.
Silas was a ghost in his own home. I felt his presence in the edicts delivered by Levi, in the perfectly prepared meals, in the silent, watching security cameras that dotted the property. He was rarely there, and when he was, our interactions were brief, cold, and transactional. He would ask Clara for a report in front of me, as if I weren't there. He would sometimes watch me during dinner, his grey eyes assessing, calculating my progress like a farmer inspecting a prize broodmare.
The one spark of rebellion came from an unexpected source: the library. It was a vast, two-story room filled with first editions and rare manuscripts. It was also the one place Clara wouldn't follow me, deeming it "unnecessary stimulation."
It became my sanctuary. I wasn't interested in the books. I was interested in the old, massive desk. Silas's father's desk. And more importantly, the small, locked drawer on the side.
It took me a week of searching during my allotted "library hours" to find the key, hidden inside a hollowed-out edition of Machiavelli's The Prince. The irony was almost laughable.
The drawer didn't contain state secrets. It contained something more precious: photographs. Old, black-and-white images of a younger, less hardened Silas. Of a beautiful, smiling woman with kind eyes—Kaelen's mother, Eleanor. And there, tucked behind a picture of a family vacation, was a folded, legal document.
It was the original IVF contract. The one that had created Kaelen.
My heart beat faster as I scanned the dense legal text. And then I found it. A clause, buried in the minutiae. A stipulation from Eleanor Sullivan. In the event of any future… disputes… over the lineage of the sole heir, the cryogenic storage facility in Zurich was to release a DNA sample from the original embryonic batch for comparative analysis.
Eleanor had known. She had known her husband was a ruthless man. She had known he might one day try to disinherit his own son. She had left a key.
A key I now held.
I heard a footstep in the hallway. Clara. I quickly refolded the document, slipped it and the key back into their hiding places, and grabbed a random book from the shelf, my heart pounding.
I had it. My insurance policy. Not just against Silas, but for my own child. Proof of its Sullivan lineage, locked away in a Swiss vault. A truth he could not manipulate.
The days bled into weeks. My body changed. A small, firm swell grew beneath my ribs. The reality of the pregnancy became inescapable. It was no longer a cluster of cells or a strategic asset. It was a baby. It moved. A faint, fluttering sensation that would stop me dead in my tracks, a feeling so alien and profound it would momentarily shatter my icy resolve.
During one of these moments, I was standing in the music room, my hand pressed to my stomach, feeling the tiny, butterfly kicks, when a voice spoke from the doorway.
"It's remarkable, isn't it?"
I jumped, whirling around. Silas stood there, leaning against the doorframe, watching me. He was holding a glass of whiskey. He looked tired. For the first time, I saw the faint lines of strain around his eyes.
"What is?" I asked, my voice defensive.
"The first movements," he said, his gaze fixed on my hand covering my stomach. "The first undeniable proof of a separate life. It's the moment it stops being a concept and starts being a person."
His observation was so unexpectedly human it threw me off balance. He stepped into the room, his presence filling the space.
"I wasn't there for it with Kaelen," he said, almost to himself. He swirled the amber liquid in his glass. "I was closing a deal in Tokyo. Eleanor called me, crying. I thought something was wrong." A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. "She was just happy."
He looked at me then, and for a fleeting second, I didn't see the ruthless patriarch or the calculating strategist. I saw a man haunted by the ghost of the family he'd failed, looking at a second chance he'd never expected to get.
The moment was so fragile, so real, it was terrifying. This was a different kind of trap. Not a cage of gold, but one of shared, complicated humanity.
Then, his eyes hardened again, the moment shattering like glass. The mask was back.
"Clara says your calcium levels are adequate," he said, his tone all business once more. "See that they remain that way."
He turned and left the room, leaving me alone with the ghost of his vulnerability and the kicking child in my womb.
I stood there, trembling, my hand back on my stomach. The baby kicked again, a strong, insistent pulse.
The walls of my gilded cage weren't just made of money and power. They were also made of moments like these, designed to confuse my hatred and make me forget that my warden was also the man who had burned me alive.
The game was getting harder to play. Because the most dangerous pawn of all was the one growing inside me, and it was starting to feel less like a weapon and more like a heart that beat outside my body.