Chapter 4 - The File on Clara
Three hours later, Cameron sat in the private waiting suite on the fifth floor of Mercy General.
Hope was fast asleep on the long leather sofa beside him, wrapped in Cameron’s heavy navy suit jacket like a blanket. Her red dress was rumpled, her small face peaceful for the first time in six hours.
The door opened quietly. Marcus stepped in, holding a thick, unbranded manila folder.
Marcus looked exhausted, his tie loosened at his neck, but his expression was dead serious.
“You were right,” Marcus said softly, shutting the door behind him. “She wasn't a random traveler.”
Cameron stood up from his chair, taking the folder. “What did you find?”
Marcus pointed to the top document inside.
“Her name is Clara Vance,” Marcus said.
Cameron’s hand froze over the page. “Vance?”
“Yes,” Marcus nodded. “Daughter of Arthur Vance—the same Arthur Vance currently sitting in a Tokyo hotel room screaming into his phone because you missed your meeting.”
Cameron stared at the photograph stapled to the upper corner of the report. It was a state identification photo from seven years ago: Clara Vance, smiling brilliantly, her grey eyes bright, her dark hair long and styled. She looked like royalty.
Nothing like the pale, dying woman lying in ICU Room 504.
“How did Arthur Vance’s daughter end up starving on an airport floor in Terminal B?” Cameron asked, his tone dropping into a dangerous register.
“Seven years ago, Clara was the heir apparent to Vance Group’s domestic real estate portfolio,” Marcus explained, reading from his notes. “She fell in love with a senior financial analyst named Julian Cross—a man her father despised. Arthur gave her an ultimatum: break off the relationship or be stripped of her inheritance and her trust funds.”
“She chose the man,” Cameron said.
“She chose the man,” Marcus confirmed. “She married Cross, cut all ties with the Vance family, and disappeared from high society. But three years ago, Cross emptied her personal accounts, loaded her down with two hundred thousand dollars of debt in her name, and vanished to South America with a mistress.”
Cameron felt a cold rage settle into his ribs. “And her father?”
“Arthur Vance refused to take her back,” Marcus said grimly. “When she went to his office six months ago to ask for help with Hope’s medical bills, Arthur had security escort her out of the building. He told the press he had only one child, and she died the day she disowned her family.”
Cameron looked over at the sofa where little Hope was sleeping.
A six-year-old girl, carrying the bloodline of one of the richest men in Asia, sleeping under a borrowed coat because her grandfather’s pride was larger than his humanity.
“Where was she living?” Cameron asked.
“A basement apartment in Queens,” Marcus said. “Evicted four days ago. She was working three jobs—cleaning offices at night, working a bakery shift at dawn, and doing remote data entry—trying to buy those two tickets to Florida. Her mother—Clara’s mother—lives in a small retirement village near Ocala. Clara was trying to reach her before her body gave out.”
Cameron closed the folder with a sharp, heavy snap.
“Call my legal team,” Cameron said.
“For what?”
“I want a full buyout offer prepared for Vance Group’s domestic debt holdings by midnight,” Cameron said, his voice flat and absolute. “Every loan Arthur Vance owes to West Global Bank... call them in.”
Marcus stared at him. “Cameron... you’re going to war with Arthur Vance over a woman you haven't spoken to in twenty years?”
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Cameron looked down at his own hand—at the faint white scar on his left wrist from a rusty fence in an upstate orchard in 2004.
“She’s the girl who shared her bread with me when I had nothing in that shelter, Marcus,” Cameron said softly. “And nobody abandons her twice.”
