Minutes earlier, he had been standing at the top of his world—literally and figuratively. His fingers were clenched around his phone, knuckles white, as his ex-wife Rachel Hale shouted through the line.
They were arguing about money, custody, and their ten-month-old twins, Evan and Nora. To her, the babies were leverage. To Victor, they were responsibilities to juggle between flights, contracts, and boardrooms.
Even as he fell, it felt like just another problem to manage.
Victor had always controlled everything—companies, negotiations, people’s time. He paid for perfection: the mansion, the imported marble, the expensive cribs upstairs. In his mind, that was what made him a good father. Love and warmth were abstract ideas, not skills he’d learned.
Somewhere upstairs, Amelia Brooks, the nanny, was probably carrying the twins. Victor rarely noticed her unless something went wrong. She was “the help,” the one who stayed after Rachel left, the one who cleaned up what he avoided looking at too closely. He had never asked where she came from or what she carried inside her. She was simply a solution.
At least, that’s what he believed until his body hit the floor.