Chapter 6: The Photograph
Callum
I don't sleep.
Not because of the company. Not because of the numbers. Because something she said is lodged in my chest like a splinter I can't reach.
*You made me wait five years to hear you say my name again.*
Like she'd been counting.
Like it mattered.
At 3 AM, I find myself in the study, pulling files I haven't touched in years. I don't know what I'm looking for. Some version of the story that makes me the good guy.
It doesn't exist.
By morning, I'm showered, dressed, and at my desk before anyone else arrives. My assistant brings coffee. I don't drink it.
"I need everything we have on Laurent Equity," I say.
She hesitates. "Sir—"
"Everything."
Within an hour, I'm reading through filings, ownership trails, corporate histories. All of it clean. All of it precise. Built layer by layer over five years with surgical patience.
She didn't rush.
She didn't make mistakes.
She built something real while I wasn't watching.
Then I find it.
Buried in a profile piece from a business magazine three years ago. A feature on emerging female founders. There's a photograph.
Vivienne, seated at a desk, hair pulled back, smiling at the camera with the kind of confidence I never saw when she worked for me.
And on the desk behind her—barely visible, slightly blurred—a child's drawing.
Stick figures. A house. A sun.
The word *Mama* in red crayon.
My breath stops.
I zoom in.
It's unmistakable.
A child's artwork. On her desk. In her office.
I sit back. Slowly.
She has a child.
I count the years. The timeline. The math doesn't add up unless—
Unless it does.
Unless the baby is mine.
I close the article.
I open it again.
I stare at the drawing until my vision blurs.
Then I pick up my phone and call the one person who might know.
"I need information," I say.
"On who?"
"Vivienne Laurent," I say. "Specifically... if she has a child."
Silence on the other end.
"Why?"
"Because I think it's mine."
More silence.
"I'll look into it."
I hang up and lean back.
The office feels too small. The air feels wrong. Everything I was angry about—the shares, the power, the humiliation—suddenly doesn't matter.
Because if she had my child.
If she kept that from me for five years.
Then this isn't just business.
This is war.
And she fired the first shot a long time ago.
I don't sleep.
Not because of the company. Not because of the numbers. Because something she said is lodged in my chest like a splinter I can't reach.
*You made me wait five years to hear you say my name again.*
Like she'd been counting.
Like it mattered.
At 3 AM, I find myself in the study, pulling files I haven't touched in years. I don't know what I'm looking for. Some version of the story that makes me the good guy.
It doesn't exist.
By morning, I'm showered, dressed, and at my desk before anyone else arrives. My assistant brings coffee. I don't drink it.
"I need everything we have on Laurent Equity," I say.
She hesitates. "Sir—"
"Everything."
Within an hour, I'm reading through filings, ownership trails, corporate histories. All of it clean. All of it precise. Built layer by layer over five years with surgical patience.
She didn't rush.
She didn't make mistakes.
She built something real while I wasn't watching.
Then I find it.
Buried in a profile piece from a business magazine three years ago. A feature on emerging female founders. There's a photograph.
Vivienne, seated at a desk, hair pulled back, smiling at the camera with the kind of confidence I never saw when she worked for me.
And on the desk behind her—barely visible, slightly blurred—a child's drawing.
Stick figures. A house. A sun.
The word *Mama* in red crayon.
My breath stops.
I zoom in.
It's unmistakable.
A child's artwork. On her desk. In her office.
I sit back. Slowly.
She has a child.
I count the years. The timeline. The math doesn't add up unless—
Unless it does.
Unless the baby is mine.
I close the article.
I open it again.
I stare at the drawing until my vision blurs.
Then I pick up my phone and call the one person who might know.
"I need information," I say.
"On who?"
"Vivienne Laurent," I say. "Specifically... if she has a child."
Silence on the other end.
"Why?"
"Because I think it's mine."
More silence.
"I'll look into it."
I hang up and lean back.
The office feels too small. The air feels wrong. Everything I was angry about—the shares, the power, the humiliation—suddenly doesn't matter.
Because if she had my child.
If she kept that from me for five years.
Then this isn't just business.
This is war.
And she fired the first shot a long time ago.