He Blocked My Number the Night I Died Chapter 07

Saturday came.

I turned thirty in a hospital bathroom, putting on concealer over a fading burn on my jaw while Tessa held my daughter.

“You don’t have to do this today,” Jude said from the doorway.

“Yes, I do.” I capped the lipstick. “She just told the whole country I’m a danger to my own baby. If I hide one more day, she wins the story. And whoever wins the story wins custody.”

Ingrid had confirmed it that morning. Caleb’s lawyers had filed an emergency motion: In the event Nora Vance is alive, petitioner seeks temporary custody of the minor child due to the mother’s demonstrated instability.

Instability. Because I hadn’t wanted to go home to the man who’d blocked me while I burned.

At 9:47 a.m., the shares vested.

At 10:00 a.m., the Vance Ridge Capital board meeting began on the forty-second floor.

At 10:06 a.m., I walked in.

I’d bought a white suit. I don’t know why. Maybe because everyone had worn black to bury me.

The conversation died mid-sentence.

Twelve board members. One empty chair at the head of the table, my grandmother’s old seat, which Caleb had always kept for “tradition.”

And Caleb, standing at the window, frozen.

He looked like he’d seen a ghost. I suppose he had.

“Nora,” he breathed.

“Hello, Caleb.”

He crossed the room in three steps, reaching for me. I stepped back. His hands stopped in the air.

“You’re alive.” His voice was shredded. “Oh my God, you’re alive. The baby-”

“Her name is Hope,” I said. “And she’s not your concern right now.”

“Not my-Nora, she’s my daughter-”

“Was she your daughter on Tuesday night?” I asked quietly. “When I called you ten times?”

He flinched like I’d slapped him.

I walked past him and sat in my grandmother’s chair.

“Ladies and gentlemen. As of 9:47 this morning, I hold fifty-one percent of the voting shares in this company. Ms. Shaw has the paperwork.”

Ingrid slid a folder down the table like a blackjack dealer.

The board erupted. Someone called legal. Someone else called PR. A silver-haired man named Harold, who had known my grandmother, just started slowly, quietly clapping.

“And as majority shareholder,” I said, “my first motion is to place the CEO on immediate leave pending an investigation into the use of company funds.”

Caleb went white. “What funds?”

Ingrid opened another folder. “The forty thousand dollars a month paid from a Vance Ridge account into Sienna Ashford’s ‘creative consulting’ LLC. For three years.”

Caleb looked genuinely stunned. “That-that was a stipend. Her art career. Your parents asked me-”

“My parents asked you to pay my sister out of my grandmother’s company,” I said, “and you never once thought to ask me.”

He opened his mouth. Closed it.

The vote passed eleven to one.

Caleb didn’t vote against himself. He didn’t vote at all. He just stared at me like he was finally seeing my face for the first time,

I stood to leave. My stitches ached. My hands were trembling under the table, but no one saw.

Then the conference room door burst open.

My mother. My father. And Sienna, in a black dress, with my grandmother’s emerald still on her finger.

‘Security!” my father barked. “That woman is unstable!”

Sienna gasped and clutched her chest.

“Nora,” she whispered, tears spilling instantly, perfectly. “What did you do with the baby?”