Chapter 2 - Eight Months of Silence
Dr. Elena Ramirez led them into a consultation room.
Beckett hated consultation rooms.
They were designed to soften bad news.
Muted walls.
Comfortable chairs.
Boxes of tissues placed where frightened people could reach them.
He knew because Vale Therapeutics supplied equipment to hundreds of hospitals.
He had sat through design presentations explaining exactly why rooms like this looked the way they did.
For the first time, he understood why.
Violet sat with Celeste in her arms.
Beckett remained standing.
“What happened?” he asked.
Elena looked toward Violet.
“Would you like to explain?”
Violet shook her head.
“I can't.”
That answer frightened Beckett more than anything else.
Elena opened the tablet in front of her.
“Celeste was born slightly premature at thirty-six weeks. Overall, she's doing remarkably well. However, yesterday she had several episodes of abnormal heart rhythm.”
Beckett's stomach dropped.
“Arrhythmia?”
Elena glanced at him, mildly surprised.
“Yes.”
“What type?”
“We're still determining that.”
He moved closer to the table.
“What did the ECG show?”
“Beckett,” Violet whispered.
He barely heard her.
Medical manufacturing had made him fluent enough to understand exactly how much uncertainty could hide inside carefully chosen words.
Elena continued.
“Her oxygen levels remain stable. Her cardiac structure appears normal. That is encouraging.”
“But?”
“There may be an electrical conduction issue. Most cases in newborns can be managed. Some resolve naturally.”
“Some don't.”
Elena's silence answered him.
Violet's hand trembled against the blanket.
Beckett saw it.
His anger vanished instantly.
“When will you know more?”
“By tomorrow morning, hopefully.”
“Tomorrow?”
“We need continuous monitoring.”
“Can we accelerate the testing?”
Elena's expression became firmer.
“Mr. Vale, faster does not always mean safer.”
He hated that sentence.
He also knew she was right.
Celeste made a tiny sigh.
Beckett looked down.
For the first time, her eyes opened.
Dark.
Unfocused.
Searching.
They remained open only a few seconds.
Yet when those eyes passed over Beckett's face, something happened inside him that no quarterly report, acquisition, award, or victory had ever created.
He wanted to protect her.
Not because she carried his name.
Not because biology made her his responsibility.
Because she was small.
Because she was vulnerable.
Because she existed.
The feeling was immediate and terrifying.
Elena left after explaining the monitoring schedule.
Silence followed.
Violet stared at Celeste.
Beckett stared at Violet.
Finally he said, “How long has she been here?”
“Two days.”
“And you were alone?”
“My friend Claire has been helping.”
“The entire pregnancy?”
“Mostly.”
His hands curled at his sides.
“You could have called me.”
“I know.”
“I would have come.”
“You don't know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
Violet lifted her gaze.
“How?”
He stopped.
Because she was right.
The man he had been eight months ago?
The man who had looked at the woman he supposedly loved and described children as obstacles?
Would that man have come?
Beckett wanted to say yes.
But for the first time, he refused to lie simply because the truth humiliated him.
“I don't know what I would have done then.”
Violet looked away.
“But I know what I'm doing now.”
“And what is that?”
“Staying.”
Her eyes snapped back to him.
“Beckett—”
“I’m not asking permission to care whether my daughter is healthy.”
“She isn't suddenly yours just because you found us.”
The sentence landed hard.
He lowered his voice.
“Biologically, she is.”
“That's not what I mean.”
“I know.”
“You missed everything.”
“I didn't choose to.”
Violet stood carefully.
“Neither did I.”
He frowned.
“You left.”
“Yes.”
“That sounds like a choice.”
“You think I wanted this?”
Her voice cracked.
She immediately lowered it.
“You think I wanted to be pregnant alone? You think I wanted to sit in an apartment at two in the morning reading about prenatal complications by myself? You think I wanted to go to every appointment and watch other women walk in holding someone's hand?”
Beckett said nothing.
Violet's tears came silently.
“I loved you.”
“Loved?”
She looked at him.
He regretted the question the moment it left his mouth.
“This isn't about that.”
“It is to me.”
“Of course it is. Everything becomes about what you want eventually.”
He recoiled slightly.
Violet wiped her cheek.
“I spent seven years building a life before I met you. I had a career. Friends. Independence. Then I fell in love with Beckett Vale and somehow everything started orbiting Beckett Vale.”
“I never asked you to give up your career.”
“No. You just built a life where yours always came first.”
He wanted to argue.
Again, he couldn't.
Late calls interrupted dinners.
Meetings interrupted vacations.
His phone stayed beside the bed.
He had postponed their wedding twice.
Once for an acquisition.
Once for an international expansion.
Violet had tolerated it because she believed they were building toward something.
Then she had asked about children.
And Beckett had revealed that his version of their future had never included the thing she wanted most.
He looked at Celeste.
“Why keep the ring?”
Violet's hand instinctively touched the chain.
“I don't know.”
“Yes, you do.”
Her expression hardened.
“Don't interrogate me.”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“You always say that when what you mean is that you want information.”
He almost smiled.
Not because anything was funny.
Because that was exactly what she used to tell him.
He took a breath.
“Then tell me what I need to do.”
“For what?”
“To be here.”
“You can't fix eight months in one afternoon.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
It cost him something to say the next words.
“I know because I would give anything to have those eight months back.”
Violet stared at him.
Beckett looked at Celeste.
“What did I miss?”
Her expression changed.
Just slightly.
But he noticed.
“Everything.”
“Tell me.”
Violet hesitated.
Then perhaps because she was exhausted, or perhaps because some part of her still remembered the man she once planned to marry, she began.
“She kicked constantly at night.”
Beckett swallowed.
“She hated orange juice.”
He looked confused.
Violet almost smiled.
“Every time I drank it, she started moving like she was offended.”
A laugh nearly escaped him.
“What else?”
“She responded to music.”
“What kind?”
“Piano.”
He remembered.
Violet played piano when she was anxious.
“She had hiccups every night for almost two weeks.”
Beckett pictured all of it.
A life happening without him.
His daughter growing.
Violet alone.
And him sitting in boardrooms believing his silence was pride.
His phone vibrated.
He ignored it.
It vibrated again.
Violet glanced toward it.
“You should answer.”
“No.”
“It might be important.”
“You're important.”
The words silenced both of them.
His phone vibrated a third time.
He pulled it out.
His chief operating officer.
MERGER EMERGENCY. CALL IMMEDIATELY.
The preliminary agreement they had spent eighteen months negotiating was supposed to be finalized that afternoon.
Ten billion dollars.
Thousands of employees.
The largest transaction of Beckett's career.
Eight months earlier, nothing on earth could have made him miss that call.
He turned the phone off.
Violet watched him.
“What are you doing?”
“Staying.”
“You don't have to prove something by destroying your company.”
“I’m not.”
“Then answer it.”
“No.”
“Beckett.”
He slipped the phone into his pocket.
“For once in my life, the most important thing in the room isn't my company.”
Violet looked stunned.
He looked toward Celeste.
Neither of them knew that a few hours later, Vale Therapeutics would lose nearly a billion dollars in market value.
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And by nightfall, Beckett would have to decide whether finding his daughter was about to cost him the empire he had spent half his life building.
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