PART 1

Seven months after my divorce became final, I walked into St.

Jude’s Children’s and Women’s Hospital absolutely furious with my ex-wife, only to find out she had just given birth to twin boys and both of them were mine.

Before that long night was over, a nurse slipped a small metal key into my hand and warned me to use it before my own relatives reached the building.

That unsettling warning was not even the most shocking thing waiting for me in the dark.

My name is Alexander Montgomery, and the very day my family underestimated my determination was the day they started to destroy themselves.

The unexpected phone call came exactly thirty-seven minutes before midnight while I was sitting by myself in my office.

“Your ex-wife has just been admitted,” a woman’s tense voice said through the speaker.

“Room 418 in the maternity recovery wing.

You need to come right now, well before your family gets here.”

Before I could ask even one question, the call ended and left me in complete silence.

Sylvia Remington Montgomery had been entirely out of my life for seven long months.

Those seven months had been full of cold lawyers, frozen bank accounts, sealed legal accusations, and total silence after evidence came out that seemed to prove she had betrayed one of my family’s most protected corporate assets.

At least, that was the particular story I had chosen to believe at the time.

By the time my car pulled up to the hospital entrance, I had already convinced myself that this was just another elaborate scheme.

I assumed it was one more desperate attempt to reopen our financial settlement and pull me back into a toxic life she had supposedly walked away from.

Still, one particular sentence from the caller kept echoing in my head.

Come now, before your family does.