Chapter 30 - The Desperate Ploy
When Derek woke up the next morning with a pounding headache, the hazy memory of the phone call rushed back, filling him with a sudden, suffocating panic. He knew he had made a fatal error. He knew Naomi Chen would use the recording to obliterate his last remaining legal tie to his daughter.
He frantically called his mother from a payphone.
Vivian met him in a secluded, overgrown park near her apartment complex. When she saw her son, pale and trembling, her delusions of a grand comeback shattered into desperate reality.
"They are going to file to terminate my rights today, Mom," Derek whispered, pacing frantically on the cracked concrete path. "I violated the order. The judge is going to send me to federal prison for probation violation."
Vivian gripped her cheap purse, her eyes wide with terror. "We have to act now. Vance Gable hasn't found anything on her. She's impenetrable legally. We have to take the child before the court order goes through."
"Are you insane?" Derek hissed. "She has Elias guarding that house 24/7! It's a suicide mission!"
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"Not the house," Vivian said, a dark, frantic light sparking in her eyes. "The visitation center. Your scheduled visit is tomorrow afternoon. The security is focused on keeping you away from Lena, not keeping you inside the building. I will pay Vance to create a massive distraction at the facility. A fire alarm, a bomb threat, whatever it takes. In the chaos, you grab Maya and run out the emergency exit. I have a car waiting. We cross the state line and fight it from a non-extradition zone."
It was a reckless, doomed plan born of pure desperation. But Derek, facing the terrifying prospect of a cold prison cell, nodded slowly. He had nothing left to lose.
