Chapter 5
The subterranean VIP garage at the Sterling Center was dimly lit, echoing with the distant thunder of a brewing winter storm. I had just finished a grueling trauma drill. As I reached for the chrome door handle of my waiting car, a shadow detached itself from a concrete pillar.
“Elena!”
The voice was a demonic shriek. Preston lunged at me from the darkness. He was drenched in freezing rain, emaciated, and caked in mud. But he didn’t hold a gun or a knife. Clutched in his frantic grip was a medical syringe.
Before my security detail could tackle him, he slammed into me, pinning me against the vehicle. I felt the sharp, horrifying prick of a needle scrape the side of my neck. He depressed the plunger in a panic, but my defensive reflex—a sharp elbow to his sternum—knocked him back before he could empty the barrel.
The intense, burning chill radiated from my jugular. Succinylcholine. A paralytic agent used in the ER. My vision began to swim. My knees buckled as the paralytic hit my central nervous system, paralyzing my diaphragm.
Tires screamed in the confined concrete space. A massive black Mercedes G-Wagon roared out of the shadows. The steel bumper clipped Preston’s side, sending him flying into a concrete wall with a sickening crunch.
Harrison Sterling kicked open the driver’s door, his obsidian eyes burning with apocalyptic violence. His bodyguards swarmed Preston. One brought the heavy steel heel of his combat boot down squarely onto Preston’s right hand. Bones pulverized like dry twigs. Preston unleashed a blood-curdling shriek, his surgical career literally crushed into the concrete.
Harrison sprinted to me. I couldn’t speak, but I weakly raised my hand, pointing a trembling finger at my leather medical bag. He tore the bag open, instantly recognizing the threat. He drew a dose of Neostigmine—the reversal agent—and plunged it into my thigh. Slowly, a jagged breath tore through my lungs. The paralysis began to recede, leaving me violently shivering.
Harrison pulled me to my feet, pressing his expensive leather shoe into Preston’s fractured ribs. “I will make sure you die in a cage, Pierce,” Harrison rumbled.
“Wait,” I croaked, stepping forward. I crouched down, the hem of my coat soaking in the dirty water, to meet Preston’s terrified, bulging eyes. “Before you go to prison, let me give you your final diagnosis.”
Preston whimpered, spitting blood onto the asphalt.
“Did you really think I accidentally bumped Khloe’s tray that night?” I stared into his soul. “I saw her reflection in the surgical light. She cranked the IV Pitocin valve wide open. She deliberately overdosed me to rupture my uterus. And you saw my vitals spike. You knew exactly what she did. But you let her try it, just to break my pride. You aren’t just a fraud, Preston. You are a murderer.”
Preston’s sanity shattered into fine dust. He let out a mindless howl, tearing at his own hair with his good hand. The realization that I had known his darkest secret completely broke him.
Six months later, Khloe Summers was sentenced to seven and a half years in federal prison. Preston, diagnosed with severe paranoid schizophrenia, was sentenced to twelve years in a maximum-security forensic psychiatric hospital.
I stood at a podium under the flashing cameras of the global press, wearing a brilliant white suit, my posture unbroken.
“Today, Sterling Group is donating twenty million dollars to launch the Winter’s Dawn Women’s Medical Advocacy Foundation,” I announced, my voice echoing with unyielding power.
Later that evening, on the glass-walled helipad overlooking the golden Manhattan sunset, Harrison stood beside me. “If it gets lonely at the top, my castle is right next to yours,” he smiled warmly.
May you like
I looked at the blazing sky. I am Elena Vance. I survived the butcher’s block, I excised the infection from my life, and my name is now the most brilliant verdict in this city.
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