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CHAPTER 1: The Cold Truth in Room 204 “She wasn’t just neglecting them... she was starving them on purpose.” The words hung in the sterile air of the emergency room, heavy enough to choke me. / Chapter 5 / 8

Chapter 5 - The War in the NICU

“Touch my son, and you won’t leave this floor alive.”The threat hit me like a bullet. Noah.

Before Victoria’s bodyguards could react, I slammed my shoulder directly into the chest of the nearest guard, sending him crashing into the heavy medical equipment. The monitors shrieked in alarm. I grabbed a heavy metal IV pole and swung it with all the strength honed by years of manual labor, striking the second guard across the jaw.

"Ethan, no!" Emily screamed.

"Stay with her!" I yelled to the panic-stricken nurses who were running into the hallway. "Lock this door!"

I sprinted down the third-floor hallway toward the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. My heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. Victoria’s threat wasn't an empty one—if she owned my mother, she could easily pay a rogue hospital worker to tamper with Noah’s incubator or slip something into his IV line.

As I rounded the corner to the NICU, I saw a woman dressed in a nurse’s scrub uniform standing right beside Noah’s isolation booth.

She had a syringe in her gloved hand.

"Stop right there!" I roared, throwing my body through the glass doors of the nursery.

The fake nurse whipped around in surprise. The mask slipped off her face slightly.

My breath caught in my throat.

It wasn't a stranger. It was my younger sister, Ashley.

"Ashley?!" I froze, horrified. "What... what are you doing?!"

Ashley’s eyes were wild, bloodshot, and filled with tears. She held the syringe trembling over the rubber port of Noah’s IV line. "Ethan! Stand back! You don't understand! They have Mom! Victoria’s men have Mom in the parking garage! They said if I don't inject this saline solution into his line, they'll kill Mom!"

"Ashley, look at me!" I stepped forward slowly, palms open, tears streaming down my face. "That is your nephew! He is seven days old! He never did anything to you! Mom made her choice when she sold out my family for money!"

"Mom did it for US!" Ashley screamed, sobbing hysterically. "We were broke, Ethan! You got out, you got married, you got a life, and you left us in that dump! Mom owed two hundred thousand dollars to loan sharks! They were going to break her legs!"

"So you decided to murder a baby?!" I shouted, my voice breaking. "MY BABY?!"

"I didn't have a choice!" she cried.

"YOU ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE!"

I lunged forward. Ashley panicked and tried to plunge the needle into the port. I grabbed her wrist in mid-air, twisting it violently until she let out a sharp cry and dropped the syringe onto the floor. The glass shattered.

I pinned her against the wall, holding her down as security guards and police officers flushed into the NICU, guns drawn.

"Get your hands off her!" Sergeant Miller bellowed, slamming Ashley to the ground and ratcheting handcuffs onto her wrists.

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