Chapter 5 - The Trap is SetBack in Columbus, the atmosphere inside the Sterling family mansion was ice cold. Nathan paced back and forth across the imported Persian rug in the grand study, his phone pressed tightly to his ear for the twentieth time.
“No trace of her on traffic cams near the hospital, Mr. Sterling,” a gruff private investigator’s voice crackled through the speaker. “It’s like she vanished into thin air.”
Doreen sat regally behind a massive mahogany desk, sipping black coffee without a single tremor in her hand. She looked at her son with undisguised contempt.
“Stop pacing, Nathan. You look pathetic,” Doreen snapped.
“She has my son, Mom!” Nathan shouted, his voice cracking with panic. “If she goes to the police with wild stories about the psychiatric hold, or if the media gets wind of why she was admitted—!”
“She won't go to the police,” Doreen interrupted coldly, her eyes narrowing. “Because if she does, we will release our counter-narrative: that she suffered a catastrophic psychotic break, attacked hospital staff, and fled into the freezing night with a newborn in critical condition. Who do you think a judge is going to believe? A grieving, unstable mother with a history of delusions, or a respected family of philanthropists?”
Nathan swallowed hard, the last remnants of his moral compass dissolving into cowardice. “What do we do next?”
“We leak the narrative to the local press tonight,” Doreen said smoothly, pulling her phone toward her. “We paint her as a danger to the child. Once the public believes she is a fugitive mother having a mental breakdown, the police will hunt her down for us. And when they find her, the baby comes back to this house permanently.”
Unknown to them, every word of their conversation was being transmitted live via a micro-bug Simone had planted inside Nathan’s designer watch two days earlier.
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In the quiet kitchen of the countryside safehouse, Leah and Simone listened to the audio feed through a laptop. Leah’s hands shook, not with fear, but with a cold, terrifying clarity. They weren't just trying to take her baby. They were planning to brand her a lunatic to the entire world.
“Well,” Simone said, closing the laptop with a sharp click. “That makes our decision very easy. It’s time to pay a little visit to an old friend of mine.”
