The phone line at Charles de Gaulle Airport hummed with a heavy, suffocating static. In that agonizing silence across the Atlantic, the man who had effortlessly orchestrated a double life finally stopped breathing. / Chapter 4 / 15

Chapter 4 - The Breach"Stop! You have to stop!"

The voice tore through the sterile silence of the operating theater.

Althia didn't look up from the open chest cavity, her needle driver poised precisely between two millimeters of tissue. "Security, remove whoever just breached the red line immediately."

"Althia! Listen to me!" Preston’s voice echoed wildly. He was standing in the doorway, clad in a full blue Tyvek bunny suit, his mask pulled down around his chin, his eyes wide with absolute panic. Hospital security guards were lunging for him, but he was thrashing violently against them. "You're killing him! I saw the monitors! His pressure dropped!"

"Preston Sterling, if you do not drag that man out of my operating room this instant, I will drop this needle, walk out that door, and let your father bleed out on this table," Althia didn't raise her voice, but every single syllable carried the weight of an executioner's axe.

Marcus Keller rushed toward the doorway, his face purple with fury. He grabbed Preston by the collar of his protective suit. "Are you out of your absolute mind? Get the hell out of here! She is in the middle of a circulatory arrest!"

"She hates us!" Preston screamed, fighting against the guards as they wrestled him backward toward the airlock. "She’s punishing me through him! She’s going to let him die!"

"Shut your mouth!" Althia finally looked up, her blood-splattered mask hiding everything except her blazing, unforgiving eyes. "You arrogant, narcissistic bastard. Do you really think I would compromise my surgical ethics, stain my license, and throw away everything I’ve worked for just to settle a score with a cheating coward? Your father gave me my career. I am the only person in this room—the only person in this country—who has the skill to sew this graft together without killing him on the table."

Preston froze, pinned between two burly security guards in the decontamination vestibule.

"Now," Althia whispered coldly, turning back to the open chest, "get him out of my sight before I lose my patience."

The heavy doors hissed shut, sealing Preston out once more.

Sarah Lin let out a long breath through her mask. "Jesus Christ, Althia. How do you keep your hands steady with that kind of circus outside?"

"Practice," Althia replied evenly, re-engaging the needle driver. "Resume graft anastomosis. Give me 4-0 Prolene."

For the next twenty minutes, the operating room became a sanctuary of absolute focus. Althia’s fingers danced with microscopic precision, weaving the synthetic Dacron into the remnants of the aortic wall. Every stitch had to be watertight, perfectly spaced, and anchored with exact tension. A single millimeter off could mean a fatal postoperative aneurysm.

"Anastomosis complete," Althia announced, her voice steady as a rock. "De-airing maneuvers starting now."

She released the cross-clamp. Blood surged back through the graft, filling the synthetic tube and rushing upward toward the arch.

"Perfusion back on. Warming patient up to 37 degrees," the perfusionist called out.

Althia watched the monitors like a hawk. The graft held. Not a single drop of blood leaked from the suture lines. The color began to return to the surrounding tissue as warm blood flooded the upper body.

Ten minutes later, Richard’s heart gave a faint, spontaneous flutter. Then another.