Chapter 5 - The Chairman's Office
The private elevator bypassed all public floors, whisking Damian and me silently upward until the digital display flashed 14: Executive Suite.
When the doors slid open, we stepped out onto plush Persian carpets that muffled our footsteps entirely. The hallway was lined with oil portraits of past hospital presidents, their painted eyes seeming to watch us with cold, judgmental detachment.
Damian led the way, his gun drawn and held high, moving with the lethal grace of a predator in his natural habitat. I followed right behind him, my hand steadying the pistol in my pocket, every nerve ending screaming with a desperate, protective rage.
We reached the heavy mahogany double doors of Arthur Sterling’s office.
Damian didn't bother knocking. He raised his boot and kicked the center of the door with devastating force. The brass lock splintered, and the heavy doors flew inward, crashing against the interior walls.
Arthur Sterling sat behind an enormous mahogany desk, swirling a glass of scotch. He didn't look terrified; in fact, a faint, condescending smile played on his lips as he set his glass down and looked up at us.
"Mr. Marchetti," Sterling said smoothly, adjusting his silk tie as if we were arriving for a routine board meeting. "And... ah, Miss Carter. I must admit, I didn't expect you to survive the night. My men at the diner were instructed to be thorough."
Damian stepped into the room, his gun leveling directly at the center of Sterling’s forehead. "You have five seconds to tell me why I shouldn't scatter your brains across your expensive wallpaper, Arthur."
Sterling chuckled softly, leaning back in his leather executive chair. "Because, Damian, if you pull that trigger, you will never find out where the financial backup keys are stored. The entire network—every adoption ledger, every surrogate payment, every offshore account linked to your wife's syndicate—is locked behind an encrypted dead-man's switch. If my heartbeat stops, the data goes live to every federal prosecutor and rival mob family in the country."
I stepped around Damian, my eyes blazing with a fury that felt hot enough to melt steel. I walked right up to the edge of the mahogany desk, planting both hands on the polished wood and leaning over it until our faces were inches apart.
"You took my children," I whispered, every word dripping with ice. "You told me they died. You left me in a cold room with a fake death certificate while you played God with my family."
Sterling looked up at me, his smile fading into a look of cold, clinical disdain. "My dear girl, you were a surrogate chosen for genetic perfection and absolute poverty. You were paid for your service, and when the market shifted, your children became valuable assets. In the grand scheme of things, you should be thanking me. They were raised in luxury, surrounded by wealth you could never dream of providing."
Before Sterling could finish his sentence, I reached across the desk, grabbed him by his expensive silk tie, and yanked him forward so hard his forehead slammed against the wood with a sickening thud.
"You don't get to talk about my children," I snarled, pressing the barrel of my gun right beneath his chin.
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Sterling’s bravado finally cracked. His eyes went wide with genuine terror as he stared into my face, realizing that unlike Damian, who operated on calculated mob logic, I was a mother operating on pure, unadulterated primal rage.
"Wait!" Sterling choked out, his hands trembling as he clawed at my wrist. "The key... the dead-man's switch... I can disable it! Just don't shoot!"
