Chapter 1 - The Lockdown at St. Catherine’s
The single word poisoned hung in the sterile air of the ICU corridor, vibrating with a lethal weight that threatened to crush the last remnants of my sanity. Dr. Adrian Bennett’s face was a mask of grim professional resolve, but the flicker of panic in his eyes betrayed the severity of the situation.
“A toxin?” I stepped forward, my voice dropping into the low, dangerous register that normally made senior executives across Atlanta tremble during board meetings. “Are you telling me someone deliberately introduced a lethal substance into my wife’s body while she was in labor?”
“Mr. Sloane, hospital security has already been alerted,” Dr. Bennett said, holding up a hand to keep me back. “The toxicology screen came back positive for a synthetic organophosphate—fast-acting, highly localized, and impossible to ingest accidentally through hospital food or routine intravenous fluids. It was administered directly into her secondary IV line just after the delivery of the third child.”
My blood ran cold. Just after the delivery. That meant the window was excruciatingly narrow. Only a handful of people had access to the VIP maternity suite during the transition from the delivery room to recovery: the attending nurses, the anesthesiologist, myself, and…
My mind snapped back across the hallway.
Vanessa Vale.
She was still standing there, phone clutched in her manicured hand, her posture far too rigid for someone merely waiting for an update. Vanessa was the senior vice president of public relations at Sloane Infrastructure Group—a woman who had spent the last three years trying to engineer a merger between my company and her father’s crumbling real estate empire. She had supposedly arrived at the hospital to deliver urgent corporate paperwork that required my signature before the London markets opened.
Paperwork. On the night my wife gave birth to our triplets.
“Where is security?” I demanded, spinning around to face my chief of security, Marcus Vance, who had materialized at my shoulder like a silent shadow.
“Already moving, Boss,” Marcus growled, his eyes scanning the corridor with predatory precision. “All exits from the third-floor maternity wing are sealed. No one enters, no one leaves. Every security camera feed from the delivery suite to the private elevator is being downloaded to my terminal right now.”
“Good,” I said, my jaw clenching so hard I thought my teeth might shatter. “Find out who bypassed the biometric scanner on Suite 3B. And bring me Vanessa Vale.”
Across the hall, Vanessa must have sensed the shift in the air. She tucked her phone into her designer handbag, forced a brittle, sympathetic smile onto her face, and started walking toward us.
“Mason, oh my god,” she breathed, her voice trembling with theatrical concern. “I just heard the whispers from the nurses’ station. Is Claire… is she going to make it? This is an absolute nightmare.”
She reached out to touch my arm, her long acrylic nails glistening under the fluorescent lights. I didn’t flinch, but I didn’t welcome the touch either. I simply stared at her with a coldness that made her hand freeze mid-air.
“You said you came here to have me sign the Meridian Acquisition papers, Vanessa,” I said softly, my voice cutting through the hallway like a scalpel.
“Yes, of course,” she stammered, blinking rapidly. “The board in London insisted—”
“At two o’clock in the morning. On the exact night my wife was in the delivery room.” I took a step closer, towering over her. “How did you even know which room we were in? The VIP wing is restricted. My staff didn’t release this floor number to the press or the corporate office.”
Vanessa’s composure flickered for a fraction of a second—a micro-expression of panic that someone of my background doesn’t miss. Growing up on the south side of Atlanta taught you how to read predators long before you ever had to deal with corporate backstabbers.
“I… I checked with the front desk, Mason. You know how efficient I am,” she recovered quickly, though a drop of sweat formed near her temple. “Please, don’t let grief make you paranoid. Your wife is a nurse here; everyone knows the Sloanes use St. Catherine’s.”
“My wife isn’t just a nurse, Vanessa. She’s the heart of everything I built,” I whispered, leaning down until my lips were inches from her ear. “And if I find out you had anything to do with what’s happening inside that room, I won’t just ruin your career. I will dismantle everything your family owns down to the concrete foundation.”
May you like
Before she could answer, Marcus stepped out of the security alcove, his tablet glowing in the dim light. He looked at me, his face pale, and held out the screen.
“Boss, you need to see this footage from the service hallway. Someone didn't just walk into Claire's room. They used a master security override code—a code that only three people in this entire hospital possess.”
