“I’m sorry! I’m so clumsy!” I shrieked, letting the blood well up and spill over my fingers, smearing it across the white tiles in a horrific display. I rocked back and forth, holding my bleeding hand, sobbing hysterically. “I’m sorry, I’ll clean it, don’t hurt me!”
Vance stopped dead in his tracks. The sheer, messy reality of the blood and my sudden, frantic breakdown repulsed him. He recoiled, his face twisting in utter disgust, pulling his expensive leather shoes away from the crimson droplets.
“Jesus Christ, you’re pathetic,” he spat, turning away to shield his suit from the mess. Beatrice gasped, covering her mouth in horror at the stain on her pristine floor.
In that split second of their revulsion, while their eyes were averted in disgust, my bloody thumb found the device inside my pocket one last time.
Click.
Three strikes. The signal was out. But as Vance slowly turned back around, staring at the unnatural, calculated coldness that had suddenly replaced the panic in my eyes, his brow furrowed. He took a step closer, realizing something was terribly, terribly wrong.
They didn’t let me leave the bathroom immediately. When they finally deemed I had “calmed down” from my hysterical episode, Vance hauled me up by my uninjured arm, haphazardly wrapping a hand towel around my bleeding palm, and practically dragged me down the hallway to the master bedroom.
“You’re going to stay in here and keep your mouth shut,” Vance shouted, throwing me onto the edge of the mattress. “Mom has the board members downstairs. You will not ruin this night.”
The heavy oak door slammed shut, and the distinctive snick of the deadbolt locking from the outside echoed in the quiet room.
I sat in the dim light, the adrenaline slowly receding to leave behind a throbbing ache in my head and a burning sting in my hand. But my mind was racing with terrifying clarity. I had triggered the alert, but federal operations took time. Warrants, mobilization, tactical briefings—Marcus couldn’t just teleport through the walls. I had to survive the intervening hours.
I thought they would leave me alone until morning. I was wrong.
It was barely past midnight when the lock clicked open again. The house below was eerily quiet; the guests had long since departed. Vance stood in the doorway, but he wasn’t alone. Behind him stood Mr. Thorne, a gaunt, reptilian man with slicked-back hair who served as the Sterling family’s “fixer” and corporate attorney. Thorne carried a slim, black leather briefcase.
Vance’s eyes were bloodshot, completely erratic from hours of heavy drinking and whatever else he had consumed in his downstairs office. He stalked into the room, snapping on the harsh overhead lights, while Thorne quietly closed the door and locked it behind them.
“Change of plans, Sarah,” Vance sneered, pacing at the foot of the bed. “We’re not waiting for tomorrow. Mom found the encrypted files on your laptop. She found your little investigation.”
My stomach dropped into a bottomless abyss.
My background in corporate communications and digital design had been my secret weapon. Years spent analyzing digital content, managing marketing databases, and meticulously kerning typography for campaigns had trained my eyes to see what others missed. When I had started looking into our finances, I hadn’t just found banking errors; I had found sloppy digital forgeries. The kerning on Beatrice’s “Children’s Hope” charity letterhead was slightly off. The metadata on Vance’s logistics invoices didn’t match the creation dates. I had downloaded it all, hiding it in a partitioned drive.
They had found the decoy folder.
Thorne stepped forward, placing his briefcase on the bedside table. He snapped the latches open with a sharp, synchronized click that sounded like a gun being cocked. He withdrew a thick stack of legal documents, printed on heavy stock paper, and laid them out neatly. Finally, he withdrew a heavy, silver fountain pen and placed it deliberately beside the papers.
“These are irrevocable asset transfer documents, Mrs. Sterling,” Thorne said, his voice a smooth, oily purr. “They transfer all your equity in the marital properties, your access to the joint offshore accounts, and grant Mr. Sterling full power of attorney over your personal trusts. Given your… recent mental instability, it’s for your own protection.”
Vance stepped closer, reaching into his jacket pocket. He didn’t pull out a gun, but he pulled out a heavy, steel tactical folding knife—a hunting tool he kept in his truck. He didn’t open it, but he rhythmically tapped the heavy metal handle against his palm. Tap. Tap. Tap. A silent, undeniable promise of extreme violence if I refused.
“Sign them, Sarah,” Vance commanded softly. “You sign them right now, and maybe we send you to a nice, quiet facility in upstate New York to rest. You refuse, and I promise you, you will fall down the stairs tonight, and you won’t wake up.”
I stared at the papers. If I signed, I gave away my leverage, my financial safety net, and officially tied myself to their fraudulent entities. But the heavy metal in Vance’s hand told me I didn’t have a choice.
I had to play the only card I had left: time.
I slowly reached for the silver pen, letting my hand shake violently. The bloody towel wrapped around my palm hindered my grip. I let the pen slip from my fingers, clattering onto the hardwood floor.
“I… I can’t hold it,” I whimpered, hyperventilating. “My hand hurts too much. I can’t read this. It’s too blurry.”
“Pick up the damn pen!” Vance roared, slamming his fist onto the bedside table.
Thorne sighed, a sound of profound boredom, and bent down to retrieve the pen. “Take a deep breath, Mrs. Sterling. Just a signature on the bottom line of the first three pages.”
I took the pen again, forcing tears to stream down my face. I brought the nib down to the paper, hovering millimeters above the signature line. I moved with agonizing slowness, acting as though a severe panic attack was paralyzing my motor functions. I stuttered, asking Thorne a nonsensical question about paragraph four, subsection B, intentionally mispronouncing legal terms to drag out the seconds.
