Chapter 3
8:55 AM. The executive boardroom.
"With this investment, my legacy is secure," Julian pitches to the room full of executives, projecting a chart on the screen.
The heavy double doors swing open.
Julian stops dead. The laser pointer shakes in his hand. "Sera? Security, get her out of here!"
I walk straight to the head of the mahogany table.
I slam a stack of legal documents onto the polished wood.
"As of 9:00 AM, I am freezing all capital injections," I say, my voice echoing in the dead-silent room. "Your company is suffocating, Julian. You are completely bankrupt."
Marcus, the lead investment director, calmly stands up. He buttons his suit jacket. He looks at Julian with utter pity. Then he turns his chair toward me and gives a single nod.
Julian stumbles backward. "What? No... she was just a stay-at-home mother..."
The color drains from his face. For a second, I see absolute terror in his eyes.
But then, he stops panicking.
Slowly, a smirk spreads across his face. He leans his hands on the table, looking at me with pure malice.
"You think you won because you cut my funding?" Julian laughs darkly. "Keep the money, Sera. I already got what I needed from you."
The boardroom doors burst open again. Arthur runs in, sweating, his face completely pale. He shoves a sealed medical dossier into my hands.
"We finally broke into Julian's private clinic server," Arthur gasps, his voice shaking violently.
I rip open the file. My stomach plummets into an abyss.
Chloe has a rare, terminal blood disorder.
Aria is listed as a perfect genetic match.
The sickening truth crashes into me like a freight train. The fake psychiatric file. Aria is too frail. A legitimate ethics board would never approve a massive bone marrow extraction on a seven-year-old asthmatic child.
He needed to label her insane to lock her in a shadow clinic, where no one would ask questions if she didn't wake up from the anesthesia.
Julian leans over the table, whispering so only I can hear.
"As her sole legal guardian, I signed the medical consent forms months ago."
My vision blurs with rage. I grab a heavy glass water pitcher from the table, ready to smash it across his smiling face—
Julian calmly checks his gold watch.
"The extraction surgery was scheduled for 8:00 PM tonight," he whispers. "But since you showed up... I had the court order executed early."
My phone vibrates violently on the table.
I snatch it up.
"Sera!" my contact at the hospital screams through the speaker, drowning out the boardroom silence. "Julian's private medical team just bypassed our security with a federal judge's order! They strapped Aria to a gurney—they are taking her to the surgical wing right now!"