Chapter 283
No.1
The Gulfstream G650 cut silently through the stratosphere, a silver needle stitching a path across the dark expanse of the Atlantic. Inside the hushed,cream-leather cabin, Elisa stared out the window,but she didn't see the blanket of clouds below. She saw the blinking, erratic lines of an ICU monitor.Dr.Evans's frantic voice from the earlier phone call still echoed in her ears.
Across the polished wood table, Alastair Cromwell,the CEO of Aethel Intelligence, swirled the amber liquid in his glass. He had insisted on flying back with her, a silent, supportive presence.
"Are you sure you're okay, Faye?" he asked,his usual flamboyant energy subdued. "That performance with Thorne... it was brilliant, but even for you, that was intense. His eyes when he looked at you... that wasn't acting."
Elisa waved a dismissive hand, not taking her eyes off the window. "It was a strategic maneuver,Alastair. A merger of interests. Don't read romance into a balance sheet." Shewas trying to convince herself as much as him. Thorne's low, magnetic promise in the suite still echoed in a corner of her
mind, a distraction she couldn't afford.
Alastair watched her, his gaze sharp. He saw the tension in her shoulders, the way her fingers drummed a frantic, silent rhythm on the armrest.This wasn't just post-battle fatigue. This was something else. Something deeper.
Her satellite phone, provided for the flight,suddenly buzzed on the table.
The screen lit up with a blocked number. An intercontinental call.
Her first instinct was to ignore it. But a cold knot of dread tightened in her stomach. It could be about the company.Or worse.
No.2
She pressed the button, her voice clipped and professional. "This is Faye."
"Elisa."
The voice was August's. Cold, controlled, and utterly unwelcome. It felt like a violation, hearing him in this sterile, safe space.
"Where are you?" he demanded, no preamble,no greeting.
"That's none of your business," she snapped.
" know Dr. Evans already called you about your
grandfather, Phineas," August said, his tone flat,matter-of-fact. "I made sure of it. His heart failed an hour ago. The direct result of the Chambers family halting his experimental treatments."
A cold fury spiked through her dread. She already knew the terrifying reality of his condition, but hearing August wield it like a weapon made her stomach churn. He was reminding her of his power.
"You bastard," Her voice was a choked whisper."You're killing him."
No.3
"I am giving you a choice," August corrected. It was a cruel reminder of the legal ties that still bound them, a web she hadn't fully escaped. "The hospital protocol can only do so much. But my private medical team is at NewYork-Presbyterian right now. They are the only ones who can stabilize his failing organs, and they are on standby. Waiting for my order."
Her mind reeled. His team. The best doctors in the world, on call for the Chambers family. A resource that could mean the difference between life and death. A resource she desperately needed.
He had her trapped. He was offering her the one thing she could not refuse, using the very crisis he engineered to pull her back into his cage.
"I'm on my way," she said, the words tasting like ash in her mouth. She ended the call without another word.
The rest of the flight was a blur of silent terror.
The jet touched down at a private terminal at JFK.As she descended the stairs, a black Maybach was waiting on the tarmac, its engine humming.August's car. He had anticipated her every move.
"Go," she said to Alastair. "Handle the company. I'll handle this."
She slid into the back of the car, the scent of the leather and August's cologne a suffocating reminder of her captivity. "Get me to the hospital.Now," she ordered the driver.
The city lights streaked past the window, a frantic,meaningless blur.
No.4
She burst through the doors of the hospital's cardiac ICU, her heels clicking sharply on the polished linoleum. The sterile smell of antiseptic filled her lungs. As a nurse, this environment was familiar, but as a granddaughter, it was a landscape of pure terror.
She saw him through the glass wall of a private room. Her grandfather. Phineas Wilder. Looking
impossibly small and frail in the large hospital bed,a web of tubes and wires connecting him to a bank of silently blinking machines.
August was standing in the hallway, leaning against the wall. There was no warmth in his posture, only the calculated stillness of a predator waiting for its prey. He didn't offer comfort; he offered a silent reminder of who held the cards.
He saw her and straightened up, walking over to meet her. His gaze swept over her, taking in her pale face and trembling hands.
"The doctor?" she asked, her voice hoarse, refusing to show him how much she was breaking.
"Severe cardiac distress," August said, his voice quiet, factual. The CEO reporting on a critical asset. "They managed to resuscitate him,but his system is crashing without the experimental protocol. He's stable for this exact minute, but he's not awake yet."
She nodded, processing the information.She ignored August entirely and pushed through the door into the room, the automated hiss of the seal sounding like a sigh.
She scrubbed her hands with sanitizer, the cold gel
No.5
a shock to her skin, and approached the bed.Seeing him up close, seeing the ventilator tube taped to his mouth and the pale, waxy color of his skin,broke something inside her. A sob caught in her throat, hot and sharp.
She sank into the chair beside the bed and took his hand. It was cool to the touch, the skin thin and papery, covered in the faint blue lines of his veins.She squeezed it gently. "Grandpa," she whispered."I'm here. It's Elisa."
August had followed her in. He stood near the door,a silent, looming shadow in the dim light of the room. He watched her, his expression unreadable.
Suddenly, Phineas stirred. A low moan escaped his lips, muffled by the ventilator. His eyelids fluttered.He was trapped in the twilight world of post-anesthesia delirium, fighting his way through nightmares.
"Shhh, Grandpa, it's okay," Elisa soothed, leaning closer, stroking his forehead. "I'm right here."
His lips moved again, forming words that were barely a whisper, slurred and indistinct.
"S-sorry.." he mumbled, his voice a faint, raspy breath. "So sorry... Lissy..."
"Sorry for what?" she whispered, trying to understand, trying to calm the ghosts that haunted him.
He turned his head slightly toward her, his unfocused eyes looking through her, seeing something from long ago.
No.6
"Not... not Arthur's..." he breathed, the words a painful struggle. "You're not... a Vance..."
The words dropped into the silent, sterile room like stones into a deep well.
Elisa froze. Her hand, holding his, went rigid. Her blood turned to ice water in her veins.
Not a Vance.
The world stopped spinning. It simply ceased to exist. Even though she had legally taken her grandfather's name, Wilder, to escape her past, her childhood, her deepest traumas, had been defined by that one, hateful surname. The twenty years of neglect, of being told she was worthless, of her father Arthur Vance looking at her with cold, empty eyes...
It wasn't because he wanted a son.
It was because she wasn't his daughter at all.
The shock was a physical force. It slammed into her, knocking the breath from her body. The room swam before her eyes, the blinking lights of the monitors blurring into streaks of color. She swayed in her chair, a wave of vertigo threatening to pull her under.
A hand landed on her shoulder.
No.7
Firm.Possessive.Calculated.
It was August. He had been standing right behind her.He had heard every single word.
His grip was firm, anchoring her to reality as her world shattered around her, but it felt less like a lifeline and more like a shackle.
"Elisa," he said, his voice a low, dark murmur in her ear. "Breathe. He's delirious. But it seems you have more secrets than even you knew. We'll find out the truth once my team saves him."