Graham POV:
I sat in the back of my bulletproof Lincoln, the thick doors sealing me inside a dark, soundproof vault. The air felt heavy, pressing against my chest. I grabbed the knot of my silk tie and ripped it loose, gasping for air. The enclosed space triggered the old panic, the suffocating terror of being locked in the dark closet as a child. But right now, the panic was not coming from the walls. It was coming from the phantom image of that jagged, violent scar on Corinna's wrist.
I snatched my phone from the seat and dialed the encrypted number. The Bluetooth system in the car beeped loudly before connecting to the low-level campaign office in Ohio.
Robert picked up on the second ring. When he heard my voice, a loud clatter echoed through the speakers, followed by the sound of hot coffee spilling. Robert stammered, his words tripping over themselves in sheer terror.
I did not have the patience for his fear. I leaned forward, my voice dropping to a lethal, quiet register. I told him I knew exactly where his mother and sister lived in Queens. I demanded he tell me every single detail of the day Corinna left New York three years ago.
Robert tried to play dumb. He swore he had given me the full itinerary back then. He said he just dropped her off at the train station.
I slammed my fist into the leather seat. The impact shook the car. I roared at the dashboard, demanding to know how she got a butcher's knife wound on her wrist.
A dead, heavy silence fell over the phone line. The only sound was Robert's ragged, panicked breathing.
That silence snapped the last thread of my sanity. I kicked the partition glass and ordered my driver to turn the car around and head straight to JFK Airport. I was going to fly to Ohio and beat the truth out of him with my bare hands.
The threat of physical violence finally broke him. Robert started crying. He confessed that there was a blind spot in the schedule, a detour he had scrubbed from the records. On that freezing, snowy day, before going to the train station, Corinna had forced him to drive her to a private maternity hospital in Brooklyn.
My brain felt like it had been hit with a sledgehammer. A high-pitched ringing pierced my ears, drowning out the sound of the engine.
I gripped the edge of the seat, my fingers digging into the leather. My voice shook violently as I asked him what she was doing at a maternity hospital. Robert sobbed, saying he did not know. He said she was inside for two hours, and when she came out, her face was the color of dirty snow.
I pressed the end call button. The phone slipped from my fingers. I fell back against the headrest, my mouth opening and closing as I gasped for air like a dying fish on a dock.
***
Corinna POV:
The sunlight in my top-floor office was brilliant and warm. I sat back in my wide executive chair, watching the city move below me. Lucian walked over and placed a crystal flute of chilled champagne on my desk.
We tapped our glasses together. A soft, clear chime echoed in the room, celebrating the perfect execution of the first phase of our restructuring plan.
Lucian walked to the floor-to-ceiling window. He looked down at the tiny yellow cabs crawling through the financial district. He turned his head and asked if exposing the scar today was too much of a gamble.
I let out a cold, sharp laugh. I slowly twisted the decorative diamond ring on my right index finger. I told him it was not a gamble; it was bait for a starving beast. The naive, desperate girl I used to be had died on that operating table. The political meat grinder of Washington had resurrected me as pure poison.
I opened my encrypted laptop and bypassed the standard interface, diving straight into the backend logs of the Brooklyn private hospital.
The screen glowed with a rapid stream of red text. Three top-tier hacker IPs, carrying the distinct digital signature of the Rios family, were violently battering the hospital's outer firewall.
Lucian frowned, his posture stiffening. He warned me that if Graham found any trace of Leo's existence, the fallout would be catastrophic.
I did not blink. I hit the enter key, deliberately disabling the decoy firewall I had set up months ago. I watched the Rios IPs flood into the outer database like rats into a maze.
I took a sip of my champagne. I told Lucian I was not hiding the truth. I was feeding Graham the exact "truth" I needed him to swallow.
***
Graham POV:
My phone vibrated violently against the floorboard. I picked it up. It was my Chief Technology Officer.
He spoke rapidly, breathless with success. He said they had smashed through the hospital's three-year-old archive system. They found a heavily encrypted medical file under Corinna's name.
I ordered him to send it to the car's secure tablet immediately.
A sharp ping echoed in the cabin. The screen of the tablet lit up. A yellowed, scanned document appeared. My hands shook so violently I could barely hold the device. I dragged my finger across the glass, zooming in on the physician's diagnostic notes.
The black text burned into my retinas. *Gestation: 12 weeks. Fetal heartbeat: critically weak. Recommendation: Immediate termination of pregnancy.*
My vision blurred. A massive, crushing weight collapsed my lungs. The tablet slipped from my numb fingers, hitting the floor mat with a dull thud.
I covered my face with both hands, my fingers digging into my scalp. A guttural, animalistic sob tore its way up my throat. "I personally... killed my own child."
