The interior of the Rolls Royce was a sanctuary of silence, the double-paned glass sealing out the world. Ophelia flipped through the appointment documents, her finger tracing the line that designated her as the Chairwoman of the Board.
Arthur glanced at her in the rearview mirror. His eyes were kind, crinkled at the corners. "Miss, regarding the Barnes family... do you require me to intervene?"
"Lions don't turn around when dogs bark, Arthur," Ophelia said, closing the folder.
"Understood." Arthur's expression shifted to something grimmer. He passed a tablet back to her. "This is the data on the truck that hit us."
Ophelia took the tablet. The screen displayed a grainy photo of a mangled semi-truck. On the side of the cab, barely visible through the wreckage, was a logo: a silver wolf.
"Sterling Industries," Ophelia murmured. Her brow furrowed. "Silas Sterling's people?"
"It was an accident, officially," Arthur said, his voice tight. "But in New York, the only people reckless enough to sideswipe a Pennington convoy are the Sterlings."
"Silas..." Ophelia stared at the logo. "I heard rumors. He's dying."
"The best doctors in the city have given up. They say his heart is failing."
The car slowed. They were at the emergency entrance of Mercy General. A security guard stepped out, hand raised to stop the battered vehicle.
Arthur rolled down his window. He didn't speak. He just pointed a gloved finger at the license plate.
The guard looked down. NY 6. His eyes widened. He stumbled back, saluting frantically, and waved them through.
"Wait here," Ophelia said, pulling a black baseball cap from her bag and jamming it onto her head. She pulled the brim low.
"Miss, the car is... conspicuous," Arthur noted dryly.
"You're the distraction," she said.
She grabbed a nondescript canvas duffel bag from the floorboard. Inside clinked glass vials and steel instruments.
She slipped out of the car and moved toward the employee entrance. Her phone buzzed with a message from Arthur. It was a six-digit number. She punched in the code-827701-without hesitation. The lock clicked open.
The hospital smelled of antiseptic and stale coffee. Ophelia moved like a ghost, weaving through the corridors. She passed the main lobby, where a swarm of reporters was pressing against the glass doors.
"Is Silas Sterling dead?" someone shouted.
Ophelia kept her head down. She turned a corner and collided hard with a chest.
Papers went flying. A young doctor in scrubs stumbled back. "Whoa! Watch it!"
Ophelia instinctively snatched three sheets of paper out of the air before they hit the floor. Her eyes scanned the charts in a split second.
"Potassium 6.5," she muttered, handing them back. "He's bordering on ventricular fibrillation. You need to push calcium gluconate."
The doctor, whose badge read Dr. Thomas Yates, Intern, stared at her. "What? How do you... do you work here?"
Ophelia realized her mistake. "Just passing through."
She ducked past him and sprinted up the stairwell.
She reached the third floor. Room 304. Not a VIP suite. Just a standard room.
She slipped inside.
An old woman lay in the bed, frail and small. Grandmother Barnes. The only person in that house who had ever snuck Ophelia a cookie, who had ever brushed her hair.
Ophelia approached the bed. She placed two fingers on the woman's wrist. The pulse was thready, weak. She glanced at the chart at the foot of the bed-congestive heart failure, chronic. Her eyes flicked to the monitor, noting the dangerously low oxygen saturation. She gently lifted the woman's eyelid, checking for response. There was none.
"I'm here, Nana," she whispered.
She opened her bag and took out a small, unlabeled amber vial. She shook out a single blue pill. It shimmered slightly in the fluorescent light. This was a compound she had been developing in secret for two years, specifically for Nana's condition.
The door banged open.
"Hey!"
It was Dr. Yates. He was breathless, angry. "What are you doing? What is that?"
He lunged for her hand.
Ophelia didn't panic. She sidestepped, grabbed his wrist, and twisted. It was a simple Aikido lock.
"Ah!" Yates bent double, his knees hitting the floor.
"If you want her to live through the night, be quiet," Ophelia hissed.
She popped the pill into the old woman's mouth and massaged her throat until she swallowed.
Yates stared at the cardiac monitor. The erratic, jumping line suddenly smoothed out. The heart rate climbed from 40 to a steady 72.
"My god," Yates whispered, forgetting the pain in his wrist. "What did you do?"
