Chapter 10

"Mom, calm down. Let me ask my assistant."

He called his assistant to check the subsidiary card given to Emily.

The assistant said that card had only been used for a few hundred dollars, spent at City General Hospital.

Everyone heard it through the speakerphone.

Damien Sterling squatted down, holding his head. Only a few hundred dollars…

Noah said his sister sneaked off to buy painkillers—just painkillers—for months. Not treatment. Not scans. Just enough to dull the agony so she could function.

"She told me she didn't want to be a burden," Noah said, standing apart from the family, arms crossed. "She said even if she told you, you'd just be annoyed."

"That's not true!" Mrs. Sterling cried.

"Isn't it?" Daniel's voice was quiet. Lethal. "When she said there was no first-aid kit in her room, what did you do? When she came downstairs every morning in pain, what did you say? You told her not to embarrass the family."

Mrs. Sterling had no answer.

Sophia arrived last.

She walked in with her usual grace, her expression one of careful concern. "I came as fast as I could. Is Emily okay? Oh my God, I've been so worried—"

"Save it," Damien said.

Sophia's step faltered. "Damien?"

He turned to face her. His eyes were swollen. His voice was hollow.

"The girls who bullied Emily. They were your friends. The ones who held her down in the bathroom. The ones who put cockroaches in her books. You told them to do it."

"I—I never—Damien, you know me—"

"I know the security footage from school. Noah showed me. You stood outside the bathroom and watched."

The hallway seemed to shrink.

Sophia's mask—the one she'd worn for sixteen years, the one that had fooled every single person in this family—cracked. And beneath it was something cold, calculated, and very, very afraid.

"She was going to take everything from me," Sophia whispered. "My family, my name, my brothers—"

"She never wanted any of that!" Damien shouted. "She just wanted someone to look at her! To ask if she was hungry, or sick, or scared! That's ALL she wanted!"

His voice echoed down the hospital corridor.

A nurse poked her head out. "Please keep it down. There are patients—"

"My sister is one of them," Damien said, and his voice broke on the word sister.

The surgery lasted four hours.

Dr. Evans came out looking exhausted but steady.

"We managed to remove the primary tumor. But it's spread to the lymph nodes. She'll need chemotherapy. Aggressive. Months of it."

"Whatever it costs," Michael said immediately. "Everything."

Dr. Evans looked at him coolly. "The money was never the issue, Mr. Sterling. A first-aid kit costs twelve dollars."

Michael Sterling, heir to a billion-dollar empire, had no response to that.