Chapter 55

POV: Liam

​The fluorescent lights of the Sterling Tower’s executive sub-level flickered with a rhythmic, irritating buzz that seemed to vibrate inside my skull. I wasn't in the boardroom anymore. After the coup, after Sarah had taken the seat I’d spent five years protecting, I had been relegated to a "transition office" in the bowels of the building. It was a glass box with no windows, a holding pen for a man the world was preparing to devour.

​The door hissed open. I didn't look up from my hands. I was still thinking about the look on Isabella’s face when she saw those initials on the screen. L.S. "You look like a man waiting for a blindfold, Liam."

​I looked up. It wasn't Sarah. It was Miller and two other directors who had stayed on the board—the ones who knew how to pivot when the wind changed. They stood in the doorway like three crows on a fence. Behind them, two security guards stood with their hands clasped, blocking the only exit.

​"I’m a man who’s tired of the theater," I said, my voice sounding like it had been scraped across stone. "What do you want, Miller? I’ve already been stripped of my clearance. Sarah has the keys. Eleanor has the momentum. What’s left to take?"

​Miller stepped into the room, his expensive shoes silent on the industrial carpet. He placed a thick, leather-bound folder on the desk. "We’re not here to take anything, Liam. We’re here to offer you a way out. A survival strategy."

​"I've seen your survival strategies," I said. "They usually involve a lot of blood and a very clean press release."

​"The federal investigation is deepening," Miller said, ignoring my sarcasm. "The DOJ isn't just looking at the Vane estate anymore. They’re looking at the Sterling Trust's involvement in the 2014 integration. They’re looking at the 'Silent Partner' clause. They’re looking at you, Liam. As a co-beneficiary, you aren't just a CEO who looked the other way. You’re a principal. In the eyes of the law, you own the crime."

​I felt a coldness settle in my stomach. The "L.S." initials weren't just a secret; they were a noose. My father had tied me to Isabella’s biology before I even knew her name, making me the legal guarantor of an experiment that should have never existed.

​"The board has a proposal," the second director said, a woman named Vance who had always been a master of damage control. "A total realignment. We can't stop the investigation, but we can redirect it. We have enough evidence to bury Eleanor and Arthur ten times over. We can frame the entire Medusa project as a Vane-led deception that exploited the Sterling Trust’s capital without your knowledge."

​"Except I did know," I said. "I found the files six months ago. I’ve been managing the data ever since."

​"The records can be... adjusted," Miller said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "The logs showing your access can be attributed to a security breach. We can make you the whistleblower. The hero who tried to stop the Vane madness from the inside. We can save your reputation, your assets, and your freedom."

​I looked at the folder. "And what’s the price?"

​"Distance," Miller said. The word hung in the air like a threat. "Total, irrevocable distance from the Isabella Vane asset."

​"She’s my wife."

​"She’s a biological liability," Vance countered, stepping forward. "As long as you are tied to her—emotionally, legally, or through that marriage license—you are the Primary Beneficiary. You are the target. If you stay by her side, you go down with the ship. The DOJ will seize her, they will seize you, and the Sterling legacy ends in a federal courtroom."

​"We need you to sign a formal relinquishment of your beneficiary status," Miller explained. "And a petition for the annulment of the marriage on the grounds of 'undue influence' and 'fraudulent representation.' You claim you didn't know what she was. You claim you were a victim of the Vane family’s manipulation."

​"You want me to tell the world I didn't know my own wife was the project I was funding?" I asked, a bitter laugh escaping my throat. "No one will believe that."

​"The public wants a victim, Liam. If you play the part of the deceived husband, they’ll eat it up. You distance yourself from the 'Girl with the Flatline,' you hand the keys to the Medusa core over to the board’s new compliance team, and we make the DOJ go away. You keep your shares. You keep your father’s house. You walk away clean."

​I stood up, the chair screeching against the floor. I walked to the glass wall of the tiny office, staring at my own reflection. I looked like a ghost. I looked like the man my father had raised me to be—the one who understood the value of an exit strategy.

​"And what happens to Isabella?" I asked.

​"She becomes a Ward of the Company under Sarah’s oversight," Miller said, as if he were discussing a piece of office equipment. "The 'Biological Reclamation' begins. We stabilize her, we secure the data, and eventually, we settle with the government. She’ll be taken care of. In a facility. Away from the cameras."

​"You’re talking about a cage," I said. "A permanent one this time."

​"She’s already in a cage, Liam," Vance said. "The shunt in her chest is a lock only we have the key to. You staying with her doesn't change that. It just ensures you're in the cell next to her."

​I thought of the look in Isabella’s eyes when she’d confronted me in the medical suite. The betrayal. The way she’d looked at the "L.S." on the screen as if it were a brand. She already believed I was the enemy. She already believed I had owned her from the start.

​If I stayed, I was the monster she thought I was. If I left, I was the man the board needed me to be.

​"The papers are in the folder," Miller said, checking his watch. "The DOJ is expecting a statement by 6:00 AM tomorrow. If your name isn't on that relinquishment, they’ll issue the arrest warrants for the entire Sterling executive team. Including Sarah. You’d be taking down the people who have been loyal to you for years."

​"Loyal?" I turned to him. "Sarah took my chair."

​"Sarah took the chair to keep the company from being seized by a federal receiver," Miller corrected. "She did what you couldn't. She played the game. Now it’s your turn."

​I walked back to the desk. I looked at the folder. The first page was the annulment petition. It was written in cold, clinical language. The petitioner was unaware of the synthetic nature of the union... It was a lie. A beautiful, life-saving lie that would preserve the Sterling name and keep me out of a prison cell.

​I picked up the pen. The weight of it felt like a mountain.

​"If I sign this," I said, my voice barely a whisper, "I lose all legal right to interfere with her treatment. Is that correct?"

​"You lose all right to her, period," Vance said. "She becomes a Vane-Sterling asset, managed by the board. You walk away with your life. It’s a clean break, Liam. The kind your father would have made."

​I looked at the signature line. My father’s seal—the hawk with the broken wing—was embossed at the top of the page. It was a reminder of the legacy I was supposed to protect. It was a reminder that in this world, love was a luxury that men like me couldn't afford.

​I thought of the bridge. I thought of the way her hand had felt in mine when we were just two people in a car, before the data, before the core, before the initials.

​"The reclamation phase," I said. "Sarah signed off on it?"

​"She had to," Miller said. "To show the regulators we were taking control of the 'unstable' element. Phase Two is the only way to ensure the data doesn't degrade. It’s for her own good, Liam. It keeps her 'integrated.'"

​Integrated. The word felt like a death knell. It meant erasing the woman to save the core. It meant finishing what Eleanor had started ten years ago.

​I looked at the door. The security guards were still there, watching me. The room felt like it was shrinking, the walls closing in until there was only me, the pen, and the lie.

​"Liam?" Miller prompted. "We’re out of time. The feds are in the lobby. They’re waiting for the word."

​I held the pen over the paper. The ink was dark, a deep, permanent black. I could see the reflection of the fluorescent lights in the nib.

​"I need to see her first," I said.

​"That’s not part of the deal," Vance snapped. "You sign, you leave. That’s the arrangement."

​"I sign, or I don't," I countered, my voice regaining a hint of its former authority. "I want five minutes. No cameras. No recorders. Just five minutes."

​Miller and Vance exchanged a look. They knew they had me on the hook. They knew the pressure of the impending arrests would eventually force my hand.

​"Five minutes," Miller agreed. "And then you sign the folder. Or we let the feds come up."

​They turned and walked out, the security guards stepping aside to let me pass. I walked down the long, silent corridor toward the medical wing, the folder tucked under my arm. Every step felt like a betrayal. Every breath felt like a theft.

​I reached Isabella’s door. I stopped, my hand on the handle. Through the small glass window, I could see her. She was staring at the wall, her face a mask of stone, her eyes empty. She looked like she was already gone.

​I looked down at the pen in my hand. I looked at the signature line.

​The world was waiting for an answer. The board was waiting for a signature. Isabella was waiting for a man who didn't exist.

​I opened the door and stepped inside.

​The cliffhanger wasn't the signature or the rejection. It was the fact that as I stood there, watching her, I didn't say a word. I just looked at the folder, then at her, and the silence in the room became the only answer I had left.