Chapter 10 - Behind the Mask
Room 402 was guarded by two armed federal marshals. I pushed the heavy door open and stepped inside.
Sarah was sitting upright in the hospital bed, wearing a yellow patient gown. She had no makeup on, her pale hair pulled back into a sloppy knot. Her wrists were handcuffed to the metal bed frame. Despite her physical restraint, her eyes burned with a dark, defiant glare as I walked into the room.
"Look who finally came to visit," Sarah sneered, her voice raspy. "How is our little masterpiece?"
"He is NOT your masterpiece, Sarah," I said coldly, walking to the foot of her bed. "The DNA results came back. You aren't his mother."
Sarah didn't even flinch. She leaned her head back against the pillow and let out a cold, chilling laugh.
"So Chen told you," Sarah shrugged casually, as if discussing a minor accounting error. "So what? You're the biological father, Mark. I made sure of that. I chose the finest egg donor in the country—a woman with an IQ of 140 and a master's degree in classical music. I gave you a perfect heir."
"You bought an egg, hired a surrogate in secret, and faked a seven-month pregnancy!" I yelled, my voice shaking with disgust. "You are sick, Sarah! You're completely insane!"
"I am a strategist!" Sarah hissed, leaning forward as far as her handcuffs would allow. "Do you have any idea what my life was like after my father died? The feds were freezing our assets, the press was dragging our name through the mud! I had forty million dollars in offshore accounts, but I needed a safe house! I needed a respectable, brilliant, oblivious husband like you to build a squeaky-clean life around me!"
"I was your cover story," I said bitterly.
"You were my salvation!" Sarah declared passionately. "And I loved you, Mark! In my own way, I built a wonderful life for us! We had a beautiful home, a flourishing architectural firm, social status! All you had to do was design your buildings and love me! But your stupid, nosey mother had to go digging through my lockbox!"
"My mother saved me from a monster," I said, leaning over the footboard, staring straight into her cold eyes. "You kicked a 72-year-old woman on the floor because you were terrified of being exposed."
"She was going to take everything away from me!" Sarah screamed, her voice cracking with psychotic rage. "Everything I worked six years to build! I protected what was mine!"
"It was never yours, Sarah," I said quietly. "The money belonged to the families your father bankrupted. The patents belong to my father's estate. And that baby in the NICU... he belongs to me. You will never touch him. You will never see him. You will spend the rest of your life in a federal prison."
Sarah's mask finally cracked. The cold, arrogant smile vanished, replaced by a sudden, intense terror as she looked down at the steel handcuffs binding her to the bed.
"Mark... please," she suddenly whimpered, tears flooding her eyes as she tried to switch tactics once again. "Don't do this... I love you! We can fix this! I can give you the passwords to the offshore accounts! Forty million dollars, Mark! We can move anywhere in the world! Just tell the feds you made a mistake! Tell them the papers were yours!"
"I wouldn't take a single cent of your blood money if I was starving on the street," I said with total disgust.
"Mark! Please!" Sarah begged, thrashing against the handcuffs as metal rattled loudly against the frame. "Don't leave me! Mark!"
I turned my back on her and walked toward the door. As my hand touched the handle, Sarah's desperate weeping instantly ceased, replaced by a loud, chilling scream of pure hatred.
"YOU'LL NEVER ESCAPE ME, MARK VANCE!" she roared, her voice echoing through the hospital room. "I CREATED YOUR LIFE AND I WILL DESTROY IT FROM A CELL! YOU HEAR ME? YOU ARE NOTHING WITHOUT ME!"
I stepped out into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind me.
Agent Miller stepped forward with a pair of key cards. "We're taking custody of her now, Mr. Vance. Transporting her to the federal detention center downtown."
"Thank you, Agent," I said, taking a deep, clean breath for the first time in days. "Take her away."
As the federal agents unlocked her room to process her transport, I walked back toward the NICU. But as I reached the elevator bank, my phone rang. It was an urgent call from my business partner, David.
"Mark!" David shouted over the receiver, sounding panicked. "You need to get to the architecture firm right now!"
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"David, what's wrong? I'm at the hospital with the baby."
"Mark... someone just broke into our firm's central servers!" David yelled. "All of our architectural schematics, client contracts, and safety engineering files for the new forty-story downtown tower project... they're being wiped in real-time!"
