Chapter 2 - The Toxicology Report
The emergency room at Mount Sinai was a blur of fluorescent lights, shouting doctors, and terrifyingly frantic heart monitors. I paced the waiting room for three agonizing hours until Dr. Aris, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist, finally emerged. His face was grave.
"Are you the sister who brought in the sample of the broth?" he asked, his voice low.
I nodded, my heart hammering against my ribs. "Yes. Is she going to make it? Is the baby okay?"
Dr. Aris gestured for me to follow him into a private consultation room. He closed the door securely. "Olivia is stable, but we had to induce a medical coma to stop her organs from failing. The baby’s heart rate has stabilized. But Claire... we rushed a tox-screen on that mason jar and the amber vials you provided."
He handed me a printout.
"That wasn't just spoiled meat," he said, his voice laced with horror. "It was laced with dangerously high concentrations of heavy metals, specifically lead and arsenic, combined with a massive dose of crude belladonna extract. It’s an archaic cocktail. It was designed to keep her completely docile, suppress her immune system, and ultimately induce a massive, fatal hemorrhage during delivery."
I felt the blood drain from my face. "They wanted her to die in childbirth."
"From a medical standpoint," Dr. Aris whispered, "the doses were meticulously calculated to keep the fetus viable while slowly destroying the mother's body. If you hadn't pulled her out of that penthouse today, she would have been dead by Friday."
Before the horrifying reality could fully set in, the door to the consultation room swung open. My father stood there, breathless and flanked by two of his fiercest corporate litigators. But behind him was the one person I prayed wouldn't arrive so soon.
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Preston Sterling. He had flown in on his private jet from London. His designer suit was perfectly pressed, his jaw set in a line of cold, calculating fury.
"Where is my wife?" Preston demanded, looking at the doctor as if he were an unruly employee. "I have the paperwork to transfer her to a private facility immediately."
