The chill of the bulletproof glass seeps into my cheekbone, a stark contrast to the inferno of Alexander Sterling's grip on my throat. Eighty floors below, Manhattan pulses like a living circuit board, its indifferent lights blurring through the rain-streaked window. His breath, hot and laced with expensive Scotch and fury, washes over my face.
"Talk," he snarls, the single word vibrating with barely leashed violence. He slams my head back against the unyielding pane. A dull thud echoes in the cavernous silence of his penthouse.
"Who paid you to sell me out?"
My reflection stares back from the dark glass – wide, dark eyes in a face drained of color, a trapped creature pinned against the glittering void. The air tastes thin, sharp with ozone from the storm outside and the acrid scent of his rage. His knuckles are white where they press into the delicate column of my neck, a pressure point away from disaster. Platinum cufflinks glint coldly at his wrists, identical to the ones now likely crushed in the wreckage.
The irony tastes like blood on my tongue.
Five Years Earlier - Connecticut, Midnight
Rain lashed the windshield of my battered Volvo, the rhythmic thump of the wipers a frantic counterpoint to the drumming in my chest. I was pushing ninety, desperate to make the last bridge inspection in Port Chester before dawn. The fog was a living thing, swallowing the winding country road whole, reducing the world to the cone of my headlights and the slick, reflective asphalt.
Then, light. Blinding, searing white light exploding from the opposite lane, cutting through the mist like a physical blade. Instinct screamed. I wrenched the steering wheel hard left, tires shrieking against the wet tarmac. Momentum fought physics. The world tilted violently.
Not for me.
A tortured scream of rending metal ripped the night apart, followed by the sickening crunch of impact and the crystalline shatter of safety glass. My Volvo fishtailed to a shuddering halt on the grassy verge, engine sputtering. Heart hammering against my ribs, I scrambled out into the downpour.
Through the swirling fog and rain, the scene materialized like a nightmare. A sleek, dark shape – a Maybach, its emblem glinting dully – lay crumpled nose-first in a deep drainage ditch, steam hissing from its ruined hood like a dying beast. The sharp, nauseating tang of spilled gasoline warred with the unmistakable copper-sweet smell of fresh blood.
I slid down the muddy embankment, my boots sinking into the muck. The driver's side was obliterated. Airbags hung like deflated ghosts. And there, slumped sideways against the deployed bag, was a man. Blond hair, matted with blood. An expensive watch glinted on a limp wrist. His face was obscured, turned towards the shattered window. But the sheer, brutal impact was evident.
One arm hung at a grotesque angle. Dark, arterial blood pulsed sluggishly from a deep gash near his temple, staining the white collar of his shirt crimson, dripping onto the platinum cufflink at his wrist.
Glass crunched under my boots as I wrenched the buckled driver's door open, ignoring the shard that sliced a burning line across my palm. The metallic scent of blood thickened, cloying in the damp air. Inside the wrecked luxury, the man was deathly still. Rainwater dripped from the torn roof lining onto his pale face. I reached in, fingers trembling slightly, finding the pulse point beneath his jaw. It fluttered, faint and thready as a trapped moth's wing against my fingertips. Fading fast.
"Hey! Can you hear me?"
My voice sounded unnaturally loud in the sudden quiet after the crash's fury. No response. Just the ragged, wet gurgle of his breathing – a terrible sound I knew too well.
*Tension pneumothorax*.
Air trapped in the pleural space, collapsing the lung, suffocating him from the inside. My medical training, dusty but ingrained, snapped into focus.
"Stay with me!" The plea was automatic. I leaned further in, bracing myself against the cold, wet metal of the car frame. My eyes scanned the ruin of his chest. His custom-tailored Armani shirt was soaked through, dark and heavy. Carefully, I ripped the fabric open, buttons pinging into the darkness. The sight beneath made my breath catch. A jagged piece of the splintered steering column, like a broken spear, protruded obscenely just below his collarbone. Blood welled around it with every shallow, agonized breath he managed.
NO.
Panic, cold and sharp, pricked at my edges. This was beyond roadside first aid. This needed an OR, a trauma team, NOW.
I fumbled for my phone, thumb smearing blood on the screen. No signal. The bars were mocking gray slashes. The isolation of the rain-lashed Connecticut backroad pressed in, suffocating. The gurgling breath grew more desperate. He was drowning in his own blood. My battered field kit, a relic from my brief EMT stint years ago, lay on the Volvo's passenger seat.
I grabbed it, the plastic latch slick with rain. Inside, sterile gauze packets, antiseptic wipes, bandages – pitifully inadequate weapons against the carnage before me. Kneeling in the mud beside the wreck, ignoring the icy water soaking through my jeans, I pressed a thick wad of gauze hard against the wound near the embedded shrapnel. It vanished instantly, saturated, the bright white turning a sickening maroon.
Futile.
The blood flow was relentless. A glint of metal caught the weak moonlight filtering through the broken windshield. His wallet had fallen onto the floor mat, half-submerged in muddy water. With my free hand, I picked it up, wiping grime from the soft black leather. Flipping it open, the glow of my phone screen illuminated the driver's license behind scratched plastic.
Alexander Sterling
The name slammed into me with the force of a physical blow. The photograph, even blurred and blood-smeared, was unmistakable. The sharp, aristocratic jawline, the cold, assessing blue eyes – eyes that had stared down my father across a bankruptcy court table years ago.
Eyes that had held nothing but icy triumph as Sterling Capital dismantled Lin Pharmaceuticals brick by brick, driving my proud, broken father to an early grave. The Wolf of Wall Street himself, bleeding out in a ditch.
My hand, still pressing the useless gauze, froze. A wave of pure, unadulterated hatred, cold and familiar, washed over me. Let him bleed. Let him choke. Let the rain wash him into the earth. Justice. The thought was seductive, dark and sweet.
My fingers tightened on the gauze, the pressure easing almost imperceptibly. His labored breathing hitched, a wet, bubbling sound. A different sound pierced the haze of hate – shrill, insistent, digital. Not the rain, not his breathing. It was the memory of a sound: the flatline whine of a cardiac monitor during my final, disastrous med school practical. The look on the evaluator's face – not anger, but profound disappointment.
"Miss Lin, technical skill is meaningless without the fundamental imperative to preserve life. Choosing not to save, when you have the capacity, is still murder."
The professor's words, calm and devastating, echoed as clearly as if he stood beside me in the muddy ditch. Murder. Not justice. Just another kind of death. My father wouldn't have wanted this. He believed in fairness, even when the world was unfair. He wouldn't have wanted his death to make me a killer.
My gaze dropped from Sterling's ashen face to my own left arm, the sleeve pushed up during the frantic drive. The skin at the inner elbow was unblemished, but the memory was a physical ache.
A rare genetic fluke. A secret burden. RH-null. Golden blood. The universal donor. Only about forty known individuals worldwide possessed it. A life-saving gift, and an isolating curse. The irony was almost laughable. The man who destroyed my family needed the rarest blood on earth to survive.
And I was one of the few who could give it.
My father's face swam in my memory, kind eyes shadowed by defeat. "Do the right thing, Evelyn. Always."
Gritting my teeth against a surge of nausea, I tore open a sterile packet from the kit. The needle glinted, cold and sharp. No time for hesitation. No time for hatred. Just the brutal, undeniable imperative of the oath I'd once sworn.
I plunged the needle into the prominent vein at my inner elbow. Dark, precious blood, thick with life, began to flow through the clear tubing into the collection bag.
My blood. Into Alexander Sterling. The universe wasn't just cruel; it was a master of grotesque irony. I closed my eyes, not against the pain, but against the sickening intimacy of the act. His veins would run with my essence. The thought was a violation.