Chapter 10 - The Broken Mask
“I’m not signing anything,” I whispered, gripping the hospital bed rails until my knuckles turned bloodless white. “Not for you. Not for him.”
Cynthia’s polite smile vanished. The mask she had worn my entire life—the elegant, devoted doctor’s wife, the pillar of the country club, the benevolent philanthropist—melted away like cheap wax under flame.
Her face twisted into something venomous and cruel.
“You ungrateful little bitch,” Cynthia hissed, stepping forward and jabbing a manicured finger toward my face. “Everything you have—your private school tuition, your trust fund, the clothes on your back—was paid for by Richard’s work! Eleanor was an old, senile fool who thought she could hand a thirty-million-dollar medical development to a girl who cries over bruised feelings!”
“It was never a development to Eleanor,” I fired back, my voice rising, shaking with pure, unadulterated fury. “It was a free clinic for people who couldn't afford Richard’s five-thousand-dollar consultation fees! You’re going to bulldoze it and turn it into private luxury suites!”
“Of course we are!” Cynthia snapped. “Because that’s what power does! It expands! Now sign the papers, Olivia, or so help me God, I will tell the judge you threatened to burn down the family estate, and you will never see the light of day again!”
She thrust the pen into my face.
Dr. Vance didn't hesitate. She stepped forward, gripped Cynthia’s wrist with surgical precision, and twisted it downward.
The expensive gold pen clattered to the floor. The legal papers scattered across the tile.
“Get your hands off me!” Cynthia shrieked. “I will have you ruined! Do you know who my husband is?!”
“He’s a sadist with a medical license,” Dr. Vance said, pressing Cynthia firmly against the doorframe, reaching behind her with her free hand to smash the red *Emergency Code Silver* button on the wall.
An ear-splitting siren began to pulse through the ward. Overhead, the automated PA system crackled to life:
*“Code Silver, Isolation Three. Security to Burn Unit. Code Silver, Isolation Three.”*
Cynthia’s face drained of color as the heavy thud of running security guards echoed down the corridor. She yanked her arm free from Vance’s grip, scrambling to pick up her scattered purse.
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“You’ve sealed your fate, Livvy,” Cynthia spat, retreating toward the door, her composure shattered. “Richard is already at the courthouse. When he comes back, there won't be a doctor in this state who can save you!”
She turned and fled into the red-lit hallway just as four burly security guards rounded the corner.
