Chapter 40: Mark's Debts

I climbed into the back of Thorne's silver sedan. Ben hesitated, then slid in next to me, his hand still tight around the wrench. Thorne locked the doors.

"Isolation Wing B," Thorne said, pulling onto the main road toward the hospital. "Code is 4-8-1-5. Don't forget it. If you trigger the silent alarm, the doors seal automatically."

"Why B?" I asked, watching the back of his head. "The oncology ward is in Wing A."

"Because he's not getting chemo," Thorne said. "He's getting a marrow flush. It's... experimental."

"It's torture," I snapped.

"It's maintenance," Thorne corrected, his voice flat. "It keeps his counts low enough to justify the diagnosis but high enough to keep him alive. If we stop, his body will start to produce normal cells. And then the game is up."

"And the game was worth killing my mother?" I asked.

Thorne's eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. For a second, I saw a flicker of something—guilt? Regret? Or just exhaustion.

"I didn't kill Maria," he said softly. "She died. It happens."

"You didn't take her to a hospital," I said. "That's murder."

"That's preservation," Thorne said. "If I had taken her to St. Jude's, they would have asked questions. Who the father was. Why a maid was carrying a Sterling baby."

"A Sterling baby?"

"She wasn't just carrying you," Thorne said. "She was carrying the secret. That Archibald Sterling, the great patriarch, had a vasectomy in 1950. Before Edith was born. Before Clara was born."

I stared at him.

"None of them are Sterlings," Thorne said. "Not biologically. Archibald and Martha couldn't conceive. They used donors. Anonymous donors. The entire dynasty... it's a fiction. A legal construct held together by money and willpower."

"So Clara isn't a Sterling either?"

"No," Thorne said. "But she was the only one Archibald truly loved. He wrote the will to protect her. To ensure Edith couldn't take everything."

He turned into the hospital service entrance.

"But Edith found out," he said. "She found the adoption papers in the attic. That's when she started the fire. The first fire. In 1988."

"The fire at the records office," I whispered.

"She burned her own history," Thorne said. "And then she started building a new one. With you. And Leo. And Mark."

He stopped the car at a security checkpoint. He flashed a badge. The gate opened.

"We're here," he said.

We pulled up to a loading dock. Thorne cut the engine.

"Wing B is through those doors," he said, pointing. "Third floor. Room 304. There's a guard, but he works for me. He'll let you in."

"What about you?" Ben asked.

"I'm staying here," Thorne said. "If Edith sees me with you, she'll kill Leo just to spite me."

He unlocked the doors.

"Go," he said. "Save your son."

We ran. The loading dock smelled of diesel and antiseptic. We found the service elevator and punched the button for the third floor.

The doors opened onto a quiet hallway. No nurses station. No beeping monitors. Just a long, white corridor with sealed doors.

Room 304 was at the end.

A guard was sitting outside, reading a magazine. He looked up as we approached.

"Dr. Thorne sent us," I said, my heart hammering.

The guard nodded. He swiped a keycard. The door clicked.

I pushed it open.

The room was dark, illuminated only by the glow of a single monitor. In the bed, small and pale, lay Leo.

He was hooked up to a machine I didn't recognize. A thick tube ran from his arm to a canister of clear liquid.

"Leo," I whispered.

I rushed to the bed. He was asleep, his chest rising and falling in shallow hitches. I touched his cheek. It was cold.

"We have to disconnect him," Ben said, looking at the machine.

"No," a voice said from the corner. "If you disconnect him, the alarm will sound. And the doors will lock."

I spun around.

Mark was sitting in a chair in the shadows. He was holding a gun.

Not Edith's silver pistol. A heavy, black revolver.

"Mark?" I asked. "How did you get here?"

"I took the tunnel," he said. "From the greenhouse. It comes out in the basement of the hospital. Did you know that? Edith built a tunnel between the estate and the hospital."

He stood up. The gun was shaking in his hand.

"She told me everything," Mark said. "About Alice. About the money. About why she named me Mark."

"She named you Mark because you were a target," I said.

"No," Mark said. "She named me Mark because that was the name of the first boy. The one she lost."

"What first boy?"

"The one she tried to adopt in 1980," Mark said. "The one who died in her care. Before she decided to start stealing them."

He looked at Leo.

"I'm not here to stop you, Sarah," he said. "I'm here to end it."

He pointed the gun at the machine.

"If I shoot the console," he said, "the locks disengage. The power cuts. You can take him."

"But the alarm," Ben said.

"I don't care about the alarm," Mark said. "I care about the debt."

He looked at me. His eyes were wet.

"She paid my gambling debts," he said. "But I have other debts. Debts she doesn't know about."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a stack of papers. Gambling markers. IOUs.

And a check.

*Pay to the Order of: Mark Sterling.*
*Amount: $2,000,000.*
*From: The Edith Sterling Trust.*

"She tried to buy me out this morning," Mark said. "She thought two million was the price of a son."

He ripped the check in half.

"Take Leo," he said. "Go."

"What about you?" I asked.

Mark smiled. It was a sad, broken smile.

"I'm going to wait for her," he said. "She's coming to check on her investment. And when she gets here..."

He cocked the gun.

"I'm going to foreclose."

"Mark, don't," I said. "Come with us. We can testify. We can put her in prison."

"Prison is too good for her," Mark said. "She needs to lose. She needs to know she lost."

He aimed at the machine.

*Bang.*

The shot was deafening in the small room. Sparks flew from the console. The monitor went black. The hum of the machine died.

And with a heavy *thunk*, the door lock disengaged.

"Go!" Mark screamed.

I grabbed Leo. Ben grabbed the IV stand. We ran.

We didn't look back. We sprinted down the hallway, the sound of alarms blaring in the distance. We hit the stairwell and took the steps two at a time, Leo's weight heavy in my arms.

We burst out into the loading dock. Thorne's car was gone.

"The truck," Ben said. "We left it at the gate."

We ran to the gate. The truck was there, engine idling.

We jumped in. I held Leo in my lap, checking his pulse. It was stronger now. The machine had been draining him, keeping him weak. Without it, he was fighting back.

"Where to?" Ben asked, putting the truck in gear.

"The police station," I said. "The main precinct. Not the local one. We need the FBI."

We sped toward the highway. Behind us, the hospital lights blazed in the night.

But as we merged onto the ramp, I saw something.

A fire.

In the distance, toward the estate. A column of black smoke rising into the sky.

Mark.

He hadn't waited for Edith at the hospital.

He had gone back to the source.

To the greenhouse.

"He's burning it," I whispered. "He's burning the bodies."

If he burned the greenhouse... he was destroying the evidence of Alice's murder.

But he was also destroying the only leverage we had left.

"Turn around," I said to Ben.

"What?"

"Turn around!" I screamed. "We have to stop him! If he burns Alice, we have nothing!"

Ben slammed on the brakes. The truck skidded to a halt on the shoulder.

"Sarah, look," he said, pointing at the dashboard.

The gas light was on. Empty.

We weren't going back. We weren't going anywhere.

And in the rearview mirror, a black SUV was pulling up behind us.

Edith's security team.

We were trapped.