Chapter 1: The Paper in the Gauze
The crisp air of St. Jude Private Clinic tasted like antiseptic and deceit. Maya adjusted her grip on the bedsheet, staring at the crumpled piece of paper now resting between Dr. Vance’s fingers. Her arm felt weightless without the heavy plaster cast, but her heart weighed a thousand pounds.
Eleanor, her stepmother, stood frozen in her pink satin suit. The pristine pearls around her neck seemed to choke her as her manicured hand hung suspended in mid-air.
"Read it, Dr. Vance," Maya whispered, her voice slicing through the tense silence. "Read what my father actually signed before he died."
Dr. Vance smoothed the creased edges. His professional composure cracked, his eyes darting rapidly across the handwritten ink and the official embossed seal. "This isn't a medical authorization," he murmured, glancing up with rising alarm. "It’s a handwritten codicil. Signed forty-eight hours before Arthur Sterling slipped into a coma."
"Give that to me!" Eleanor lunged forward, her elegance shattering into raw desperation. "That is confidential family property! Maya is delusional from the painkillers—she doesn’t know what she’s doing!"
"I haven’t taken the pills in two weeks, Eleanor," Maya said coldly, standing on trembling legs. "I hid them under the mattress. I wanted my head clear when I finally tore that cast off."
The doctor read aloud, each word striking like a hammer: "I, Arthur Sterling, declare that the trusteeship of Sterling BioTech shall not pass to my wife Eleanor, but directly to my daughter Maya upon her eighteenth birthday. Any medical declaration of her incompetence must be verified by an independent board..."
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"That document was supposed to be incinerated," Eleanor hissed under her breath, her mask slipping completely.
"My father knew you’d try to silence me," Maya said, taking a step toward her. "He knew you would break my bones just to keep me in this bed."
