The St. Jude's Hospice for Chronic Care didn't have marble floors or mahogany desks. It smelled of industrial lavender, floor wax, and the quiet, heavy stillness of people waiting for the end.
I stood in the doorway of Room 302, my breath hitching in my chest. I was still wearing the midnight-blue silk gown from the gala, though I'd thrown a tattered trench coat over it. I looked like a fallen star in a hallway of shadows. My heels clicked hollowly on the linoleum—a sharp, aggressive sound that felt disrespectful in the quiet.
"Maya? You're early," the night nurse, Elena, whispered as she stepped out of the station. She looked at my gown, then at my tear-streaked face. "Is everything okay? Did something happen with the foundation?"
"I need to see her files, Elena," I said, my voice sounding like it was coming from a great distance. "Not the medical charts. The billing. The intake records from twenty years ago."
"Honey, those are in the archives. And you know the policy—only the primary payer can request—"
"I am the primary payer now," I said, stepping into the light. The desperation in my eyes must have been terrifying, because Elena took a step back. "Reid Sterling transferred the trust to my name last month. I am the owner of this debt. Now, please. Open the office."
Ten minutes later, I was sitting in a cramped, fluorescent-lit back office, surrounded by filing cabinets that groaned under the weight of decades of tragedy. Elena handed me a dusty, yellowed folder.
"This is the transition file from the Geneva facility," she said softly. "It's been here since she was transferred back in 2006. No one has ever looked at it."
I opened the folder. My hands were shaking so violently I almost dropped it.
There it was. The same name I had seen on the transfer papers in the coat check: Elena Gable. But as I flipped through the pages, I saw something that Sarah hadn't mentioned. Something Eleanor had buried under layers of corporate jargon.
There was a birth certificate tucked into the back of the file.
It wasn't mine. I was born in 2001. This certificate was dated 1998.
Name of Child: Leo Gable.
Father: Arthur Sterling.
Mother: Elena Gable.
I felt the room spin. I grabbed the edge of the metal desk, the cold steel biting into my palms. Leo. I had a brother. Not a "half-brother" for Reid, but a full brother for me. And his father was... Reid's father.
"Maya? You've gone white as a sheet," Elena said, reaching for my shoulder.
"Arthur Sterling didn't just have an affair with my mother," I whispered, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. "He had a family. He had a whole other life."
I flipped the page. There was a letter, handwritten on heavy vellum paper, dated the day my mother was moved back to New York. It was from Eleanor Sterling.
Elena,
The boy is safe. He has been placed where Arthur can never find him, and where you can never reach him. As long as you remain in this facility and Maya remains in the dark, the trust will continue. If you speak, if you seek him out, or if you tell Maya who her father truly is, the funding stops. And we both know Maya cannot survive the debt alone.
Stay quiet. Stay sick. It is the only way to keep your daughter alive.
The paper fluttered to the floor.
My entire life—the shifts at the diner, the hunger, the desperation, the $5 million debt—it had all been a cage built by Eleanor Sterling. She hadn't been paying for my mother's "life"; she had been paying for her imprisonment. She had separated my mother from her son and me from my father, all to protect the "purity" of the Sterling line.
And Reid.
If Arthur Sterling was my father... then Reid wasn't my fiancé. He was my...
I lurched toward the trash can and retched. The midnight-blue silk felt like it was suffocating me. The emeralds on my ears felt like lead weights.
"Maya! What is it?" Elena cried out.
I didn't answer. I couldn't. I scrambled for the file, clutching the birth certificate to my chest. I had to find Reid. I had to tell him before he found Sarah. I had to tell him that our entire relationship—the kisses, the proposal, the "Ice King" melting—it was all a tragedy designed by his mother.
I ran out of the office, ignoring Elena's shouts. I burst through the front doors of the hospice into the cold New York night.
A black car was waiting at the curb.
The window rolled down. It wasn't Reid. It wasn't a taxi.
It was Eleanor.
"You were always too curious for your own good, Maya," she said, her voice smooth and chillingly calm. "I told you that some secrets are meant to be built over. You chose to dig. Now, you have to deal with what you've found."
"You monster," I rasped, stepping toward the car. "He's my brother. Leo is my brother. And Arthur was my father. You kept me in poverty while you sat on billions that belonged to my family!"
"Your family?" Eleanor laughed, a sharp, dry sound. "Your mother was a waitress, Maya. Just like you. Arthur was a weak man who fell for a pretty face and a warm meal. I didn't keep you in poverty; I kept you alive. Do you have any idea what the Sterling board would have done to an illegitimate heir in 1998?"
"Where is he? Where is Leo?"
Eleanor leaned back into the shadows of the car. "He's closer than you think. But if you want to see him, you're going to have to do something for me first."
"I'm not doing anything for you ever again."
"Oh, I think you will," Eleanor said, holding up a phone. On the screen was a live feed of the Silver Star Diner.
I saw Lou behind the counter. And I saw two men in dark suits standing by the door.
"The diner is old, Maya. The wiring is faulty. It would be such a shame if it went up in flames with everyone inside. Especially since Reid is currently there, looking for Sarah."
My blood went cold. "If you touch him..."
"Then get in the car," Eleanor commanded. "We have one last contract to sign. And this time, there are no 'No Feelings' clauses. Just the truth."
I looked at the hospice behind me, then at the black car. I looked at the birth certificate in my hand.
I got into the car.
As the door clicked shut, I realized that Volume 2 wasn't about a marriage or an architecture firm. It was a hostage situation. And the ransom was the soul of the man I loved—the man who was, unknowingly, the only family I had left to lose.