Chapter 4 - Shadows of Manhattan
Forty-eight hours later, Manhattan was engulfed in a media firestorm. Every billboard in Times Square displayed Eleanor’s face beneath glowing red text: WANTED: ELEANOR STERLING - ARMED AND DANGEROUS. The news outlets painted her as a unstable socialite driven mad by post-partum depression and jealousy, accused of poisoning her billionaire husband and slaughtering two staff members.
Inside a subterranean safe house beneath an abandoned subway tunnel in Brooklyn, Eleanor watched the television screen in total silence. Marcus Kane, a rugged man in his late fifties with scarred knuckles and piercing grey eyes, handed her a steaming mug of black coffee.
"Julian is alive," Marcus said flatly.
Eleanor’s head snapped up, a mixture of shock and overwhelming relief washing over her face. "Is he... can he speak? Does he know the truth?"
"He’s in a medically induced coma at Bellevue VIP wing," Marcus replied, leaning against a workbench covered in surveillance monitors and dismantled firearms. "Thomas Sterling flew in from London yesterday morning and declared emergency power of attorney over Sterling Global. He’s placed Julian under twenty-four-hour guard by private mercenaries. Nobody gets in. Not even the doctors without Thomas’s personal clearance."
Eleanor set the mug down, her fists clenching. "Thomas is keeping him sedated so he can’t tell the police what really happened."
"Precisely," Marcus said. "And there’s more. The toxicology report from the nursery was altered. They swept the room before the NYPD arrived. The video footage from your laptop? Erased from the cloud server. As far as the world is concerned, you are a monster."
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Eleanor walked over to the small crib where Leo lay sleeping peacefully under Marcus’s watchful security setup. She stroked her son’s soft cheek. "I don't care about the money, Marcus. I don't care about my reputation. I am going to wake Julian up, and I am going to tear Thomas’s lie apart piece by piece."
"Then you’d better get ready," Marcus said, tossing a black tactical vest onto the table. "Because tonight, Thomas Sterling is hosting a emergency board meeting at the penthouse. And we’re crashing it."
