The ambulance’s red lights sliced through Paris’s morning mist like a bleeding wound. In the textile factory’s basement, when paramedics lifted Victoria Sterling onto the stretcher, her fingers still curled in the rigid, stubborn posture of someone holding a pen—refusing to loosen even in unconsciousness.
Liam sat in the ambulance’s rear compartment, staring at his mother’s paper-pale face. Her chest rose and fell faintly, and the vital signs monitor beeped with a steady, monotonous rhythm. Thank God the sedative hadn’t been an overdose. “She calculated the dose perfectly,” the doctor had said. “Enough to show her resolve, but not enough to close the door on being saved.”
“She’s always been like this,” Liam muttered to himself. “Everything has to be under her control.”
His phone vibrate
