Chapter 3 - THE GOLD SIGNET
The emergency vehicle doors slammed shut, the red and blue lights painting the rain-streaked walls of the living room in frantic flashes.
“Can I go?” Lily cried, twisting in my arms as the paramedics wheeled the stretcher toward the front door. “I want to ride with Mommy!”
“You’re riding with me,” I said, my voice firm but gentle as I pulled her close. I looked at Brent, who had just stepped through the front door, soaking wet and breathing heavily. “Brent. Lock the house. Follow the ambulance to Swedish Hospital. And do not let anyone—media, police, or strangers—near that room until I get there.”
Brent nodded, his face pale with shock. “Got it, boss.”
I carried Lily back out to the SUV, buckling her safely into the backseat and wrapping her in two dry blankets from my trunk. The adrenaline was still pumping through my veins, but beneath it, a cold, heavy dread was settling into my stomach.
I pulled the framed photograph and the gold signet ring from my coat pocket and placed them on the passenger seat.
Sarah.
The name echoed in my mind. Ten years ago, my older sister Sarah had vanished from Seattle under mysterious circumstances, cutting ties with our family after marrying a man my father had aggressively tried to block from our corporate circles. A man named Robert Sterling.
Sterling Enterprises. One of my largest commercial real estate competitors in the Pacific Northwest.
If the woman unconscious in the back of that ambulance was Sarah’s daughter—which meant Lily was my niece—then the little girl who had walked into my store with eleven dollars and thirty-seven cents wasn’t just a random customer in need of a father.
She was the hidden heir to a multi-million-dollar estate that Robert Sterling had spent a decade trying to legally dismantle.
We arrived at Swedish Hospital twenty minutes later. The rain had turned into a steady, freezing mist.
I carried Lily through the sliding glass doors of the emergency entrance. The medical staff, already briefed by the incoming paramedics, directed us immediately toward the intensive care unit on the fourth floor.
Dr. Marcus Vance—no relation to my family, despite the shared name—met us at the ICU double doors. He looked tired, his lab coat rumpled.
“Are you Mr. Vance?” he asked, eyeing me carefully.
“Yes. How is she?”
“She’s stable, but barely,” the doctor said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Severe ketoacidosis combined with extreme physical exhaustion and malnutrition. Her body simply shut down. If she had been left another two hours without insulin, we wouldn't be having this conversation.”
Lily clutched my sleeve. “Is Mommy going to wake up?”
“Yes, sweetie,” Dr. Marcus said with a kind, reassuring smile, kneeling down to her eye level. “The doctors are helping her breathe right now. She’s going to be just fine. Would you like to go sit with a nurse in the playroom while I talk to your uncle Ethan?”
Lily hesitated, looking up at me.
“Go with the nice doctor, Lily,” I whispered, pressing a kiss to her damp hair. “I’ll be right outside the door.”
Once Lily disappeared down the brightly lit corridor, hand-in-hand with a pediatric nurse, the warmth vanished from the hallway.
I turned to Dr. Marcus, pulling the gold signet ring from my pocket and holding it up.
“Who brought her in?” I asked. “Did anyone else arrive with the ambulance?”
The doctor frowned, looking at the heavy gold ring. “No. Just the neighbor who called 911. But Mr. Vance... there is something else you need to know about the patient’s chart. We ran her admission bloodwork. It wasn't just natural diabetic shock.”
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My stomach plummeted. “What are you saying?”
“Her insulin pump was deliberately tampered with,” Dr. Marcus said quietly, checking to make sure no nurses were listening. “The dosage valve was jammed shut yesterday afternoon. Someone tried to kill her.”
