Chapter 304: All the Clues from the Day of the Miscarriage
The next day.
A frigid morning light enveloped the top-floor CEO’s office of the Sterling Group. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows lay the waking silhouette of the entire city.
The room was deathly still and oppressive, the very air seeming to have frozen solid.
Dressed in a sharply tailored, high-end black suit, Sean Sterling stood alone by the massive floor-to-ceiling window, a lit cigarette pinched between his fingers.
A sleepless night had left his eyes bloodshot. His jaw was clenched into a cold, sharp line, and a hostile aura radiated from him, warning others to keep their distance.
Isla Griffith’s miscarriage was a poisoned thorn piercing his heart. The venom seeped through his skin and ravaged his entire being, the pain so intense he felt like he was suffocating.
"President Sterling."
His assistant knocked and entered, standing before the desk. He called out cautiously, his tone respectful.
"We’ve finished investigating all the leads from the day of Ms. Griffith’s miscarriage. Nothing was missed."
Sean Sterling spun around. His dark, deep eyes held not a shred of warmth, only an abyssal chill.
His thin lips parted, his voice as cold as tempered ice. "Speak."
The assistant lowered his head slightly and began to report.
"First, the household staff. At the time of the incident, Ms. Griffith was the only one home. The nanny had gone to the supermarket. We have supermarket surveillance footage of her entire trip, her payment receipt, the time logs from the residential complex entrance, and even a statement from a neighbor she ran into. All the evidence and witness testimony checks out. The nanny can be completely ruled out as a suspect."
Hearing this, Sean Sterling’s fingers tightened, crushing the cigarette out of shape.
’It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t the nanny. Then it must have been deliberate.’ The thought made his heart clench violently.
"What about the security cameras in the complex and the hallway?" he demanded, his voice low and laced with suppressed rage.
The assistant replied, "The security equipment wasn’t tampered with. There are no signs of a power cut or deleted records. No footage shows any outsiders breaking in or approaching Ms. Griffith."
"However, we did a deep dive into Ms. Griffith’s complete call log for that day. We found two highly suspicious calls. Their timing aligns perfectly with the period just before and after the incident."
Sean Sterling’s gaze darkened, and the chill emanating from him intensified in an instant. "Which two?"
"The first was an incoming call from an anonymous number that lasted three minutes. The call was routed through an overseas cell tower. The number itself is a disposable, virtual one—no name, no registration. There’s no information on it in the carrier’s system, so for now, we can’t identify the user."
The assistant paused, then handed Sean the page from the report concerning the number.
"President Sterling, we’ve tried tracing it through multiple channels, but we’ve come up with nothing. All we can confirm is that it’s not a domestic number."
Sean Sterling glanced down at the number. A sinister glint flashed in his eyes as the hand at his side clenched into a fist.
’An anonymous overseas number... This was clearly a deliberate, well-thought-out move. The goal was to avoid being traced by me.’
The assistant took a deep breath and continued his report.
"The second call: immediately after hanging up with the anonymous caller, Ms. Isla Griffith dialed your personal cell phone number."
Sean Sterling frowned. "..."
’Isla called me?’
The assistant paused, stealing a glance at Sean Sterling to gauge his boss’s reaction.
"According to the carrier’s records, that call lasted four minutes and forty-six seconds—almost five minutes."
"Are you sure she called me?!"
"Positive," the assistant confirmed.
Sean Sterling’s pupils contracted violently. It felt as if an invisible hand had seized his heart in a crushing grip.
’A call that lasted almost five minutes... Why didn’t I know anything about it?!’
Sean Sterling immediately pulled out his phone. His fingertips trembled with panic as he frantically swiped the screen open.
Once, twice, three times...
He frantically scoured his call history—received, missed, outgoing, blocked. He checked every category, even quickly opening his cloud backup to look.
But he found nothing.
There was no call from Isla Griffith during that time. No call record, no trace. It was as if that nearly five-minute conversation had never happened.
’What the hell?’
Sean Sterling’s face visibly darkened, shifting from icy cold to deathly pale, and finally to the ashen color of utter despair.
His mind raced as he closed his eyes, forcing himself to remember what had happened that day, at that exact time.
After a long moment, it hit him. He remembered.
At that time, he had been at the hospital. He’d spoken with his mother in her room for a bit, then had gone to the doctor’s office to discuss her discharge.
He had left his phone in her room. He didn’t have it with him.
!!!
A horrifying thought, one that sent a chill through his entire body, slammed into his mind without warning.
’It had to be his mother.’
’She must have picked up the phone he’d left behind and answered Isla’s call.’
’What did she say to Isla during those five minutes?’
’Did she provoke her with the cruelest, most humiliating, most hurtful words imaginable?’
’Did she utterly extinguish Isla’s last shred of hope, causing her to break down completely, triggering the hemorrhage that led to the miscarriage?’
Regret, rage, panic, agony—a tidal wave of emotions instantly drowned Sean Sterling.
The hand clutching his phone trembled uncontrollably, his knuckles turning a translucent white. His chest heaved, and each breath became heavy and labored.
He had never imagined his own mother could have caused this tragedy.
The office fell into a dead silence. The assistant kept his head down, not daring to breathe too loudly.
Sean Sterling opened his eyes, his gaze turning cold and ruthless.
He looked up at his assistant, his voice as hard as iron and filled with irrefutable command.
"That anonymous overseas number—keep digging. Use all of the Group’s resources. Pull every string we have, legal or otherwise. Leave no stone unturned. I want the real identity behind that number, and I don’t care if you start with a single shred of a clue. Don’t let anything go."
"Yes, President Sterling. I’ll make the arrangements immediately," the assistant replied with a bow.
"And one more thing..."
"Your orders, President Sterling?" The assistant was all ears.
A part of Sean Sterling refused to believe his mother was involved, but the call log suggested an undeniable connection.
He needed irrefutable proof. Without it, he wouldn’t have the grounds to confront her.
"Go and pull all the security footage from inside and outside my mother’s hospital room from that day. Get audio if you can. I need to know what was said during that call."
"Yes, President Sterling. I’ll look into it right now."
Not daring to delay, the assistant turned and swiftly left the office.
The heavy, solid wood door clicked shut, sealing the suffocating hostility and dead silence within.
Sean Sterling stood alone in the center of the vast office, gripping his phone so tightly his knuckles turned a bloodless white.
’He didn’t dare imagine what his mother had said to Isla on that call.’
’But he was certain it wasn’t anything pleasant.’
’Otherwise, Isla wouldn’t have been so agitated that she miscarried.’
Sean Sterling was overcome with agony as a sharp, piercing pain suddenly shot through his chest.
He pressed a hand to his chest and swayed slightly. His once ironclad expression was now tinged with an undeniable fragility.
’It was his fault.’
’He was the one who left the phone in his mother’s room. He was the one who failed to protect Isla. He was the one who had personally pushed his own child into the abyss.’
Dizzy and disoriented, Sean Sterling staggered behind his desk and collapsed heavily into the leather chair, the red veins in his eyes growing even more pronounced.
An indeterminate amount of time passed before the intercom on his desk buzzed.
Sean Sterling answered the call. All traces of vulnerability vanished from his eyes, replaced once more by a cold, hostile aura.
"Speak."
"President Sterling, the trace on the overseas number is underway. We’ve contacted international telecom providers and intelligence agencies. The subject used heavy anti-tracking measures, so it will take time, but we won’t stop."
"Also, we’ve pulled all the security footage from inside and outside your mother, Mrs. Donovan’s, hospital room. It’s been encrypted and sent to your personal email."
Sean Sterling’s gaze darkened. His fingers flew across the keyboard as he opened the encrypted file.
The surveillance footage began to play on the screen, clearly showing the events of that day.
After he left the room, his phone was, indeed, sitting on the nightstand.
Not long after, a call came in. Judging by the time, it was the call from Isla Griffith.
On the security footage, Sean Sterling watched his mother, Yvonne Donovan, answer the phone.
There was no audio, only video, but the scornful, cruel expression on his mother’s face said everything.
He didn’t need to hear a recording; Sean Sterling could already imagine what was said.
"Find a way to restore the audio."
The assistant on the other end sounded troubled. If audio had been available, he wouldn’t have sent only the video.
The assistant explained cautiously, "I’m sorry, President Sterling, but the hospital rooms are only equipped with video surveillance, not audio. We can’t retrieve a recording."
"The phone carrier’s system also only stores the number and call duration, not the voice content of the conversation itself."
"..." Sean Sterling’s expression darkened, his brow clouding over with a frosty look.
"But," the assistant quickly added, "President Sterling, a long time ago, you set your personal phone to automatically record all calls and sync them in real-time to your private, encrypted cloud storage."
"Even if the call log is deleted from the device itself, the recording on the cloud remains intact. It can’t be erased from there."