Chapter 188: Devil’s Sister Has A Plan
"I was trying to give it back to her," Valerie’s voice came out muffled, then she snapped upright, running her knuckles over her temples.
"The plan was for Ana to look at the screen, see the tracker herself, and deal with it like a grown woman. But now? Now Damian will take the phone to his tech team! They’re going to clone the backup, restore every single pending ping, and he is going to see that four-week late alert before she even gets a chance to breathe! What on earth are we supposed to do now?"
Victoria sighed, crossing her arms as she stared out the high windows. The initial shock had settled into a resigned, practical calm.
"There is nothing more we can do, Valerie," Victoria said evenly, her tone carrying the fatalism of a seasoned matriarch. "If Damian discovers it through his tech division, so be it. A pregnancy cannot remain hidden in this family forever. He was bound to find out sooner or later."
"You don’t get it, Mom," Valerie whispered, the theatrical flair instantly draining from her face.
A heavy, sickening dread settled into her chest as the chaotic memory of that night at Nocturne flooded back. She remembered the blinding strobe lights, the smell of spilled cocktails, and Anastasia slumped against the velvet booth... slurring her words with raw, weeping vulnerability before the poison seized her lungs.
He doesn’t care about me, Ana had cried, her voice cracking beneath the music. He doesn’t want a partner. He just loves keeping me caged.
Valerie swallowed hard, her throat tight with a sudden ache of protective guilt. She loved Damian. She knew her brother was a titan who built empires, and part of her desperately wanted to believe he wasn’t the cold monster he played in the boardroom.
But what if Ana was right? What if Damian’s possessive, suffocating control turned this fragile miracle into an absolute nightmare? What if Valerie’s clumsy hands had just thrown Ana straight into the fire?
"What if I just ruined her life?" Valerie breathed, her voice trembling. "What if he uses this to lock her away completely?"
Victoria frowned, stepping closer. "Valerie..."
"No, Mom," Valerie cut in, already kicking off her slippers and grabbing a heavy wool coat from the armour with sudden, frantic resolve. Her eyes were sharp, driven by an adrenaline she hadn’t felt all morning. "I can’t just sit here waiting for Damian’s IT guys to detonate our lives. Mom... I have somewhere I need to be."
******************
Damian pushed open the heavy frosted-glass doors of his sprawling corner office, tossing his overcoat onto the leather sofa. The windows revealed the gray, restless Manhattan skyline, but his focus was anchored on the files stacked across his mahogany desk.
Henry stepped in behind him, holding a leather folio and an encrypted tablet.
"The preliminary review for the Nocturne incident is scheduled for nine, sir," Henry reported in his crisp, composed cadence. "Legal has issued nondisclosure agreements for the venue staff, and the toxicology lab results from Mount Sinai have been placed under executive seal per your directive."
Damian didn’t look up, unbuttoning his tailored suit cuffs with sharp, mechanical precision. "Take Anastasia’s phone to Gary in private systems. Pull a replacement unit from the secure reserve, mirror the cloud backup using my executive bypass, and bring it straight to my desk the second it’s initialized."
He pulled the fractured, spiderwebbed device from his inner pocket and handed it over.
Henry took the ruined phone with practiced care, though a subtle, observant pause broke his usual rigid protocol. A faint, almost imperceptible tilt appeared at the corner of Henry’s mouth.
"Understood, sir," Henry murmured, tucking the device into his portfolio. "Though, if I may note... Mrs. Sterling appeared to be in remarkably high spirits when she arrived at the lobby just now. She even greeted the security detail with a rather cheerful good morning. It seems her recovery is proceeding far better than the medical team anticipated."
Damian’s hands stilled on his cuffs.
His dark, obsidian eyes flicked up, locking onto his assistant with a sharp, guarded intensity. The lingering memory of the car ride... her playful teasing, the daring wink she threw him from the pavement, and the uninhibited heat of her kiss... flared hot and confusing in his chest.
"She’s defiant, not recovered," Damian muttered, his voice dropping into a dry, gravelly rasp as he turned toward the glass wall, though a slight, uncharacteristic tension lingered in his jaw. "Just see that Gary finishes the transfer before noon."
"Right away, sir," Henry replied smoothly, bowing his head slightly before turning to descend to the technical operations floor.
******************
Two floors down, in the temperature-controlled silence of the Systems & Security Suite, Gary plugged the cracked device into an encrypted high-speed diagnostic dock.
Blue optical cables hummed as the bypass code bypassed the fractured display, forcing the phone’s mirrored memory drive to mount onto a dual-monitor workstation. Beside it, an unboxed, pristine flagship device was linked via a braided transfer tether.
A progress bar flashed on the screen...
SECURE CLOUD RESTORE: 84%
Decrypting local cache...
Rebuilding application sandbox...
Push notification queue restoring...
Gary leaned back in his swivel chair, sipping lukewarm coffee as the transfer bar crawled forward. He had run this protocol a dozen times for executives whose devices were destroyed during travel. Standard procedure was to verify the touch interface, confirm the security certs, and deliver it sealed.
The transfer chime chimed softly.
RESTORE COMPLETE (100%)
𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞
The pristine glass screen of the new phone flared to life, illuminating the dark workstation. Because the operating system was catching up on twenty-four hours of silenced, disconnected data, the notification center began unspooling in rapid-fire succession.
Marcus reached for the phone to swipe it into locked transport mode, his fingers hovering over the glass.
Right at the top of the stacked alerts, cutting through corporate emails and calendar invites, a bold, high-priority banner snapped into place with a bright pink accent.
Cycle Tracker Alert: Period is 4 weeks late. High probability. Please log your symptoms or take an at-home test.
Gary blinked, his hand freezing inches above the screen as he read the words. Behind him, the heavy pneumatic door to the tech suite hissed open, and Henry’s polished oxfords clicked against the raised floor.
"Is it done, Gary?" Henry asked, checking his watch. "Mr. Sterling wants it upstairs immediately."
********************
Down on the thirty-fourth floor, the marketing division’s conference room was buzzing with low murmurs and the click of laptops. Sunlight poured through the tall windows, illuminating the digital whiteboards where Clara stood at the head of the long glass table, sleek laser pointer in hand.
"The PR optics regarding the venue closure need to center on a routine infrastructure inspection," Clara said, her voice crisp and commanding as she clicked to the next slide. "No leaks about executive presence, no whispers about security breaches. Our priority this quarter remains the launch campaign for the autumn line."
Around the table, team members nodded, scribbling notes. But two chairs down, Anastasia was barely registering the presentation.
She sat with her hands clasped loosely over her tablet, her spine straight in an effort to appear present, but the color had completely drained from her lips.
A dull, rhythmic throb pulsed behind her temples, and an overwhelming, heavy fatigue weighed down her limbs like lead. Her breathing was steady, yet every couple of minutes, her eyelids fluttered, threatening to slip shut.
Marcus, seated right beside her with an open project brief, glanced sideways.
He had worked alongside Ana long enough to know her typical sharpness in these strategy sessions. Usually, she was the first to dismantle a weak pitch or offer an incisive angle.
Today, she hadn’t touched the black coffee steaming in the ceramic mug beside her, and her posture was stiff, as if using every ounce of energy just to keep upright.
Marcus leaned in slightly, keeping his voice beneath the hum of Clara’s presentation.
"Ana?" He murmured, his brow furrowing with genuine concern. "You look completely wiped out. Are you sure you should be in here?"
Ana blinked, startled out of her haze, and turned to him with a faint, tight smile.
"I’m fine, Marcus. Just... a rough night. Haven’t caught up on sleep yet."
"That doesn’t look like ordinary lack of sleep," Marcus countered quietly, noticing the slight tremor in her fingers as she reached for a pen. "You’re as pale as paper. If that seasonal flu is hitting you, go crash in Clara’s private office before you pass out right here on the glass."
Ana slipped out of the conference room while Clara directed the team’s attention to the budget breakdown.
She walked into Clara’s private corner office, shutting the frosted door behind her to seal out the hum of the marketing floor. Sinking into the plush leather sofa by the window, Ana leaned her head back against the cushions and closed her eyes. The pounding in her temples gradually softened in the cool, quiet room.
Twenty minutes later, the door clicked open.
Clara walked in with an armful of pitch decks, tossing them onto her desk before immediately crossing the room toward the couch. Her sharp, impeccably styled brows drew together in obvious concern.
"Marcus said you looked like a ghost out there," Clara said, perching on the edge of the low coffee table opposite Ana. "What’s going on? You were discharged less than twenty-four hours ago, Ana. Why are you even pushing yourself to be present at work? You’re basically the woman of Sterling Global."