Chapter 186: The Devil’s Mockery
Victoria slid a small porcelain plate of peeled green apples and dry crackers toward Anastasia, while Valerie practically hovered, pushing a bowl of warm oatmeal closer.
"Just a little more, Ana," Valerie coaxed, her voice laced with nervous enthusiasm. "You barely touched the fruit. You need calories to build your strength back up."
"Valerie is right," Victoria chimed in smoothly, drizzling a spoonful of organic honey over the oats with uncharacteristic domestic attentiveness. "A few bites of fruit won’t cut it, dear. You’re eating for recovery now. You must nourish yourself properly."
Ana stared at the spread of bland carbohydrates being systematically constructed around her plate, utterly bewildered. She shifted awkwardly on her stool, looking between the two women.
A quiet knot of guilt tightened in her chest. They think this is their fault, Ana thought, feeling a pang of sympathy. She assumed Victoria and Valerie were overcompensating with anxious maternal care because they blamed themselves for what happened at Nocturne, entirely unaware that Ana blamed her own recklessness for getting caught in the crosshairs.
"I really am fine," Ana insisted gently, forcing a bite of apple down to appease them. "You don’t need to fuss over me like this."
Beside her, Damian’s eyes narrowed into sharp, lethal slits.
He leaned against the counter, his coffee untouched, observing his mother and sister like a predator scenting a trap. Victoria Sterling did not push oatmeal on people. Valerie Sterling rarely woke up before noon, let alone acted like a doting nursemaid. The synchronized, suffocating attentiveness was completely out of character.
Damian checked the platinum watch on his wrist, breaking the bizarre rhythm.
"I’m heading into the office," Damian announced, his gravelly voice slicing through the clatter of silverware. "The board is convening an emergency session over the club’s security breach. Julian is already en route."
He reached for his suit jacket draped over the back of a chair, but Ana immediately turned on her stool, her hazel eyes lighting up with sudden determination.
"Take me with you," Ana said, setting her fork down. "I feel completely fine now, and Clara probably needs help managing the marketing damage control. I can work from your private suite if you don’t want me on the main floor."
"No!"
The word cracked through the kitchen like a synchronized gunshot.
Both Victoria and Valerie spoke in absolute unison, their voices sharp, urgent, and entirely too loud for a casual Monday morning. Valerie’s hand hovered mid-air near the fruit bowl, while Victoria’s back went rigid as a steel rod.
Silence slammed over the penthouse kitchen.
Ana blinked in pure shock at the sudden double-rejection, her lips parting in silent confusion.
Damian froze.
His jacket remained halfway up his arm. Very slowly, his dark, obsidian gaze lifted from Ana, tracking across the marble island to lock onto his mother and sister. The air in the room plummeted by ten degrees.
His jaw set into stone, every corporate executive instinct screaming that a massive, deliberate conspiracy was unfolding under his roof.
"No?" Damian repeated, his voice dangerously low, the quiet rasp vibrating with dark, sharp suspicion. "Since when do the two of you hold veto power over where my soon to be wife goes?"
Valerie scrambled for an excuse, her voice jumping half an octave. "We just mean—she literally got discharged from the hospital yesterday, Damian! Poison doesn’t just evaporate overnight. We wanted to look after her, make sure she rests in bed instead of running around high-stress corporate floors."
"Precisely," Victoria added, smoothing down the front of her silk blouse, her tone regaining a veneer of poised maternal reason. "Anastasia needs quiet and monitoring, not boardroom drama. We only have her best interests at heart."
Damian didn’t drop his stare. His obsidian eyes flicked between the two of them, catching the erratic pulse in Valerie’s throat and the rigid, tightly controlled tension in Victoria’s shoulders. They weren’t just being protective; their eyes held an unmistakable, jittery anxiety that made his corporate instincts scream foul play.
He slid his arms smoothly into his tailored jacket, adjusting the cuffs with cold precision.
"Fine," Damian said, his voice quiet yet carrying the weight of an unyielding ultimatum. "She comes with me. But the second your color fades, Anastasia, or your breathing hitches by a fraction, my security team will drive you straight back to Mount Sinai. And I will personally ensure the chief of medicine doesn’t sign your discharge papers for an entire week."
Anastasia’s brow furrowed, a scoff catching in her throat at his arrogant, overbearing decree. "A week? That’s pure mockery, Damian. I’ve handled worse conditions than this before. I’m not made of glass."
"You don’t get a vote on the terms," he replied evenly, though the fierce possessiveness in his gaze was impossible to miss. "Go change. The car is downstairs in ten minutes."
Victoria and Valerie exchanged a desperate, helpless look as Ana stood from her stool and began padding down the hallway toward the master suite. Every instinct in Victoria wanted to physically block the elevator doors, but raising more alarms under Damian’s laser focus was suicide.
Just before rounding the corner, Ana stopped dead in her tracks.
She turned back toward the kitchen island, tilting her head in sudden recollection as her eyes landed on her sister-in-law.
"Valerie," Ana called out softly, "my phone is with you, isn’t it?"
Valerie froze like a deer caught in headlights, her breath hitching sharply in her throat.
"I—yeah," Valerie stammered, scrambling to paste on a casual smile that looked utterly unconvincing. "Yeah, I’ve got it right here. Grabbed it from your clutch during the ambulance rush."
Her hand dipped into her oversized jacket pocket, her fingers trembling against the cold metal casing. Her mind raced with sheer panic. The moment Ana tapped that screen, the bright pink banner would light up the glass. Four weeks late. One glance, and the entire secret would detonate right in front of Damian.
Valerie pulled the phone out, keeping the blacked-out screen firmly pressed against her palm. She took slow, deliberate steps toward the hallway, trying desperately to steady her rattling nerves.
"Here," Valerie said, her voice faint as she extended her arm to pass the device across the gap.
Ana reached out, her fingers just brushing the slick glass.
Whether it was the slick sweat on Valerie’s palms or a sudden, frantic tremor of hesitation, her grip buckled. The device fumbled awkwardly between their fingertips, tumbling end-over-end through the air.
Crack.
The sickening sound of tempered glass shattering against the imported marble floor echoed loudly through the quiet, amber-lit penthouse.
Ana gasped, immediately dropping to one knee to scoop it up. She turned the device over in her palm. The impact had landed dead-center against the display—a jagged, spiderweb fracture radiated from the corner, fracturing the entire OLED panel into bleeding purple lines and static before the screen flickered out entirely, dead and unresponsive.
"Oh no..." Ana sighed, rubbing a thumb over the rough shards with a disappointed pout. "The display is completely shot."
Behind her, Valerie stood paralyzed, her hands hovering mid-air, a bizarre cocktail of sheer horror and immense, breathless relief washing through her veins.
From across the kitchen counter, Damian’s eyes narrowed into sharp, lethal focus. He didn’t look at the shattered phone on the floor. His obsidian gaze was fixed entirely on his sister’s pale, guilt-ridden face, his internal alarms blaring louder than ever.