Chapter 4 - The Predator's Arrival
Marcus burst into the intensive care room, his tailored charcoal suit slightly disheveled, his silk tie loosened at his throat.
He wore the frantic expression of a grieving, concerned father, scanning the room before rushing toward Chloe’s bedside with outstretched arms.
"Chloe! My sweet little girl!" Marcus cried out theatrically, attempting to bury his face into the hospital bed sheets.
"Olivia, thank God she’s alive! I came as fast as I could the second I got out of the shareholder conference!"
"Step away from that bed, Marcus," I said, my voice dropping to a freezing, lethal whisper that stopped him dead in his tracks.
Marcus blinked, his theatrical sorrow faltering for a fraction of a second as he noticed the two armed security guards standing by the window.
"Olivia, honey, you're in shock," Marcus attempted to soothe, taking a step toward me with his hands raised in mock surrender.
"My mother made a terrible, tragic mistake; she’s an elderly woman who panicked and didn't understand the severity of Chloe’s symptoms."
"An elderly woman who hid an inhaler in her pocket while repeating your exact instructions?" I countered, crossing my arms over my chest.
"Chloe woke up on the pavement, Marcus."
"She told me everything."
Marcus’s eyes flickered with a sudden, violent spark of irritation before he quickly masked it behind a wall of wounded innocence.
"You're going to take the word of a hallucinating, oxygen-deprived child over your husband?" Marcus sneered softly, stepping closer.
"I built this family, Olivia."
"I sacrificed everything to give you and Chloe a life of luxury in University Park, and this is how you repay me?"
"You didn't sacrifice for us, Marcus; you gambled our lives away on stolen land," my father stated, stepping out from the shadows of the alcove.
Marcus froze, his color draining entirely as he recognized the legendary jurist standing before him.
"Judge Sterling... I didn't know you were in Dallas," Marcus stammered, his aristocratic swagger crumbling into pathetic subservience.
"I am here as my daughter’s legal counsel and my granddaughter's court-appointed guardian ad litem," my father announced with crushing authority.
"And you, Mr.
Vance, have precisely sixty seconds to vacate this floor before the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department executes an emergency protective order."
My father produced a stamped judicial restraining order, holding it inches from Marcus’s sweat-slicked forehead.
Marcus looked from my father to me, his teeth gritting together in pure, unadulterated malice.
"You think this is over, Olivia?" Marcus hissed, abandoning all pretense of grief.
"You sign that deed, or I will drag you through every family court in Texas until you don't have a single cent left to your name."
May you like
"Try it," I replied, looking him dead in the eye.
"You'll be serving twenty years in Huntsville before the first hearing even begins."
