You’ll only embarrass me wearing that dress. / Chapter 17 / 70

Chapter 17 - The Race Against Time

The private intensive care floor of New York-Presbyterian Hospital was locked down under armed Harrell security within forty-five minutes.

Outside the glass observation room, Raymond Harrell sat on a plastic waiting room chair, his head buried in his hands, his broad shoulders shaking with silent, agonizing sobs. For seventy years, the silver-haired lion of Wall Street had ruled over corporate empires, broken competitors, and amassed billions. Yet here, in this sterile corridor smelling of antiseptic and despair, all his wealth could not buy a single breath of clean air for his only daughter.

Inside the glass room, Phoebe lay motionless on a hospital bed, surrounded by a forest of monitors, IV drips, and a ventilator humming rhythmically. Her skin had turned ashen, her lips faint blue, her brilliant emerald eyes shut tight against the world.

Thomas Sterling stood inside the room, clad in sterile scrubs, refusing to leave her side. He held her limp, cold hand tightly between both of his, his head bowed against the mattress.

"Dr. Chen," Thomas demanded, his voice hoarse and raw with fury, not looking up as the chief toxicologist entered the room. "Tell me you have the synthesis."

Dr. Chen, a world-renowned specialist who had been flown in via Harrell corporate helicopter from Boston, adjusted his glasses, his expression bleak. "The aerosol Montgomery deployed was an experimental carbamate-based neurotoxin. It paralyzes the respiratory muscles while inducing acute cellular hypoxia. Standard atropine isn't working fast enough. Her organ function is deteriorating by the hour."

Thomas looked up, his eyes bloodshot, burning with desperate rage. "There has to be a specific counter-agent! Montgomery wouldn't carry a poison without an antidote in case he accidentally exposed himself!"

"We searched his personal effects after the FBI took him into custody," Dr. Chen said, shaking his head grimly. "There was no injector on his person. If an antidote exists, it's either in his private safehouse or with his personal handler."

Thomas stood up, his jaw clenching with lethal resolve. He gently kissed Phoebe’s cold forehead, whispering against her hair: "Hold on, Phoebe. Don't you dare give up on me. I’m bringing it back."

He walked out of the room, pulling his suit jacket on over his clothes.

Raymond looked up from the bench, his red-rimmed eyes hollow. "Thomas... where are you going?"

"To finish what my family started thirty years ago," Thomas said with chilling finality. "Marcus!"

Marcus Cole stepped forward, his face grim as granite. "The FBI has Montgomery in an interrogation room at federal plaza, Mr. Sterling. But his lawyers are blocking all direct questioning. He’s claiming diplomatic immunity."

"Diplomatic immunity doesn't apply to what I'm about to do," Thomas said, his voice dropping to a terrifying register. "Where did Montgomery keep his private yacht docked before he took the helicopter into Manhattan?"

"The Brooklyn Navy Yard, Pier 4," Marcus replied without hesitation. "Our surveillance team flagged a private laboratory courier entering the vessel last night."