Victoria stumbled backward, her heels catching the edge of an ornate, solid-brass luggage trolley. The trolley rolled backward with a terrifying screech of metal, colliding with a seven-foot Ming-style porcelain vase resting on an ebony pedestal. The vase wobbled, teetered, and then crashed onto the marble in an explosion of blue-and-white ceramic shards, soil, and crushed white lilies. The sound was deafening, sending high-society onlookers screaming toward the exits.

Julian stood panting, blood dripping from his jawline onto his starched white shirt. He turned back around, wrapping his arms fully around Elena, pulling her shaking frame into the crook of his chest. “I’ve got you,” he breathed into her hair. “I’ve got you. Nobody touches you. We’re leaving.”

He thought it was over. He thought he had held the line.

Then, Elena’s body stiffened. Every muscle in her back went rigid against Julian’s chest. Her eyes, staring over his left shoulder toward the VIP elevator bank, dilated into black pools of sheer, paralyzing horror. The color drained from her face so completely she looked like a marble statue.

Her fingers dug through Julian’s tuxedo jacket, sinking into the flesh of his upper arm with a bruising, desperate strength.

“Julian…” she whispered, her voice barely a dry rattle in her throat.

“I know, Elena. It’s okay. We’re safe—”

“Julian… look behind you.”

Julian turned his head.

Standing silently by the private elevator alcove was not a hotel manager, nor a bystander. Emerging from the shadows were four men in dark, charcoal medical scrubs, flanked by two private Sterling security operatives wearing tactical earpieces. One of the men in scrubs was holding an aluminum medical case, while another unfolded a heavy-duty, reinforced transport wheelchair equipped with nylon restraint straps.

And standing in the center of them, clutching a black leather binder stamped with the insignia of the State Supreme Court, was Victoria Sterling’s personal physician, Dr. Harrison Vance.

In Vance’s gloved hand gleamed a pre-loaded, long-gauge sedative syringe.

“Mr. Sterling,” Dr. Vance said, his voice flat, professional, and terrifyingly cold. “Step away from your wife. Under the emergency conservatorship order signed ten minutes ago by Judge Hastings, Elena Sterling has been declared legally incompetent and a severe danger to the Sterling heir she carries. We are here to escort her to the St. Jude Private Psychiatric Facility immediately.”

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Victoria’s manic laughter rose from behind the wreckage of the broken vase, cold, sharp, and triumphant. “Did you really think I came here to play games, Julian? You won’t leave this lobby with that child. The baby belongs to me.”

Chapter 2 – The Ambush at the St. Regis

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