Chapter 6 - THE KING WAKES
The two guards beside Sterling didn’t move.
Everett’s voice came through the intercom again.
“Crowley.”
“Yes, sir,” Crowley answered.
“Lock… the gates.”
Sterling looked toward the security camera.
“Everett, you don’t understand what’s happening.”
A pause.
Then Everett said, “I heard everything.”
Sterling’s face emptied.
Willa almost smiled.
He finally looked afraid.
Crowley appeared in the doorway with three armed security men.
Sterling raised both hands.
“You’re making a mistake.”
Crowley nodded toward his men.
“Take Mr. Sterling’s weapon.”
Sterling laughed.
“You work for me.”
Crowley looked him in the eyes.
“No. I survived you.”
Minutes later, Willa ran upstairs.
Everett was half upright against the pillows.
His skin was pale.
His hands shook.
But his eyes were open.
Really open.
Willa stopped in the doorway.
For months she had spoken to him without knowing what those eyes looked like.
Now they were fixed on her.
Everett’s voice was rough.
“You talk too much.”
Willa stared.
Then laughed through sudden tears.
“You’ve been awake thirty seconds and you’re already complaining?”
“Eight months.”
His expression darkened.
“I’ve been awake for eight months.”
Willa walked closer.
He reached for her hand.
His grip was weak.
Still, the touch carried weight.
“Your mother,” he said.
“Sterling moved her.”
“I know.”
Everett looked toward Crowley.
“Find Ruth.”
Crowley nodded.
“I’ll use every contact we have.”
Sterling was confined to a guest room under guard.
Whitfield, however, was gone.
His car had disappeared fifteen minutes before the lockdown.
Willa checked Everett.
His blood pressure was unstable.
“You need a hospital.”
“No.”
“Everett—”
“No Whitfield.”
“Then another hospital.”
He studied her.
“You.”
“I’m not licensed.”
“I trust you.”
Willa’s face tightened.
“You shouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because the last patient assigned to me died.”
Everett’s gaze sharpened.
“Whitfield.”
She nodded slowly.
Everett said, “Then maybe he killed your patient too.”
The thought hit harder than she expected.
“I tried to prove that.”
“We will.”
Later that afternoon, Everett summoned his longtime attorney, Marcus Cole.
Marcus entered with tears in his eyes.
“My God.”
Everett looked at him.
“Who signed the medical authorization giving Sterling control?”
Marcus froze.
“What?”
“Who?”
Marcus swallowed.
“Your uncle Raymond.”
“My uncle died four months before my accident.”
Silence.
Marcus’s face went pale.
“That’s impossible.”
Willa looked at Everett.
Forgery.
The whole coma arrangement had been built on forged documents.
Marcus opened his briefcase.
“I kept copies.”
They spent two hours reviewing everything.
Then Marcus found something worse.
Three weeks after Everett’s accident, a revised will had been filed.
If Everett died while married—
His controlling shares would temporarily pass to his spouse.
Willa frowned.
“Why would Sterling marry me to him if that gives me power?”
Marcus kept reading.
Then stopped.
“Because of this.”
He turned the page.
“If the spouse dies within thirty days of Everett’s death, control transfers to the designated family trustee.”
Everett’s face hardened.
“Sterling.”
Marcus nodded.
Willa stared at the document.
“So I wasn’t supposed to become a widow.”
“No,” Everett said.
His eyes locked on hers.
May you like
“You were supposed to become the second body.”
Cliffhanger: Willa realized the wedding had never been designed to save her mother—it had been designed to create two convenient deaths.
