Chapter 13 - The Cold Clinic
Seventy-two hours later, a private gulfstream jet touched down on the rain-slicked runway of the Zurich airport.
Samuel and Ethan stepped out into the freezing Alpine air, wrapped in heavy wool overcoats. Waiting for them on the tarmac was a dark silver SUV driven by an operative from Vance Security's European division.
The drive into the mountains was silent, the winding roads carved into sheer rock faces covered in white snow. The clinic was a sleek, concrete structure built into the side of a mountain, looking more like a high-tech fortress than a medical center.
Inside, the air smelled of sterile alcohol and cold ozone.
The medical director, a pale man with thin gold-rimmed glasses, led them through three security checkpoints into a private basement ward. He stopped in front of a heavy reinforced glass wall.
Inside the glass room, the elderly woman lay still, her breathing slow and artificial, powered by a rhythmic ventilator.
"She has been in a medically induced stasis for eight years, Mr. Vance," the doctor said, his voice trembling slightly under Samuel’s cold stare. "Mr. Sterling paid us sixty thousand Euros a month to keep her in this state. If she wakes, full legal ownership of the Sterling Group reverts to her estate automatically under the 1994 family trust deed."
Ethan stood by the glass, his hands clenched into fists inside his coat pockets. "Julianna didn't just want the money," he said softly. "She was keeping her own mother in a box to protect her father's voting shares."
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"That was the arrangement," the doctor whispered, lowering his eyes.
Samuel stepped forward, his heavy hand coming down on the doctor's shoulder with a grip that made the thin man wince. "Disconnect the suppression drugs, Doctor. Wake her up."
