Chapter 8 - The Unraveling on Stage
Panic rippled through the front rows of the ballroom. Several prominent hospital board members stood up, whispering frantically among themselves.
Dr. Sterling forced a stiff, trembling smile onto his face, gripping the edge of the podium. "Mr... Mr. Marchetti. What an unexpected honor. I wasn't aware you were attending our foundation gala tonight. And... and Dr. Vance. We thought you had left the profession entirely."
"I never leave, Richard," Arya said, her voice ringing clear and steady across the room as she walked right up the stage steps. "You just tried very hard to bury me."
"This is absurd!" Sterling stammered, his eyes darting toward the side exits where hotel security was hesitating, disenchanted to approach Rocco's armed guards. "Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Vance was stripped of her license due to gross professional negligence. She's unstable—"
"Quiet, Doctor," Rocco commanded, stepping onto the stage beside Arya. He pulled a heavy recording device from his pocket and tossed it onto the podium. It clattered loudly against the polished wood.
"What is that?" Sterling whined, backing away.
"That," Rocco said, his voice dropping into a chilling register, "is a full audio confession from your hired night nurse, Mrs. Gable, detailing how you paid her twenty thousand dollars to poison my nine-month-old son with a synthesized peptide derivative, just so you could swoop in like a savior and secure my fifty-million-dollar biomedical investment."
Gasps erupted from the crowd. Flashbulbs from hidden press cameras began to pop furiously in the back of the room.
"That's a lie! Extortion!" Sterling shrieked, losing his composure completely as sweat beaded on his forehead. "You have no proof! She's a disgraced criminal!"
"I have the financial wire transfers from your offshore account to Mrs. Gable's daughter," Arya said calmly, stepping forward and opening a tablet she carried. "I also have the original medical trial data logs from three years ago, proving that you falsified patient records and forged my digital signature to cover up your botched valve trials."
She looked straight into Sterling's disenchanted eyes. "And within the last ten minutes, federal marshals armed with a search warrant signed by a federal judge have entered your private laboratory and recovered the exact chemical batch used on my patient three years ago, and on baby Leo two nights ago."
Sterling's legs gave out. He stumbled backward, crashing into the podium microphone stand, which shrieked with piercing feedback before hitting the floor.
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"Take him away, Bruno," Rocco ordered quietly.
Two of Rocco's guards marched up the stage, grabbing Sterling by his expensive tuxedo shoulders and hauling him screaming and kicking toward the double doors, past a room full of stunned elite medical professionals who watched in silent awe.
