The heavy, suffocating dread returned to Maddie’s chest the exact second she opened the thick, heavily sealed envelope from the State Medical Board.

She stood completely frozen in her beautiful kitchen, the blood violently draining from her pale face as she read the terrifying legal jargon.

The official documents falsely claimed that a routine audit of the charity hospital’s neonatal records had revealed a highly aggressive, dormant bone marrow condition.

The completely fabricated report stated that both twins were at extreme, immediate risk of sudden organ failure if they did not receive specialized treatment.

Maddie dropped the terrible papers onto the marble counter, her shaking hands flying desperately to cover her mouth to silence her own terrified sob.

She immediately rushed the oblivious, happily playing children to three different top-tier pediatric specialists in the city for emergency secondary opinions.

She absolutely did not know that Grant’s endless, toxic pharmaceutical money had already heavily compromised every single doctor in that specific elite network.

Each wealthy, highly respected physician looked at her with perfectly rehearsed, fake sympathy and tragically confirmed the exact same horrifying, completely fake diagnosis.

They told her with grim faces that the only known viable treatment was an incredibly experimental, highly classified gene therapy drug.

Maddie’s heart completely shattered into a million jagged pieces when the lead doctor handed her the glossy informational brochure for the treatment.

The bold, arrogant logo printed on the front of the medical pamphlet belonged exclusively to Ellison Medical.

She realized with a sickening, terrifying wave of utter despair that Grant completely held the literal lives of her beautiful children in his hands.

Maddie collapsed heavily onto her velvet living room sofa, crying tears of absolute agony and unimaginable, suffocating terror into her shaking hands.

She was entirely trapped in a ruthless billionaire's horrifying, vindictive game, and this time, the absolute stakes were literally life and death.