Too Late, Mr. Sanchez

Sarah woke to the pain. It felt like someone was smashing her lower belly to pulp with something blunt, over and over, until she was shaking cold all over.

Inside the operating room a nurse's voice came fast and sharp:

"Massive hemorrhage! Her pressure's still dropping! Where's the blood bank? Someone call the blood bank, now!"

Another voice answered her, taut with panic:

"I already called. They said all the blood's been transferred out!"

"What?"

"There's a Miss Winfield over in obstetrics with some light bleeding, and Mr. Sanchez had the entire blood supply diverted to her. He said Miss Winfield comes first."

Sarah lay on the operating table, her mind sinking and surfacing in slow waves. She wasn't surprised. She was only very tired.

Beside her ear, that frantic, trembling voice: "How can they do this? This patient is critical!"

"Nothing we can do. Everyone knows how precious that one in obstetrics is. We don't have the pull to get blood released right now."

Sarah didn't even have the strength left to cry out. The world went black in front of her. With the last thread of strength she had, she found the nurse's hand.

"Please, call the emergency contact on my phone. He can get blood."

Her emergency contact was her assistant. With her connections on the north side of the Capital, getting blood was something they could manage.

She didn't need Ralph Sanchez to survive. But this debt, she would remember.

When she woke again it was the following afternoon. A nurse gently slowed her IV drip. "The surgery went reasonably well. Rest properly and there won't be any lasting damage."

"Creak."

The door swung open. Jocelyn Winfield walked in and mildly saw the nurse out.

"Sorry to trouble you. I'm just here to see my sister."

She leaned against the door, her lower belly slightly rounded, tilting her head as she looked at Sarah. Her voice was sweet. "Sister, how are you still not dead?"

Her expression didn't change, still pretty and coy, as if she were asking after Sarah's health. "The whole blood supply was with me. I really thought you wouldn't pull through."

"Are you waiting for Ralph? He's not coming. Calling the police already set him off. Sister, you really are naive. No proof, no evidence. Who's going to believe those men were hired by me?"

Sarah lay back against the pillow, her face pale to the point of near translucence, but her expression was cold.

She picked up the voice recorder and pressed play.

The thug's voice came, low. "The second Miss Winfield paid me to put on a show with her."

Sarah smiled, calm. "Care to provoke me again?"

Jocelyn's grip tightened on the door handle. "You wouldn't dare... and even if you release it, no one will believe you!"

"Heh." Sarah gave a small, unhurried laugh. "Then let's try."

Jocelyn's face went white. She spun around and ran out.

Sarah leaned back against the pillow and closed her eyes for a while. Ten minutes later, Ralph came.

He looked exhausted. "Sarah, Jocelyn told me everything."

"The kidnapping." Ralph paused. "She hired those men herself."

Sarah shot back, "And? What are you trying to say?"

Ralph was silent for a long time, so long that Sarah thought he wouldn't answer at all.

"She's only an adopted daughter. If this gets out, if Mr. and Mrs. Winfield hear of it, if outsiders hear of it, she won't be able to stay in the Winfield family, or on the north side of the Capital, at all."

Sarah nodded. "So you're going to keep covering for her."

Ralph lifted his eyes to her, his gaze tangled with something she couldn't read. "Sarah, Jocelyn didn't mean it. She was just too scared, scared we'd stop looking out for her. She's young, so couldn't you just—"

"Ralph." Sarah cut him off, her tone flat. "This recording, I'm willing not to release it."

"But you'll have to sign something."

The day before, she'd had Lawyer Simmons draft a share transfer agreement overnight. She wanted five percent of the Sanchez Group shares held in Ralph's name.

When Ralph saw the agreement, he let out a breath of relief. He signed quickly, without even reading the terms carefully. In his mind, five percent in exchange for a recording that could ruin Jocelyn was no loss at all.

And more than that, Sarah wanting money set him at ease. What he feared most was her wanting nothing at all.

After he signed, he reached out to touch Sarah's face. She turned her head aside and avoided it.

"Rest well."

Sarah said nothing. She already had what she wanted. This five percent would, one day, deal Ralph a fatal blow.