Her Dying Breath, His Cold Fury

My sister Alia was dying. Her only hope was an experimental surgery that cost half a million dollars. With only two weeks to find the money, I had to swallow my pride and go to the one person I hated most: my estranged billionaire brother, Damon.

But I never got to see him. His executive assistant, a woman named Ginger, took one look at my cheap dress and decided I was a stalker. She refused to pass along my message.

She dragged me into a back room, sneering that my story about a dying sister was pathetic. In front of her colleagues, she tore Alia' s life-saving medical records to shreds and threw them in the trash.

She slapped me across the face, poured hot coffee on my chest, and ripped my dress open to humiliate me further.

I lay on the floor, broken and bleeding, while she laughed. All I could think about was the closing window for Alia' s surgery. Every piece of paper she destroyed, every second she wasted, was another nail in my sister' s coffin.

Because of that delay, Alia died. When my brother finally found out what his assistant had done, the grief that should have broken us instead forged something new and terrible. I looked at him and said that jail wasn't enough. We would give Ginger everything she ever dreamed of, just so we could be the ones to burn it all to the ground.

Chapter 1

The hospital air was thin and smelled of antiseptic. It was a smell I had grown to hate.

Alia' s hand was frail in mine, her skin almost translucent. Her breathing was a soft, shallow whisper in the quiet room. She looked at me, her eyes, once so bright, now clouded with a constant weariness.

"Haven," she whispered, her voice barely a sound. "Don' t look so sad."

I tried to smile, but my face felt stiff. "I' m not sad. I' m just thinking."

She knew I was lying. We had been each other' s whole world since our parents died. I was the older sister, the protector, the one who was supposed to fix things. But I couldn' t fix this.

The doctor found me in the hallway an hour later. His face was grim.

"Her condition is deteriorating faster than we anticipated, Ms. Allen."

My heart seized. "What does that mean?" I asked, my voice tight.

"It means the standard treatments are no longer enough. There' s a new experimental surgery. It' s high-risk, but it' s her only real chance."

A flicker of hope ignited in my chest. "A chance? We' ll take it. Whatever it costs."

He looked down at his clipboard, avoiding my eyes. That was a bad sign.

"The procedure itself, plus the post-operative care, is estimated at half a million dollars."

The number hit me like a physical blow. Five hundred thousand dollars. I made less than thirty thousand a year working double shifts at the diner. I had a few thousand saved. It was nothing.

"We don' t have that kind of money," I said, the words tasting like ash.

"I understand," the doctor said, his tone professional but distant. "You' ll need to make a decision soon. The window of opportunity for the surgery to be effective is closing. We have maybe two weeks, at most."

I went back into Alia' s room. She was asleep. I watched the slow rise and fall of her chest, each breath a victory. Two weeks. I had two weeks to find an impossible amount of money to save my sister' s life.

That night, I sat at our small kitchen table, staring at a pile of unpaid bills. Despair was a heavy blanket, suffocating me. I had sold everything of value we owned after our parents' car crash. There was nothing left.

Except for one thing. A memory.

A name I hadn' t spoken in over a decade.

Damon.

My brother.

He had been Damon Allen back then. Before he changed his name to Moran, his mother' s maiden name, to erase us. Before he took his share of the small inheritance and vanished into the world of code and silicon, emerging years later as a tech billionaire.

He hadn' t come to the funeral. He hadn' t answered my calls. He had cut us out of his life as cleanly as a surgeon' s knife.

I hated him for it. I hated him for leaving us to pick up the pieces, for abandoning me to raise Alia alone.

But now, that hatred was a luxury I couldn' t afford. He was my only hope. Alia' s only hope.

I spent the next two days tracking down the address of his corporate headquarters. Moran Tech. It was a gleaming tower of glass and steel downtown, a monument to a world I didn't belong in.

I gathered all of Alia' s medical documents, the doctor' s notes, the cost estimate for the surgery. I put them in a large manila envelope, my hands shaking. I put on my best clothes-a clean but faded blue dress that I usually saved for holidays.

I looked in the mirror. I saw a tired woman with worry lines around her eyes. I saw someone who didn't belong in a glass tower.

I took a deep breath. For Alia, I would do anything. I would crawl. I would beg. I would face the brother who had thrown us away.

The lobby of Moran Tech was like a cathedral to money. The ceilings were impossibly high, the floors polished marble. Men and women in sharp, expensive suits moved with an air of purpose and importance.

I felt like a ghost.

I walked to the front desk, my worn handbag clutched in my hand. The receptionist looked up, her expression a blank mask of polite disinterest.

"Can I help you?"

"I' m here to see Damon Moran," I said, my voice smaller than I intended.

Her perfectly sculpted eyebrow rose a fraction of an inch. "Do you have an appointment?"

"No, but... I' m his sister."

The mask cracked. A flicker of amusement, then pity, crossed her face.

"Right. Take a seat over there. Someone will be with you shortly."

She waved a dismissive hand toward a set of uncomfortable-looking chairs. She had already pegged me as a delusional fan.

I sat for two hours. People flowed in and out, ignoring me. The hope I had clung to was beginning to fray.

Finally, a different woman approached me. She was tall, impeccably dressed in a severe grey suit, her red hair pulled back in a tight bun. Her eyes were chips of ice.

"You' re the one claiming to be Mr. Moran' s sister?" she asked, her voice dripping with condescension.

"I am his sister," I said, standing up. "My name is Haven Allen."

She looked me up and down, her gaze lingering on my frayed dress and cheap shoes. A small, cruel smile touched her lips.

"I' m Ginger Porter, Mr. Moran' s executive assistant. He' s a very busy man. He doesn' t have time for... stalkers."

"I' m not a stalker," I said, my temper flaring. "Alia, our sister, is dying. I need his help." I held out the manila envelope. "All the proof is in here."

Ginger didn' t take it. She just stared at me, her eyes filled with a venomous possessiveness that startled me.

"Mr. Moran has no sister," she said flatly. "Now, I suggest you leave before I have security remove you."

"Please," I begged, the fight going out of me. "Just give him the envelope. That' s all I ask. If he sees it, he' ll understand."

Her expression hardened. "I handle everything for Mr. Moran. Including pests like you."

She took a step closer, her voice dropping to a low, threatening hiss. "You are not the first desperate woman to show up here with a sob story, trying to get his attention. But you will be the last one I have to deal with today."

Before I could react, she snatched the envelope from my hand.