A millionaire and his mistress cut the oxygen tube of his pregnant wife; but her father witnessed the scene…
Chapter 1: The Room of Ghosts
The Nor’easter storm lashed against the French windows of the Vance Estate in Greenwich. The wind howled like the wails of trapped souls, but it could not drown out the deathly silence inside the master bedroom.
The large room had been transformed into a miniature resuscitation room. Modern medical equipment beeped…beep… regularly, drawing a fragile line between life and death.
On the large bed lay Elena Vance, 32, motionless. She was seven months pregnant. A horrific car accident two weeks earlier had left her in a deep coma. Doctors said only machines could save her and her unborn child – the future heir to the Vance empire.
In the corner of the room, in an expensive electric wheelchair, lay Arthur Vance, Elena’s father. Arthur was once a tech mogul, a Silicon Valley giant. But a stroke three years ago had turned him into a statue. He was paralyzed, unable to speak (Locked-in Syndrome). He could only move his eyes. He sat there, staring at his daughter, helpless and silent.
The door to the room opened.
Richard Sterling, Elena’s husband, walked in. He was wearing a perfectly tailored Armani suit, but his tie was loose, and his breath reeked of whiskey.
Following him was Jessica, his personal secretary – a hot blonde with ambitious eyes.
“Close the door,” Richard ordered, his voice slurred.
Jessica closed the door and locked it. She looked around the room, her gaze settling on Arthur sitting in the shadows.
“And what about this old man?” Jessica whispered, worried. “He’s watching us.”
Richard sneered. He walked over to his father-in-law and roughly patted him on the cheek.
“Him?” Richard scoffed. “He’s just a breathing lump of flesh. The doctor says his brain is rotting. He doesn’t understand anything. Right, father-in-law?”
Mr. Arthur didn’t react. His eyes remained wide open, staring blankly into space, but deep within them burned a smoldering fire that Richard was unaware of.
“We have to hurry,” Jessica urged, approaching Elena’s hospital bed. She looked at the pregnant belly of the unconscious woman with a jealous and cruel gaze. “The lawyer says if this baby is born, the inheritance will automatically transfer to her through the Trust. You’ll only be a guardian, and you won’t be able to touch the original $500 million.”
“I know,” Richard hissed, his grip on his glass of wine. “That bitch Elena has been very cautious. But she didn’t consider the possibility of dying before giving birth.”
“If she dies tonight…” Jessica calculated.
“…Then all the assets will go to her legal husband, you. No children, no other heirs. That old man is practically in his grave anyway.”
Richard set down his glass of wine. He approached the life support system.
The ventilator’s steady hum pumped oxygen into Elena’s lungs. That was the only sound keeping her alive.
“I’m sorry, Elena,” Richard said, but his voice held no remorse. “You always said you loved me, didn’t you? Then help me one last time. Die so I can live a glorious life.”
He reached for the oxygen tube.
Jessica stood beside him, her hand on Richard’s shoulder, encouraging him. “Do it, honey. Just one move. Pretend it’s a mechanical malfunction. A snowstorm caused a short circuit. No one will suspect anything.”
Richard trembled slightly, then clenched his fists.
He didn’t turn off the machine. He forcefully pulled the endotracheal tube out of his wife’s throat.
The alarm sounded once then went silent as Jessica quickly cut off the power to the alarm system.
Elena didn’t struggle. She was too weak. Only her chest stopped rising and falling. The oxygen was cut off. The baby in her womb… would suffocate along with its mother.
“It’s done,” Richard gasped, stepping back, staring intently at his wife’s rapidly turning face. “Just wait ten more minutes for her heart to stop completely, then we’ll call 911 and play the role of a grieving family.”
He turned and kissed Jessica. They giggled in the darkness of their crime, right in front of their father sitting in a wheelchair.
They thought Arthur was a soulless corpse.
They didn’t know that he was the only witness. And he wasn’t as useless as they thought.
Chapter 2: The Eyes of Judgment
Five minutes passed.
The room was eerily silent. Richard began rehearsing his crying act. Jessica adjusted her clothes to appear more dignified.
Suddenly, a sound rang out.
Not an alarm. Not thunder.
It was a voice. An electronic, emotionless voice, emanating from the speaker attached to Arthur’s wheelchair.
“YOU… KILLED… HIM.”
Richard and Jessica jumped, separating. They looked around the room in panic.
“What was that? Who said that?” Richard shouted.
“It…it was the old man’s tablet!” Jessica pointed to the screen in front of Arthur.
On the screen, the mouse cursor is moving.
Mr. Arthur is unable to move his arms and legs.
But Richard—who only cared about money—had forgotten one crucial detail about his father-in-law. Arthur Vance was a pioneer in eye-tracking technology.
The tablet in front of him was equipped with an infrared camera, tracking even the slightest pupil movements. He used his eyes to type. He used his eyes to speak.
And for the past 10 minutes, while Richard and Jessica committed their crime, Arthur hadn’t just sat there watching.
His eyes had been working frantically.
“I… RECORDED… EVERYTHING.” The electronic voice rang out again, cold as a sentence from hell.
Richard’s face turned from red to deathly pale. He lunged at the wheelchair.
“You’re faking it!” he roared. “You’re a vegetable! How would you know how to use this!”
He looked at the screen.
There was more than just text on it. On it was the interface of a livestreaming software.
The camera attached to Arthur’s wheelchair – which Richard mistook for a medical sensor – had been activated.
And it was live streaming.
Not to Facebook or Instagram.
It was transmitting a signal directly to a secure server.
“SENT TO: GREENWICH POLICE DEPARTMENT – MAJOR CRIMES UNIT. STATUS: RECEIVED.”
The message appeared in bright green on the black screen.
“No! It can’t be!” Jessica screamed, lunging to smash the tablet.
But at that moment, sirens blared.
Not in her imagination. They came from outside the mansion gates. The sound of police sirens ripped through the stormy night, getting closer and louder.
“How… how could it be so fast?” Richard recoiled, bumping into the headboard of the bed where his wife’s body lay.
“I… CALLED… THEM… SINCE… YOU… WALKED… IN.”
Mr. Arthur “said.”
He had suspected Richard for a long time. He knew his son-in-law was greedy. Tonight, seeing Richard and his mistress sneak in, he activated the Panic Button with a glance at the corner of the screen. The police had heard the entire conversation, the entire plan, and the hiss of the breathing tube being pulled out.
They had heard Elena’s last breath.
Chapter 3: The Twist of Life
The bedroom door was kicked open.
The SWAT team stormed in, guns pointed directly at Richard and Jessica’s heads.
“Police! Lie down! Immediately!”
Richard collapsed to the floor, his hands covering his head. Jessica screamed and tried to hide under the bed, but she was dragged out roughly.
But the story didn’t end there.
Paramedics rushed into the room right after the police. They didn’t care about the criminal. They rushed to Elena’s bedside.
“Pulse zero! Dilated pupils! Start CPR!”
They performed chest compressions. They reinserted the endotracheal tube.
Richard, handcuffed and face pressed to the floor, laughed maniacally. “It’s useless! I timed it! 10 minutes! Her brain is dead! Her child is dead too! I still win! Even if I go to jail, the money is still mine!”
But Richard was wrong.
A forensic doctor entered. He looked at Elena’s monitor (which Jessica thought was off but was actually only muted). He looked at the brainwave graph.
He turned to look at Richard with contempt.
“Mr. Sterling,” the doctor said. “You’re a murderer, but you’re also a medical idiot.”
“What?”
“Your wife, Elena… she wasn’t brain dead from the car accident.”
The room fell silent.
The doctor pointed at Mr. Arthur.
“Mr. Arthur hired us – a top-tier private medical team – to perform a secret procedure called ‘Therapeutic Hypothermia.’ We lowered her body temperature to an extremely low level to protect her brain and fetus after the accident, putting her into an artificial ‘hibernation’ state while awaiting surgery.”
“In this state, her body’s oxygen needs are minimized. Your removing the breathing tube for 10 minutes… it was dangerous, but not enough to kill her instantly like a normal person.”
The doctor gestured for the nurse to inject a dose of medication intravenously into Elena. It was resuscitation and blood-warming medication.
“We’ve been monitoring her vital signs remotely through Arthur’s system. As soon as you removed the tube, we activated the emergency procedure in the ambulance.”
On the screen, a blue waveform began to fluctuate.
Beep… Beep…
Elena’s heart started beating again. Weak, but resilient.
And more importantly, the fetal heart monitor next to her began to thump, thumping rapidly and forcefully like a horse’s hooves.
The baby was still alive.
Richard’s face turned ashen. He had not only failed to kill her. He had failed to seize her assets. And worse, he would have to face his surviving wife (and father-in-law) to testify in court.
Chapter Conclusion: The Verdict
Six months later.
The trial of Richard Sterling and Jessica Davis became the focus of national attention in America.
The livestream video of Arthur’s eyes was shown on the courtroom’s large screen. The entire jury shuddered at the cold-blooded cruelty of the murderous couple.
No plea could save them.
Richard was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for attempted murder and assault.
The sentence was severe for the pregnant woman. Jessica received a 25-year prison sentence for complicity.
At the Vance Estate.
Elena sat in a wheelchair (she was undergoing rehabilitation), cradling a healthy, adorable baby boy in her arms. The baby’s name was Phoenix – a phoenix reborn from the ashes.
Beside her sat Arthur. He was still in his wheelchair, unable to speak, but his eyes shone with happiness.
Elena grasped her father’s thin hand.
“Dad,” she said. “You saved our lives. You’re not disabled. You’re the strongest person I know.”
Arthur shifted his gaze to the tablet screen. A line of text appeared, typed character by character with unwavering determination:
“NO…ONE… MUST… TOUCH… MY… FAMILY.”
Elena smiled, tears streaming down her face.
The enemy thinks silence is a weakness. But for Arthur Vance, silence is a weapon. In this noisy and ruthless world, sometimes the most silent observer holds the greatest power of life and death.
And Richard Sterling, who scorned “breathing flesh,” will now spend the rest of his life in prison reflecting on his fatal mistake: Never anger a father, even if he only has one pair of eyes left to fight.
