Billionaire Daddy's Rescue: The Heiress Strikes Back

Three years after my split with Wesley, Rhonda cooked his favorite lobster tails. Chloe is coming with him today. Don't start any drama, she warned.

Chloe was Rhonda's prized student. Wesley was the boy I'd loved for a decade.

Seeing me sitting frozen in my wheelchair, Rhonda's voice spiked, overcompensating for her own guilt. "Chloe sabotaging your college applications back then was for your own good! Choosing to be a war correspondent is on you. You don't get to play the victim."

I just gave a calm, detached smile. "Yeah. Time doesn't flow backward. And I am finally moving forward."

Chapter 1

Rhonda still wasn't satisfied. She kept hammering the point home. "Chloe and Wesley have a solid marriage. Don't even think about being the other woman. I won't survive the humiliation."

She was always like this. Siding with outsiders. Treating her own flesh and blood like a radioactive threat.

I had met Wesley first. We had been neighbors, childhood sweethearts growing up hand-in-hand. He kissed me under the jacaranda tree, poured his heart out to me, and swore he would marry me.

But Rhondaever the bleeding-heart high school teacherbrought the underprivileged scholarship student, Chloe, into our home. From that day on, she seeped into every crack of my world with Wesley.

Rhonda engineered it perfectly. Whether Wesley and I were heading to the library or the mall, she forced me to drag Chloe along. Rhonda even signed as the witness at their wedding.

I ripped open a bag of dill pickle potato chips. My gaze stayed perfectly flat. "If you're so paranoid, Mom, why force me to come home to recover?"

"Ungrateful brat. You think you're so tough now?" She lunged, a reflex, aiming a sharp fingernail at my forehead.

I tilted my head, dodging it.

The keypad beeped at the front door. Rhonda instantly put on a warm, welcoming smile and hurried over.

"Rhonda! I smell something amazing. Are we late? I wanted to help prep," Chloe chimed in.

"Sweetheart, come in! I made Wesley's favorite lobster tails, and that French onion soup you love."

They stepped into the living room. It took them a second to even register I was there. Chloe shrank back with a flinch, like I was some feral beast about to strike.

Rhonda shot me a warning glare, a silent demand to wipe the deadpan look off my face and greet our guests. I didn't move a muscle.

Wesley's eyes immediately dropped to the thick bandages wrapping my leg. "Aspen is your leg doing any better?" His voice sounded concerned.

I gave him a stiff, polite nod.

At the dining table, Rhonda ushered them into the best seats. Then, she barked her orders at me. "Go to the fridge and grab the mango juice. Chloe loves it."

Chloe threw me a hesitant look. "Rhonda, really, it's fine."

"Are you worried about her leg? Don't be. She brought it on herself, running off to those warzones."

"No, it's not that. I just I can't have cold drinks today. And I'll have to pass on the seafood, too." Chloe rested a hand over her flat stomach, shooting Wesley a shy, glowing look. "We're expecting. Just hit twelve weeks."

Wesley lowered his eyes. His jaw ticked, his expression unreadable.

Rhonda practically vibrated, acting more ecstatic than the mother-to-be. She started rattling off pregnancy advice, ready to move Chloe back in on the spot. "I still have your room set up! If Wesley is busy at work, you come straight here for lunch and naps."

We lived in a cramped three-bedroom house. On Chloe's second day living with us, Rhonda had handed over my sunny, spacious bedroom. She claimed Chloe had suffered enough in her childhood.

Chloe stayed in-state for college and visited constantly. I never got my room back. I was permanently exiled to the windowless den.

The room went dead quiet. They were waiting for my reaction.

Chloe tilted her head, asking tentatively. "Aspen, you're staying for good this time, right? Rhonda acts tough, but shes always checking your Instagram. I'm so jealous. Capturing the rubble in Syrian ruins, chasing armed convoys through the Libyan desert." She sighed softly. "Not like me. I'm just so spoiled being Wesley's housewife. I'd almost feel guilty about monopolizing him and Rhonda back in high school... if they hadn't insisted."

Chapter 2

Watching Rhonda dote on Chloe was a total mind trip. It proved she actually possessed a soft, maternal side. She just reserved her ruthless, drill-sergeant energy for me.

I was severely allergic to onions, a fact Rhonda ignored because she loved them. As some sick, twisted obedience test, she spent an entire summer serving nothing but onion-loaded dishes and plain rice. Even the chicken noodle soup was swimming in them.

Growing up in a single-parent home, I never met my biological dad. Rhonda made sure of that. If I even breathed a question about him? A backhand straight to my face. Zero hesitation.

Wesley was the only one who patched me up when I cried. For a long time, I had a deep attachment to him.

The Summer of the Onion Test happened when I was ten. Wesleys parents traveled constantly for business, so hed beg his grandma, Nancy, to make me extra plates of grilled cheese and tomato soup.

After that, I became his little snack monster. His pockets were always stuffed with juice boxes, strawberry Pop-Tarts, and spicy chips, just to keep me fed.

We promised wed go to an Ivy League together. Graduate, get married, and give Nancy a great-grandkid.

Then Rhonda dragged Chloe home. She came from a dirt-poor, middle-of-nowhere town and had clawed her way into our wealthy school district.

Rhonda practically worshipped her grit. She immediately canceled my piano lessons just to fund Chloe's tuition and AP prep courses.

I despised Chloe. She constantly weaponized this pathetic, wounded-bird routine to milk Rhonda for every ounce of sympathy. I outright refused to speak to her.

Wesley used to ruffle my hair and swear he'd always have my back. Until the afternoon he caught Chloe sitting alone on the bleachers, eating a squished, plain bologna sandwich.

The look on his face that day was complicated. Shocked. Pitying. But it was pure manipulation. At our house, Rhonda cooked Chloe her favorite heavy pastas every single night. Starving wasn't in her vocabulary.

Wesley chose his next words carefully, acting like he was doing me a favor. "Aspen, don't you think you're being a little petty? Your mom is amazing to everyone except you. Have you ever stopped to think maybe you're the problem?"

Years of Rhonda's gaslighting had already messed with my head. I actually started wondering if I was the toxic one.

Meanwhile, Wesley used my mom as an excuse to ditch me, secretly tutoring Chloe. He even bailed on my birthday dinner because Chloe casually mentioned she'd never been to a theme park.

I was blind to the giant red flags. Otherwise, I never would have survived a four-year long-distance relationship with him in college.

Until graduation year. I flew home early, dragging my suitcase through the front door. I found Chloe and Wesley tangled together in my childhood bedroom.

Clothes discarded. Skin flushed.

I cried until I had no tears left, watching the foundation of my entire life crumble. A sharp, physical pain fractured my chest. I spent the entire night sobbing so hard I couldn't catch my breath, my ribs aching from the force of it.

For four years, Wesley flew across the country to see me. He swore up and down wed get married the second we got our diplomas. How did a decade of love just evaporate overnight?

I lost it. I screamed until my throat bled, demanding Chloe get the hell out. Rhonda slapped me so hard my vision blurred, hissing that her name was on the deed, and I had zero right to dictate who stayed.

Suffocating under the betrayal, I dumped Wesley on the spot and applied for an overseas placement as a war correspondent.

Rhonda didn't even blame Chloe. She actually wanted to take her in as her goddaughter. Chloe's biological parents fiercely opposed the idea, which was the only reason it didn't happen.

Back in the present, Rhonda's bitter scolding echoed from the hallway, laced with Chloe's quiet, calculated instigating.

Wesley walked into my windowless room, carrying a plate of strawberries. I didn't even blink in his direction.

"Aspen, are you still punishing Chloe?" he sighed, his voice dripping with exhausted condescension. "You haven't said a single word to her today. She's going to go home and overthink this."

Chapter 3

Past me would have screamed until my lungs gave out. Shouldn't I blame her?!

She hacked into my college portal, changed my major, and stole my boyfriend. And Rhonda wouldn't even let me file a police report, let alone yell at her.

It took bleeding out from shrapnel in Syria to finally understand. When people don't give a damn about you, your words are just white noise.

I kept my mouth shut.

Wesley thought I was projecting. He kept scrambling to explain, his voice frantic. "I always knew Rhonda hated New York. You only applied to Columbia to escape her. Chloe didn't want you two to have a falling out. She just accidentally memorized your password and changed your application for your own good."

Right. Her good intentions. She swapped my Columbia Economics application for a no-name journalism program two thousand miles away.

Wesley kept rambling. "Aspen, even if I got into Columbia with you, I would've told you to change your major."

The buzzing in my ears became unbearable. I threw out a casual, cutting question. "Did you bomb your SATs on purpose just to stay at the state school with Chloe?"

His voice snapped off. He sounded like a duck choking on a snare.

He had no idea how I knew. Because he never realized his innocent, resilient little Chloe was a total snake.

The second college ended and she didn't need Rhonda's checkbook anymore, Chloe blew up my phone. She detailed exactly how Wesley snuck her out in high school to theme parks and movie theaters. Even the aquarium I had begged him to take me to for months.

In college, the second Wesley got his license, he took her on weekend road trips. If I called to check in? He'd use the hotel blackout curtains to lie about the time zones.

Trying to get over a ten-year relationship in an active warzone was agonizing.

I slapped my own face until my jaw bruised. I ripped clumps of hair from my scalp. I clawed at my own wrists until they bled, desperate to feel a different kind of pain.

My entire life, Rhonda weaponized her toxic parenting, crushing my self-esteem while gaslighting me about her struggles as a single mom. Chloe made me realize one agonizing truth.

I was fundamentally unlovable, even to my own flesh and blood.

She texted me that Wesley leaving was the smartest thing he ever did. She added that a walking red flag like me didn't deserve to take up oxygen. Rhonda flooded my inbox with pure venom, screaming that feeding me for twenty years was a waste of money. Not because I wanted to go to New Yorkthe city she loathedbut because I took a dangerous overseas assignment over a petty little fight.

Wesley only ever sent three words: I am sorry.

I refused to listen. I just ran. I drowned the betrayal in the adrenaline of active crossfire and the devastating reality of displaced refugees.

As I thought about it now, a dull ache throbbed in my temples. I glanced down at the glowing screen of my phone. A new text sat in my notifications.

"Aspen, did you get your legal documents secured? I have a chopper ready to extract you."

I typed back, my fingers perfectly steady. "Three more days, Dad."

I never expected a biological father to suddenly materialize in my life. Let alone discover that his family held a chokehold over the entire New York financial district.

Before he found me, Pierce had zero clue that Rhonda had secretly given birth to me in a rundown Ohio rust-belt town.

Fate is a twisted thing. His family had been watching the evening news. They saw me, covered in ash, reporting live from the frontlines.

They froze.

I was a dead ringer for Constance, Pierce's sister, back in her twenties. When Pierce dug into my background and saw Rhonda's last name on my file, an unusual wave of emotion welled up in him.

Chapter 4

Years ago, Rhonda had possessed striking, undeniable beauty. She had earned an acceptance letter to Columbia University, and Pierce had fallen hard for her, igniting a whirlwind, cross-class romance. But his old-money Manhattan family worshipped pedigree and bloodlines above all else.

Then came my devastating disaster in the Syrian warzone. Chaos ruled the Syrian borders. Death lingered in every shadow. Pierce caught wind of a young journalist sacrificing her leg to shield a little girl, Mabel, from a mortar strike.

He did not hesitate. He bypassed the bureaucratic red tape, pulled diplomatic strings at the embassy, and deployed a private military evac chopper to extract me.

After that, the pieces snapped together perfectly. The DNA results hit his desk that very same day. I belonged to him.

Rhonda would lose her mind if she knew. As a clueless kid, I constantly badgered her about my father's whereabouts. My innocent questions earned sharp, ringing slaps across my face. She locked me in the dark closet, leaving my stomach cramping from agonizing hunger.

One night, the foul stench of cheap alcohol rolled off her breath. Her nails dug violently into my fragile wrist. Her eyes were filled with a vicious, unhinged malice. "I must have lost my damn mind bringing a worthless parasite like you into this world! I should gouge those eyes out! Seeing them makes my skin crawl!"

Those words branded my brain. I learned to shrink into the background. I swallowed the word 'Dad' forever. Meeting Pierce finally connected all the agonizing dots.

I looked exactly like the rest of his family. The haunting resemblance lived entirely in my eyes.

The shrapnel shredded my leg beyond basic repair. Pierce burned through his elite contacts just to secure a consultation with Dr. Mercer. Mercer's surgical waitlist demanded a full month of patience.

I requested a temporary flight back to Ohio.

When Rhonda discovered my injuries, she only screamed about the inconvenience. She bitched about the logistical nightmare of shipping my corpse back home. If I ghosted her now, she would storm my agency's headquarters and terrorize my editors.

I needed to hand in my resignation and collect my vital personal documents from her house anyway. My rehab required extensive, long-term care in New York. Pierce eventually uncovered the sick truth about Chloe hijacking my college applications. He swore he would fund my actual dream.

I didn't play the humble card. Staring down the barrel of death brings brutal, unfiltered clarity. Chasing my own ambitions trumps everyone else's fragile feelings.

Rhonda refused to drive me to the clinic. She crossed her arms, her tone dripping with pure poison. "Your leg is a mangled mess. No surgeon can fix that. Face reality. No news agency wants a cripple on their payroll. I refuse to harbor a freeloader. Beg for my mercy, and I might pull some strings to get you a data-entry gig at my school."

She taught at a snobby private academy. She never once leveraged her influence for my benefit. She hoarded every favor, every parent-teacher bribe, solely to elevate Chloe's status.

A phantom agony chewed through my nerve endings. I forced the words past my clenched teeth. "What if a top-tier specialist in New York can reconstruct my bones?"

Rhonda's face twisted into a demonic mask. "You will never set foot in New York as long as I draw breath."

"Even if it guarantees I spend my life confined to this wheelchair?"

"Exactly!" she hissed, spitting the word like venom.

I anticipated the brutal rejection. A sharp, physical ache still fractured my ribs. Her petty grudges always suffocated my survival. My shattered leg and my entire future meant absolutely nothing.

I offered Keith, the cab driver, triple the usual fare. He immediately swallowed his complaints, hoisting me into the backseat and shoving the heavy metal wheelchair into the trunk. "Kid, blood keeps soaking right through your gauze. Looks brutal. Why do you have no family riding with you?" he asked.

I stared out the window. Dead silent.

Keith caught my hollow gaze in the rearview mirror. He slowly shook his head. "Orphaned, huh? Rough break."

At the drop-off, he hauled my chair onto the pavement. He pressed a cold water bottle into my palm before driving off.

Chapter 5

I pushed my wheelchair into the sterile hospital corridor.

Wesley stood there, head bowed, peeling a mandarin orange for Chloe. She wore a loose, cream-colored knit dress. Her dark hair fell softly against her cheek. She rested a hand over her flat stomach and gave a tiny, practiced wince.

Wesley froze instantly. "Is it cramping again?" His voice was tight with panic. He only had eyes for her. He didn't even notice me sitting in my wheelchair just ten feet away.

Rhonda rushed down the hall from the billing department, waving a receipt. She practically cooed over Chloe, promising to bake her favorite homemade chicken pot pie for lunch. She treated her like Chloe was her actual flesh and blood.

"Rhonda, you treat me better than my own mother," Chloe murmured.

"You clawed your way out of that dirt-poor trailer park all by yourself. If I don't spoil you, who will?"

I watched them bond, a picture-perfect mother-daughter duo.

A laugh suddenly pushed past my lips. Letting go wasn't as agonizing as I thought.

The warm, maternal smile vanished from Rhonda's face. "Are you blind? Greet your guests. Where are your damn manners?"

I stared back. Dead silent.

Chloe tugged on Rhonda's sleeve, shrinking back like a frightened deer. "Rhonda, please don't be mad. It's my fault. I forgot Wesley took the morning off for my ultrasound. I shouldn't have asked you to come. Now Aspen is getting the wrong idea"

Rhonda's expression darkened. Her tone turned absolutely vicious. "Aspen, drop the attitude! I refused to bring you to your dressing change on purpose. Your leg is wrecked. You're never walking again. Figure out how to survive on your own. I am not playing nursemaid for the rest of your life!"

Wesley stepped in, playing the smooth peacemaker. "Rhonda, take a breath. Aspen just got back from an active warzone. Her leg is barely stitched up. She just needs time to adjust."

Watching him effortlessly pacify my mother made my stomach churn. It was beyond sick.

Chloe released Rhonda's arm. Her voice cracked with weaponized guilt. "Wesley, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to cause a scene. I should have just gone to the OB-GYN alone... I hate seeing Aspen get so triggered by me..." Fat, flawless tears spilled onto her maternity dress. It was the ultimate victim routine.

"This has nothing to do with you!" Rhonda snapped, cutting her off. She whipped her head around and glared daggers at me. "Look what you did! You made Chloe cry! Get your ass home right now. Stop embarrassing me in public!"

I let out a cold laugh. I locked eyes with her, refusing to blink. "You don't own this hospital. You don't get to kick me out."

That defiance lit a match to gasoline. Or maybe it was the contempt and anger burning in my eyes.

Rhonda froze. Then, her annoyance flared into blind rage. She closed the distance and backhanded me across the face.

A sharp, stinging crack echoed down the hall.

"Excuse me? Your leg is shattered and you still dare to talk back to me? You're a crippled burden! All you do is drag my name through the mud! You just had to play the hero and be a war reporter! Look at you now. You brought this exact nightmare on yourself!"

She loomed over me. Her eyes locked onto my violently shaking, bandaged leg. Pure venom dripped from her lips. "You're trash that can't even walk. Learn how to survive on scraps. Roll your eyes at me one more time. I will throw you out on the street to beg like a stray dog."

The last frayed nerve in my chest snapped.

Total, suffocating numbness set in.

I didn't say another word. I just stared right through her. I grabbed the metal rims of my wheelchair, spun around, and pushed myself toward the exit.

Cold sweat drenched my spine. Agony chewed through my knee with every heavy push.

Chapter 6

Wesley sat next to me in the back of Keith's cab. He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck, playing the helpless victim when I refused his assistance. "Aspen, don't be so hard on Rhonda. You ghosted her. You didn't even come home for Christmas. She actually cares about you."

A dark, mocking smirk pulled at my lips. "The entire house is redecorated to Chloe's Pinterest board. My tiny bedroom is a glorified storage closet for Chloe's thrift-store rejects. You're sitting there telling me my mother misses me. Are you physically incapable of feeling shame?"

Wesley dropped his gaze. A dull flush of embarrassment crept up his neck. "Chloe grew up with nothing. She had zero support system here in Ohio. Rhonda just took her under her wing like a real daughter. I never planned on cheating on you. Your mom practically forced me to look after her."

I listened to him spew this pathetic, textbook gaslighting. My voice stayed dead flat. "So, my mother magically forced you to strip down and screw Chloe in my childhood bed?"

Panic flared in Wesley's eyes. He scrambled to backtrack. "No, it wasn't like that! I had a few too many beers that night. Chloe confessed her feelings to me for the twenty-ninth time, and I just I slipped up."

I turned my head, staring out the cab window at the blur of traffic. While I spent four years of college planning our wedding down to the floral arrangements, his heart had already packed up and moved in with another girl.

Silence stretched between us. Wesley's voice dropped, turning soft and patronizing. "Let's just wipe the slate clean, okay? You're going to need a lot of physical therapy and care going forward. There's no point in holding this toxic grudge against your mom and Chloe."

A cold scoff rattled in my throat. "Are you threatening me?"

"No!" He threw his hands up defensively. "It's just you're obviously not in any shape to work right now. Chloe is super interested in your news agency. We were hoping you could put in a good word with your editor. Rhonda agrees. Since you got blown up on their clock, they owe you a massive payout. You could leverage that to score Chloe a comfortable, remote desk job for her pregnancy."

They were actually trying to suck me dry.

I leaned forward and tapped the acrylic partition. "Keith, pull over. Now."

I kicked Wesley out on the side of a busy intersection. Then, I had Keith drive me straight to the agency's headquarters. I officially signed my resignation papers.

Mostly, I just needed to purge every single gift Wesley had ever given me. Seeing them made my skin crawl. We'd been together for a decade. The sheer volume of memories filled a massive cardboard moving box.

There were boarding passes from every holiday weekend he flew out to visit me, and cheap trinkets from late-night flea markets. There were ticket stubs from indie theaters where wed cram into corner booths and fall asleep. And handmade birthday gifts he never failed to deliver, year after year.

I spent years clinging to that pathetic, comforting delusion. I genuinely believed we would go from high school sweethearts to a rocking chair on a porch. Only later did the sick truth hit me. Chloe was standing right beside him every single time he bought these things.

Even the pair of custom clay figurines he sculpted for our anniversary. One of them had a distinct, delicate fingerprint pressed into the dried paint.

When I confronted him back then, he smoothly lied, blamed the pottery shop owner, and compensated me with a pair of matching mugs. Chloe was the one who gleefully texted me the truth years later.

The mental gymnastics required to text me he missed me, while simultaneously flirting with another girl right next to him, made my head spin.

Surviving a betrayal like that carved a brutal lesson into my bones. Some people only walk into your life to teach you that love is just a temporary layover. Never the final destination.

Back at the house, Rhonda scowled as I dumped the box into the trash bin. "You're already a useless cripple. The least you could do is kiss Wesley and Chloe's asses. What's your survival plan? Selling scrap metal? Or did you expect me to fund your pathetic existence?"

Her tone and attitude were terrible. She looked at me like I was a rotting corpse stinking up her living room. She doubled down on the agency demand, insisting I leverage my trauma to get Chloe hired.

"Play your cards right," Rhonda sneered. "And maybe Chloe's kid will be generous enough to pick out your nursing home when you're rotting away."

Chapter 7

I let out a harsh, disbelieving laugh at her sheer delusion. "Are you really swallowing the BS Chloe is spoon-feeding you? Back in high school, she didn't give a damn about her grades. She spent all her energy baking you casseroles to score brownie points, and working part-time just to buy Wesley presents. When she barely scraped into an overpriced, bottom-tier private college, she literally got on her knees and begged you to drain your savings on her tuition."

"After graduation? She complained the substitute teaching gig you lined up paid too little, quit with a pathetic excuse, and expected Wesley to foot all her bills. And now, she wants to use my trauma to coast into the best news agency in the state, just to exploit their paid maternity leave. Does Chloe get to monopolize every good thing in this world? Are the rest of us just stepping stones for her?"

Rhonda glared at me, her eyes burning with fanatic intensity. "Chloe saved my damn life! Compensating her is the bare minimum you should do."

I fired right back, my tone sharp. "If Chloe hadn't been failing so badly that her parents threatened to pull her out of senior year, you never would have driven out to her trailer park. You wouldn't have slipped into that creek and nearly drowned in the first place!"

"It was a life-saving debt regardless! Handing over the deed to this house wouldn't even cover it."

She had weaponized this exact threat a million times. This cramped house was her only real asset. Every time I stepped out of line, she dangled it over my head to keep me chained.

For my four years out of state, Rhonda only covered freshman year. I survived on academic scholarships and back-breaking waitressing shifts. Because Chloe's tuition was "too steep." Because Chloe constantly cried that her parents were forcing her to move back and get married.

Rhonda emptied her wallet for her, time and time again. We had screaming matches over it for years.

But now? My face was a stone wall. "Do whatever you want."

"Aspen, don't you dare regret this!"

"Mom, Chloe has two biological brothersColton and Levi. Whether she's gaslighting you or brainwashing you, once you sign away your assets, don't expect me to fund your retirement."

"Spit on it! You're a useless, crippled burden. Just make sure you don't crawl back here to leech off me!"

Early the next morning, a heavy knock hammered on the front door. Assuming Pierce's extraction team had arrived, I grabbed the handle of my hastily packed suitcase.

I pulled the door open. Wesley stood on the porch. He was panting, his chest heaving as he gripped a massive cardboard box.

"Aspen, I found this by the dumpsters last night. Why did you throw out everything I ever gave you? I wanted to come see you yesterday, but you blocked my number. And Chloe was feeling sick again."

I checked my watch, my voice indifferent. "Trash belongs in the dumpster. There's no 'why.'"

"Do you really have to be this cruel?" Wesley pulled out a thick stack of faded boarding passesthe physical proof of him crossing the country for me. "And these clay figurines. I made these for you with my own hands." His voice choked. The rims of his eyes flashed red.

It turned out I wasn't the only one who had actually been in love.

I twisted the knife without blinking. "What did you expect? You screwed my mother's favorite pet. Should I keep this junk as a shrine so she can accuse me of obsessing over another woman's husband?"

"But you can't just throw it all away! It's the proof that we loved each other."

I stared back, my features carved from ice. "The second you chose Chloe, all of this became entirely meaningless."

Wesley opened his mouth to argue.

A man in a razor-sharp, custom-tailored suit stepped onto the porch behind him. "Miss Aspen. Pierce was tied up with an emergency board meeting, but he has the private jet fueled on the tarmac. The moment we touch down in New York, Dr. Mercer will see you."

I gave a curt nod