The Prenup Evaluation That Ended Five Years Chapter 04

I went back to my rental in the old neighborhood and crouched on the floor, sorting through my files.

Inside a cardboard box, I found my bank statements. The money in the account was everything I’d set aside to fix up my parents’ house.

My phone went off. It was Ms. Ward, my mother’s neighbor.

“Tessa, get to the hospital right now. Your mother got into it with someone at the city zoning office, and she collapsed. Brain hemorrhage.”

Everything in my hands hit the floor.

“What happened? What were they arguing about?”

“The city said the property buyout funds for your mother’s old house, the one she was counting on for retirement, had been frozen by Sloane’s firm. Something about an undisclosed defect in the deed.”

“They froze the payout entirely. Your mother went down there to fight it, and she collapsed right there in the office.”

I was out the door and in a taxi before I finished hanging up.

Havenridge Medical Center, emergency wing. The double doors to the trauma bay were sealed shut.

A surgeon came through the doors holding a critical-condition notice.

“Severe intracranial bleeding. She needs surgery now.”

“The private neurosurgeon requires a thirty-thousand-dollar retainer cleared by billing. If that’s not done in ten minutes, he won’t scrub in.”

I ran to the billing desk and pulled out the debit card for the joint account Gavin and I shared.

Five years of scraping by. Forty thousand dollars I’d saved by cutting every corner. I hadn’t even let myself buy makeup.

The nurse swiped the card and shook her head.

“Insufficient funds. Transaction restricted.”

“That’s impossible. There’s forty thousand in that high-yield account!”

The nurse turned the terminal screen toward me.

“The joint account holder froze everything and reported the card lost. The balance has been transferred out.”

I sagged against the tile wall and called Gavin.

He was already in the building, walking down the far end of the hallway with an insulated thermos in hand.

He spotted me and stopped short. Then he came over, taking quick steps.

“Sloane had a rough day. She’s resting in a private suite upstairs. I brought her some chicken soup.”

His eyes dropped to the payment slip in my hand. He reached for my shoulder.

“Tessa, what happened with your mom wasn’t anybody’s fault.”

“Sloane was doing her job. She followed procedure.”

“I moved the money on that card over to cover the escrow account for Sloane’s firm.”

“Her career’s on the line. She can’t have anything messy on her record right now.”

He pulled a document from his jacket and held it out.

“All you have to do is agree not to go after Sloane over the property issue. Sign this waiver.”

“The second you sign, I’ll have the surgery money here within the hour.”

He’d taken my family’s house to bail out his mistress.

And now he was holding my mother’s life hostage to keep me quiet.

I stared at him, at that careful, practiced look of concern he wore so well.

Five years. Every sacrifice, every compromise, every time I chose him: all of it was one long punchline.

The trauma bay doors swung open.

A nurse shouted.

“Has the retainer cleared? The bleeding is getting worse. If she doesn’t go in now, she’s not going to make it!”

Gavin clamped down on my wrist hard enough to bruise and bent over me.

“Sign it! Sign the damn thing and the money’s here in minutes. Do what I tell you, Tessa!”

I cracked the back of his hand with mine and ripped my wrist free.

I pulled out my phone, found Elliot’s number, and hit call.

“Mr. Whitmore. I’m accepting your offer.”

“I need the best neurosurgeon you can find at Havenridge Medical Center’s emergency wing. Right now. And when this is over, take me away from here.”