“I’m sorry.” His voice was low. Stripped of performance. “I’m deeply, genuinely sorry. I should have checked. I should have thought beyond the assumption. That was…” He trailed off, searching for a word large enough. “That was unforgivable.”
“It was.”
“And I’m asking you to forgive it anyway.”
I closed my eyes. Leaned my head against the hospital wall. The fluorescent light buzzed above me, indifferent.
“There’s something else,” I said. “Something more important than your office and your receptionist.”
“What?”
“I’m at the hospital. Rowan was admitted. He collapsed – there was blood. I got a video from an unknown number showing him in terrible condition. Sable and I found him on the floor of our old house and brought him here.”
“My God – Marlowe, are you okay? Is he-“
“I’m fine. He’s alive. I don’t know more than that yet. The doctors are still with him.” I paused. “And Sterling showed up.”
“Sterling?”
“He’d already paid for Rowan’s treatment. Before we even arrived. He was waiting here – like he’d planned the whole thing. He grabbed me, tried to drag me out. I slapped him. Three times. Then he pulled a gun on the doctor.”
The silence that followed was absolute. The silence of a man receiving information that exceeds his processing capacity.
“A gun,” Caelum repeated. His voice had changed – gone cold, tight, the voice of a man recalibrating from worry to fury.
“It’s handled. He’s been arrested. Dorian – the doctor, he’s an old friend of Rowan’s – his bodyguard took Sterling down. But Caelum, someone sent me that video of Rowan. Someone wanted me to come here. And Sterling was already waiting. This wasn’t a coincidence.”
“Where are you? What hospital?”
“I don’t know the name. I wasn’t exactly reading signs when I was carrying my brother’s body through the doors.”
“I’ll find it. Stay where you are. Don’t leave. I’m coming.”
“Caelum-“
“I said I’m coming, Marlowe.” His voice was steady now, the trembling gone, replaced by something harder. Something that sounded like the version of him that ran companies and bent institutions. “And when I get there, I need to tell you something. Something I saw. But it can wait until I’m there.”
“Fine.”
“Are you safe?”
“I’m safe.”
“Promise me you won’t leave.”
“I promise.”
I hung up. Leaned against the wall. My eyes were closed and my body felt like it was made of sand – one strong gust and I’d scatter.
Sable appeared beside me. “He’s coming?”
“He’s coming.”
“See? That wasn’t so hard.”
“I slapped a man three times, fought security guards, carried my unconscious brother to a car, and had a gun pointed at someone standing next to me. And you think the hard part was making a phone call.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.