Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 129676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 648(@200wpm)___ 519(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 648(@200wpm)___ 519(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
I gulped. I knew Mum’s situation was dire. What I couldn’t figure out was how she’d passed the initial tests in the first place. The ones Tate sent her to.
Oh, but you know, don’t you, Gia? Tate’s gruff voice mocked in my head. You just choose to be obtuse.
No. Doctors operated under oath. They wouldn’t fabricate test results to get her into a prestigious program.
I cleared my throat. “Where does this leave us in terms of her treatment?”
“Well, dear,” the doctor said, breaking the professional wall between us, his voice saturated with compassion now. “Once she recovers from the pneumonia and UTI, we’re going to slowly initiate the same treatment protocol we use for all our patients but moderated. It’s going to be an interesting case study, actually. Seeing if the medicine and therapeutic program can revert symptoms of a case so advanced. But it also means that we probably won’t be able to reverse her progression back to a milder case of dementia. We’re going to focus primarily on her comfort and include her in some of the initial trials to see if it might slow her deterioration. So what we’re doing right now is palliative, not therapeutic. You need to understand that.”
Dr. Stultz basically told me my mother would never recover, never regain her faculties, never recognize me as her daughter again.
He stopped in front of the cafeteria but didn’t step inside. This was where our paths would fork.
“I understand,” I rasped, my voice, my knees, my soul weak, crumbling like a sandcastle. “Thank you for being candid with me, Doctor.”
He nodded, walking off into the cafeteria. I stumbled on uneven feet to the nearest wall, collapsing against it breathlessly.
A ping from my phone impaled my miserable thoughts.
What now? I thought. I tugged my phone out and frowned at the screen.
Tate: You slipped past security. You shouldn’t have gone to your mother’s without telling someone.
Tate: I’m on my way to my Hamptons estate and can’t turn around. Enzo will personally escort you to your new security, with whom you’ll stay until further notice.
Tate: His name is Filippo, and he is both gay and sane, so he will not touch you.
Gia: We had a deal!!!
Tate: I’m not an honorable man.
Tate: Plus, I’d go to great lengths to have you tease me with a knife again. I still get randomly hard thinking about it.
Gia: I said no bodyguards.
Gia: You force me to marry you. You force me to work a job I hate. This was the only agency I had left. To live on my own terms.
Tate: You’ll get your agency back when you stop making dumb decisions.
I slid down the wall and found myself crouched in the hallway of the hospital, holding my face in my hands.
My father was dead. So was my brother. And now I’d been told that my only surviving relative—Mum—was, for all intents and purposes, gone in all the ways that mattered.
Everyone left before I could say goodbye.
My only pathetic comfort was my ironclad knowledge that Tatum Blackthorn would never leave me. No matter how much I aggravated him. No matter how far I’d gone to try to rile him up.
But it wasn’t love that drew him to me. It was obsession.
Enzo was on his way to the hospital. He might already be here. Tate could stay in the Hamptons for days. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for him to take his meetings there over golf.
I refused to be ignored. Not when I needed someone to make me forget so badly. And Tate was a ghoul, but our kiss proved one thing—he was really good at distracting me.
I scrambled to my feet and made my way to the hospital map. Enzo would already have people in the elevators and stairwells, waiting for me to walk in. I was a woman on a mission.
That mission was to prove to Tate I could get past all his bloody security.
The map showed a far-off elevator leading to the morgue in the bowels of the hospital. I followed two transport staff wheeling out a gurney with a hidden compartment used to transport corpses to the far end of the floor. Once I stepped into the elevator with them, they shot me confused looks.
“You can’t—” one of them started.
I held my palm up. “I’m on my way down to identify my gram.”
“Oh.” They both grimaced. “Sorry,” one of them said.
Once in the morgue, I slipped out the emergency exit, slinking down and rushing to the underground parking.
My heart hammered in my chest all the way to my bulletproof Cadillac. A wedding gift from Tate. The keys were casually placed on a cushion Saturday morning, under an engraved note with my parking spot number.
The underground car park was dark and empty, but I could still feel eyes on me. Whose, I wasn’t sure.