Chapter 2
The heavy glass doors of the corridor swung open, and Lorraine Rowan swept into the hospital wing, wrapped in an expensive cashmere coat, her expression carefully calibrated to project concerned maternal authority.
“Caleb, darling! Thank goodness you called,” Lorraine began, rushing forward with her arms outstretched. “I heard there was some dreadful emergency. I came the moment I could. Where is that hysterical girl? I always said she lacked the emotional stability to carry a child—vocabularies of panic, always manufacturing dramas—”
Before she could close the distance, Caleb stepped forward. He didn’t hug her. He didn’t accept her embrace. He raised his right hand—still bearing the dried, dark stains of his wife’s blood—and shoved his mother backward against the reinforced drywall with enough force to rattle the framed directory on the wall.
Lorraine gasped, her aristocratic composure cracking into raw, furious disbelief. “Caleb! Have you lost your mind? Put your hands on your mother? What has that woman done to you?”
“Shut your mouth,” Caleb said. His voice wasn’t loud. It dropped into a flat, deadly monotone that made the nearby security guard instinctively reach for his belt. “You intercepted her calls. Seventeen times she tried to reach me. You took her phone. You told Dr. Morgan her symptoms had stopped. And then you sent me that photograph with your own caption.”
Lorraine’s eyes flickered with panic for a split second before her natural instinct for manipulation took over. She crossed her arms, lifting her chin with icy defiance. “I was protecting you! She was calling you away from your important merger meetings over every little stomach ache! Women like her love to play the victim, Caleb. She trapped you with a pregnancy, and she wanted you dancing to her tune—”
“She was bleeding to death on our bedroom floor, Mother,” Caleb interrupted, his face contorting with a rage so terrifying that Lorraine actually shrank back a half-step. “A placental abruption. The doctors are fighting to save her life and our child’s life right now. And you stood in our home, looked at a dying woman, and tried to frame her for adultery.”
“She brought this on herself!” Lorraine shrieked, losing her temper as the facade crumbled. “She doesn’t belong in our family! She’s common! She’s weak! If she loses the baby, it’s nature’s way of clearing out the—”
A sharp, echoing crack silenced the corridor.
Caleb’s hand had struck across his mother’s cheek with blinding speed, leaving a bright red imprint across her powdered skin. Lorraine staggered against the water fountain, clutching her face, her mouth opening in stunned outrage.
“If Hannah dies,” Caleb whispered, his eyes burning with the cold, unyielding fire of an executioner, “I will ensure you spend the rest of your natural life behind the gray walls of a federal penitentiary. Every bank account, every asset, every corporate title you hold through the Rowan estate is tied directly to my construction empire. From this second forward, you are cut off. You are dead to me.”
Before Lorraine could stammer a defense, the double doors of the surgical wing hissed open. Dr. Elias Morgan stepped out into the hallway, wearing blue scrubs stained with antiseptic and fatigue, his mask pulled down around his neck.
Caleb abandoned his mother instantly, rushing across the floor to grab the doctor by the shoulders. “Elias... my wife? My child?”
Dr. Morgan let out a long, exhausted breath, offering a cautious, tired smile. “She’s alive, Caleb. We got to her just in time. We performed an emergency Caesarean section. It was touch-and-go for twenty minutes, but... you have a daughter. She’s small, she’s premature, and she’s currently in the neonatal intensive care unit under close observation, but she’s breathing.”
Caleb closed his eyes, his knees suddenly buckling as the agonizing weight of the past three hours finally crashed down upon him. He braced his hands against the wall, tears breaking free and streaming down his cheeks.
“And Hannah?” Caleb choked out.
“She’s stable, but unconscious from the blood loss and anesthesia,” Dr. Morgan replied gently, casting a cold, disdainful glance toward Lorraine standing by the water fountain. “If I hadn’t returned to the house to retrieve my medical bag and found her unresponsive on the floor... she wouldn't have survived another ten minutes. Your mother told me at the front door that Hannah was sleeping and didn’t want to be disturbed. If I had listened to her, your wife would be dead.”
May you like
Caleb turned slowly toward his mother. Lorraine stood frozen in the corner of the hallway, realizing that her meticulous, lifelong crusade to control her son’s life had just resulted in utter, catastrophic ruin.
“Get out,” Caleb told her, his voice devoid of any remaining humanity. “If you are within five miles of this hospital, or my wife, or my daughter when the sun rises, I won’t just cut you off. I will destroy you.”
