Chapter2
Daniel blinked, adjusting his posture as he recognized the expensive tailoring, but his mind hadn't yet connected the dots. "Excuse me, private area, you can't just barge in here—"
Alexander didn't even slow down. He crossed the distance between them in three long strides and delivered a punch so devastatingly fast and precise that Daniel's feet literally left the floor before he crashed backward onto the linoleum, a sickening crack echoing through the corridor.
"Daniel!" Vanessa shrieked, dropping to her knees beside him as he spat blood onto the pristine floor. "Security! Someone call security! They're assaulting him!"
Gabriel stepped forward, pulling a heavy leather portfolio from under his arm. He didn't look at Daniel; instead, he looked at the trembling security guards who had rushed over. "I am Gabriel Bennett. Attorney-at-law. Touch us, and you won't just lose your jobs; you'll spend the next decade defending yourselves in federal court. That man on the floor just assaulted my pregnant sister, and every camera in this hallway has recorded it."
The guards stopped dead in their tracks.
Nicholas walked past them, his expression glacial, and headed straight for the nurses' station where Cara Ellis was standing. "Miss Ellis? I am Nicholas Bennett. My sister Claire is inside receiving emergency care. I need you to tell me everything that happened, word for word."
Cara swallowed hard, looking at the sheer authority radiating from the three brothers. "She... she was pushed. By that woman over there." She pointed at Vanessa, who was cowering beside a groaning Daniel. "Her husband held her down while she bled."
Alexander turned around slowly. His eyes, the exact shade of slate gray as mine, locked onto Vanessa. The sheer intensity of his gaze made her recoil as if she had been physically struck.
"Alexander... Gabriel... Nicholas..." Daniel groaned, struggling up onto his elbows while wiping blood from his split lip. Recognition finally flickered in his panicked eyes. The ghost of the Bennett family had come back to haunt him. "Wait... Claire never told me... I didn't know you guys were..."
"You didn't know because our sister spent seven years protecting you from what we would do if we knew how small, pathetic, and abusive you really are," Alexander said, his voice dropping into a low, terrifying register that sent chills down my spine as I listened from the triage room door.
Inside the triage room, the obstetrician looked up from the monitor with a relieved smile. "Her heart rate is stabilizing, Mrs. Bennett. The trauma caused placental abruption warning signs, but we caught it just in time. Your baby is fighting hard."
"Thank God," I whispered, pressing my head back against the pillow, tears of sheer exhaustion leaking from my eyes.
Outside, the hallway had transformed into a war zone of corporate and legal retribution. Gabriel pulled out his smartphone, tapping the screen with surgical precision. "Nicholas, pull up Daniel's corporate financials and his company's latest debt leverage. Let's see how long his precious real estate development firm lasts when we pull our institutional backing."
"Already on it," Nicholas replied, his fingers flying across his tablet. A cold, wicked smile touched his lips. "Oh, this is rich. Daniel's entire company—every single project, every commercial lease, every investor meeting he claimed he was at tonight—is entirely dependent on a bridging loan underwritten by Bennett Holdings' subsidiary shell. He doesn't even own his own office building."
Daniel's face turned the color of ash as he heard those words from the floor. He scrambled up, his hands shaking violently. "You can't do that! That's a legally binding partnership! We have contracts!"
"Contracts?" Gabriel laughed, a dry, humorless sound. "My dear boy, my legal team drafted boilerplate clauses in your commercial leases that give us unilateral termination rights in the event of gross moral turpitude, domestic abuse, or felony assault. As of two minutes ago, your company is insolvent. By 9:00 AM, every bank in the city will call in your loans."
Vanessa clutched Daniel's arm, her voice shrill with rising panic. "Daniel, tell them they're bluffing! Tell them we're safe!"
Daniel looked at my brothers, then down at his trembling hands. For the first time in his life, he realized he had built his entire identity on sand, and the tide had just come in.
"Claire," Daniel cried out, trying to push past Alexander toward my room. "Claire, please! Tell them to stop! We have a history! We love each other!"
Alexander planted a massive hand squarely on Daniel's chest, stopping him dead in his tracks. "You don't get to say her name," Alexander whispered, his voice trembling with a lifetime of protective fury. "You thought she was alone. You thought because she cut us off to prove a point, she had no one to shield her from monsters like you. You were catastrophically mistaken."
Just then, the automatic doors slid open again. Two city police officers strode into the hospital lobby, led by the head of security.
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"Which one is Daniel Vance?" the lead officer asked, holding a pair of heavy steel handcuffs.
Gabriel pointed lazily at my husband. "That's him, Officer. Assault, domestic battery against an eight-months-pregnant woman, and embezzlement fraud pending audit. Take him away."
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