Chapter 4 - The Price of a Sister
I ended the call.
Emma called again.
Then again.
On the fourth call, I shut off my phone.
Adrian’s security chief stood in the doorway.
Marco was a broad man with tired eyes and a scar beside his mouth.
I remembered him carrying groceries into our house when Adrian worked late.
I remembered trusting him.
Now every familiar face felt like a locked door.
“We have a car downstairs,” he said.
“I’m not going to his house.”
Adrian answered before Marco could.
“Then we’re not.”
Dr. Sloan folded her arms.
“She needs an independent medical evaluation today.”
“County?” I asked.
“A major hospital with maternal-fetal medicine. I can call ahead.”
“No family office,” I said.
“No family office,” Adrian agreed.
We left through a service exit with a hospital officer beside us.
Nobody touched me without asking.
That shouldn’t have felt like a gift.
It did.
In the car, Adrian sat across from me.
His phone kept lighting up.
Mother.
Mother.
Mother.
He turned it facedown.
“Why were you at the clinic?” I asked.
He hesitated.
“Someone sent me an envelope this morning.”
“Who?”
“No return address.”
He took a folded printout from his coat.
My appointment reminder.
Across the bottom, someone had written four words.
BE THERE BEFORE NOON.
I stared at them.
Somebody inside this had wanted him to find me.
“Did you know I was pregnant?”
“Not until I walked through the door.”
The car stopped at a red light.
A black SUV stopped beside us.
I stiffened.
Marco checked the mirror.
“Just traffic.”
I hated that he knew why I’d looked.
At the hospital, Dr. Sloan’s referral got me upstairs quickly.
A specialist examined me, reviewed the images, and confirmed our daughter was alive and active.
There was a concern near the placenta that needed observation.
There was no reason, based on that examination, for the plan in my clinic chart.
I cried then.
Not pretty tears.
The kind that left me embarrassed and unable to speak.
Adrian handed me tissues.
He didn’t tell me to calm down.
An hour later, Emma appeared outside my room.
She looked as if she’d run there.
“Please,” she said through the glass.
I told the nurse to let her in.
Adrian stayed by the window.
Emma’s eyes went to my belly.
Relief crossed her face.
Then she saw the papers on the bed.
“Oh, God.”
“How much?” I asked.
She flinched.
“Claire—”
“How much were we worth?”
Her mouth shook.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”
Adrian moved.
I raised one hand, and he stopped.
Emma began to cry.
“I owed money.”
“How much?”
“One hundred and eighty thousand.”
I looked at my sister.
May you like
She whispered the rest.
“Lucia paid it. Then she said I belonged to her.”
