He Threw Dirty Water at the SUV to Stop His Father

CHAPTER 4 - WHAT LAURA WAS AFRAID OF

Pritchard tried to leave.

Daniel blocked the doorway.

For the first time since Eli had seen him, there was no confusion in Daniel's face. Only cold certainty.

"You told me Laura left with another man," Daniel said. "Did my father pay you to say it?"

Pritchard's mouth twisted. "You rich people always think everything can be untangled with a dramatic confession."

"Answer him," Eli snapped.

The older man glanced toward Laura's bed, then away.

"Your father wanted the problem gone," he muttered. "I delivered the message. That's all."

"Message?" Daniel stepped closer.

Pritchard swallowed. "He said if Laura stayed, you'd throw away your future. The business deal, the family money, all of it. He was sure you'd choose her."

Daniel laughed once, with no humor in it.

"He was right."

Nurse Alvarez had already called hospital security, but Pritchard spoke before they arrived.

"She tried to contact you later," he said to Daniel. "Twice. Maybe three times. Your father intercepted one letter. I took another."

Eli's whole body went rigid. "Why?"

Pritchard looked suddenly old.

"Because by then she owed back rent. Because your mother was desperate. Because I was the kind of man who took money from powerful people and told myself it wasn't my fault."

Security escorted him out.

Silence rushed back into the room.

Then the monitor changed.

A small movement.

Laura's fingers twitched inside Eli's hand.

Her eyes opened.

Just a sliver at first.

Then wider.

Daniel stepped forward, and twenty years of hurt seemed to gather in the air between them. Laura looked from Eli to Daniel, and tears slipped into her hair.

"Danny?" she breathed.

He knelt beside her bed.

"I'm here."

Laura's eyes moved weakly toward Eli's neck, where the chain still hung loose.

"The ring," she whispered.

Eli lifted it off and placed it in Daniel's hand.

Laura gave the faintest smile. "I told him... you'd know me by that."

Daniel bent his head over her hand.

But Laura's next words changed everything.

"Don't let them take Eli."

Daniel looked up sharply. "Who?"

Laura struggled for breath.

"My diagnosis," she whispered. "They said pneumonia. It wasn't. Alvarez knows. Somebody changed my file."

Nurse Alvarez's face went pale.

She rushed to the chart.

Then she looked at Daniel and Eli with horror.

"Her biopsy report is missing."

"And the doctor who signed her discharge papers last month works for your father's medical foundation."