2026-02-22 14:36:29Joshua's lips curved into a bitter smile as Natalie's words echoed in his mind. Admit your mistake. Apologize properly. Then we'll talk.
If his mother died today—and without treatment, she would—what would be the point of Natalie paying for medication? There would be no one left to save.
But Natalie didn't care. She had already turned away, her heels clicking sharply against the marble floor as she strode toward the exit. Mark followed close behind, and just before disappearing through the glass doors, he glanced back at Joshua. The smile he gave was vicious, triumphant—the look of a man who had won.
Joshua stood frozen, the crumpled hospital documents still clutched in his hands. Then he moved, his phone already out, scrolling desperately through his contacts. There had to be someone—anyone—who could help.
He called his college roommate first.
"David? It's Joshua. Listen, I know this is sudden, but I need your help. My mother needs emergency surgery and I need to borrow—"
"Joshua?" David's voice was cautious. "Man, I heard you married into the Cavesh family. Aren't they loaded? Why are you calling me?"
"It's complicated. Please, I just need one hundred thousand—"
"One hundred thousand?" David laughed, the sound nervous and uncomfortable. "Dude, I don't have that kind of money. And even if I did... look, I'm sorry about your mom, but I can't get involved in whatever's going on between you and your wife. That's above my pay grade."
The line went dead.
Joshua tried another number. Then another. Each conversation followed the same pattern.
"The Cavesh family's son-in-law is begging for money? That's rich."
"Sorry, Joshua. I don't lend money to family, and we haven't talked in years."
"You married a millionaire and you're calling me for a loan? What kind of scam is this?"
By the eighth call, Joshua had stopped counting the rejections. His hands shook as he dialed his former supervisor from the part-time job he'd worked before marrying Natalie.
"Mr. Patterson? It's Joshua Hart. I used to work in your warehouse—"
"I remember you." The man's voice was gruff. "Didn't you quit to become some rich woman's husband? How's that working out?"
Joshua swallowed his pride. "My mother is dying. I need to borrow money for her surgery. I'll pay you back with interest—"
"Let me stop you right there, kid." Mr. Patterson's laugh was harsh. "You made your choice. You picked the easy life—or what you thought would be easy. Now you're calling me, a guy who barely makes fifty grand a year, asking for a loan? Where's your rich wife?"
"Please—"
"The answer's no. And here's some free advice: a man who can't stand on his own two feet isn't much of a man at all. You want money? Earn it yourself."
Click.
Joshua's vision blurred. He found himself at the hospital twenty minutes later, standing in the sterile hallway outside the ICU. Through the window, he could see his mother's frail form, tubes and wires connecting her to machines that beeped steadily.
A doctor emerged from the ICU, the same one who had called him earlier. Dr. Morrison's face was professionally sympathetic but firm.
"Mr. Hart, I understand your situation is difficult, but—"
"Please." Joshua grabbed the doctor's sleeve, not caring how desperate he looked. "Just perform the surgery. I'll get you the money. I'll work it off. I'll do anything—just save her first."
Dr. Morrison gently extracted his arm. "Mr. Hart, I wish I could help. But hospital policy is clear. We cannot perform elective surgeries without payment arrangements in place."
"Elective?" Joshua's voice rose. "She's dying!"
"Without the surgery, yes, her prognosis is poor. But it's not an immediate emergency room situation, which means different rules apply." The doctor's voice softened slightly. "I'm truly sorry. If you can secure the funds, we'll operate immediately. But my hands are tied."
"There has to be something—"
"Talk to our financial services department. They might be able to arrange a payment plan, but for this amount..." Dr. Morrison trailed off, the unspoken words hanging heavy between them. No one will give you credit.
The doctor walked away, leaving Joshua alone in the hallway. He slumped against the wall, sliding down until he was sitting on the cold floor. His mother was dying. His wife had abandoned him. No one would help.
A television mounted on the wall droned on, tuned to a financial news channel. Joshua barely registered it until a particular headline caught his attention.
"Breaking news in the tech sector today," the anchor announced, her voice bright with enthusiasm. "Galaxy Tech, a company many wrote off as vaporware years ago, has shocked the world by successfully going public after developing what they're calling the most advanced artificial intelligence system in human history."
Joshua's head snapped up.
The screen showed footage of a gleaming corporate building, the Galaxy Tech logo prominent. Charts displayed stock prices climbing at impossible angles.
"The company raised initial funds through crowdsourcing nearly eight years ago," the anchor continued. "After years of silence, most investors withdrew their money, writing off their losses. But one investor held onto their shares—an 80% stake that, based on today's valuation, is worth approximately one hundred billion dollars."
Joshua's mind reeled. Galaxy Tech. He knew that name. When he'd just graduated college, young and idealistic, he'd seen their fundraising announcement. Something about their sincerity, their vision, had moved him. He'd invested five hundred dollars—every spare cent he had at the time.
Then his mother got sick. In the chaos of medical bills and desperate attempts to keep her alive, he'd forgotten completely about that investment.
His phone rang, the sound jarring in the quiet hallway. Unknown number. His hand trembled as he answered.
"Hello?"
"Am I speaking with Joshua Hart?" The woman's voice was professional, crisp.
"Yes, this is Joshua."
"Mr. Hart, my name is Rebecca Sterling. I'm calling from Galaxy Tech's investor relations department. I have some rather extraordinary news for you."
Joshua's heart pounded. "What news?"
"Our records show you were one of our earliest investors. You purchased shares for five hundred dollars eight years ago and never withdrew your investment. Is that correct?"
"Yes, I—I forgot about it."
"Well, Mr. Hart, I'm delighted to inform you that as of today, you are the majority shareholder of Galaxy Tech with an 80% stake. Congratulations—you've just become our chairman."
The hallway spun. Joshua gripped the phone so hard his knuckles turned white. "That's—that's not possible."
"It's very possible, Mr. Hart. Additionally, we owe you accumulated dividends from the past several years. That transfer has already been processed. You should receive confirmation momentarily."
"How much?" Joshua's voice was barely a whisper.
"Three point five billion dollars, Mr. Hart. Welcome to Galaxy Tech."
The line went dead. Joshua stared at his phone, unable to process what he'd just heard. Then his phone chimed—a text message notification from Star Bank.
With shaking hands, he opened it.
STAR BANK ALERT: Your account ending in 7742 has received a wire transfer of $3,500,000,000.00 from Galaxy Tech Corporation. Current balance: $3,500,000,127.43.
Joshua read the message once. Twice. Three times. The numbers didn't change.
Three and a half billion dollars.
He looked through the window at his mother, still fighting for her life. Then he looked down at the phone in his hand—at the number that had just made him one of the richest men in the country.
Everything had just changed.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 152
The nurse hurriedly explained what happened to the hospital director.Sandra moved with the specific, urgent efficiency of a woman who had been waiting for exactly this opportunity and was not going to waste a single second of it. She positioned herself beside Dr. Matthews with the practiced proximity of a professional briefing a superior — close enough that the conversation was between them rather than for the room, but pitched at the volume that ensured Natalie and Mark received the general shape of what was being communicated even if they couldn't capture every word.She was fast and she was thorough.The arrival. The visitor request. The claimed relationship. The billing record discrepancy. The transaction screenshots that had appeared at a convenient moment on Mark's phone. The tears. The recovery. The demand for the director. The specific, final suggestion that Elizabeth Hart might be faking her critical illness.Dr. Matthews listened.He listened with the still, focused attenti
Chapter 151
Just as things were about to escalate, the hospital director appeared.He came through the corridor connecting the reception area to the administrative wing — not from the main entrance, not from the ward elevators, but from the internal pathway that senior staff used when moving between departments. He was carrying a tablet and moving with the purposeful, unhurried stride of a man who had a destination and was covering the distance efficiently.Dr. Gerald Matthews had been heading to one of the senior physicians' offices.A nine o'clock consultation. He had been three corridors away when the sound reached him — not the ordinary ambient noise of a hospital operating at night, but the specific, elevated quality of raised voices in a public space. The particular frequency of a disturbance that a hospital director learned, through years of being a hospital director, to identify immediately and respond to without delegation.He had stopped walking.He had listened for four seconds.Then h
Chapter 150
The nurse was displeased to hear that.Sandra's expression did the specific, controlled thing that experienced professionals' expressions did when they had been spoken to in a way they found genuinely offensive but were managing within the constraints of their environment — not the full, unfiltered display of what they were actually feeling, but the compressed, visible version of it that communicated the substance of the feeling without acting on it in ways that could be reported to a supervisor.She had been called out of her lane.She had been told that her opinion was neither requested nor required.She had been compared, unfavorably and by implication, to a woman who didn't understand what it meant to have a difficult marriage.She held all of this with the specific, professional steadiness of a woman who had been holding difficult things in hospital environments for twenty years and had developed, through that practice, a very high threshold for what caused her to lose her compos
Chapter 149
The nurse suddenly shouted at them.It was not the shouting of someone who had lost control — Sandra did not lose control, that was not what her twenty years of hospital work had produced in her — but the specific, sharp, raised-voice intervention of a woman who had been standing in the background watching something develop and had arrived at the point where standing in the background was no longer something she was willing to do."Stop," she said.The word came out with the flat, commanding authority of someone who had stopped situations in hospital rooms before and had developed the specific vocal quality that made stopping happen. It cut through the ambient tension of the reception area with the clean, immediate effect of something that required no repetition.Natalie looked at her.Mark looked at her.Carol, at the desk, looked at her with the slightly wide-eyed expression of a junior colleague who had not expected the charge nurse to enter the situation at this specific volume.S
Chapter 148
Mark rejoiced even more, calming himself.It happened internally — the specific, private quality of satisfaction that a man kept entirely behind his face when the face was still being watched. He stood in the hospital reception area with the composed, attentive expression of a loyal assistant supporting his employer through a difficult moment, and underneath that expression, in the separate accounting he kept for his own consumption, something warm and thoroughly satisfied was moving.It had worked.The transaction records. The two hundred thousand dollar monthly transfers. The consistent narration. The clean, official-looking display of a banking application showing three years of payments flowing from Cavesh Industries to Joshua Hart's personal account.None of it was real.That was the specific, private truth that Mark Sullivan was holding behind his composed expression while Natalie declared her intention to sue her husband — the truth that he was not going to share with anyone in
Chapter 147
The lady had never thought her ex-husband could be someone shameless like that.The thought arrived with the specific, cold clarity of a conclusion that had been building through an evening of accumulated evidence and had now, with the transaction records still visible on Mark's phone screen and the nurse's billing discrepancy sitting in the room like an unanswered question, arrived at its final form.Joshua Hart.She had married him. She had housed him. She had given him her name and her family's resources and three years of the specific, sustained tolerance that had cost her more than she had admitted to anyone including herself. She had looked at him across three years of domestic coexistence and had seen — had been certain she had seen — a man who was dependent and directionless and incapable of the kind of sustained, deliberate deception that the transaction records were now suggesting.She had been wrong about a great many things tonight.But this — this specific conclusion — sh
You may also like
Trillionaire they never noticed
Alfred ifeanyi75.1K viewsI Married a Beautiful Boss After the Breakup
Seafarer's Strike203.2K viewsZILLIONAIRE’S COMEBACK.
Becca72.4K viewsWAR GOD'S REVENGE
Ardy-sensei96.7K viewsThe Househusband Was a Hidden Monarch
Maryam Alabi 987 viewsRise Of The True Heir
Favoured217 viewsReborn in New York: The regret Reversal system
JA290 viewsDiscreetly the General's son
The_Juice197 views