2026-02-22 14:38:21Joshua raised an eyebrow, a cold smile playing at his lips. "So you're here to meet Lorenzo Gatti."
"Not that it's any of your business," Natalie said icily. "But yes. Some of us actually aspire to success."
"Then let me save you some time." Joshua's voice was sharp. "Mr. Gatti won't cooperate with people who have no moral standards."
Natalie's eyes flashed with fury. "Moral standards? You dare talk to me about morals? Your mother is lying in a hospital bed, critically ill, and you're here spending her medical expenses at the most expensive restaurant in the city! You're disgusting!"
The words carried through the dining hall. Nearby diners turned to stare, their expressions shifting from curiosity to disgust as they looked at Joshua.
"Did you hear that?" a woman at the next table whispered loudly to her companion. "He's using his dying mother's medical money to eat here?"
"That's shameful," her companion agreed, shaking his head. "What kind of son does that?"
"Absolutely despicable," another diner murmured.
Natalie's lips curved into a satisfied smile as the whispers spread. She raised her voice, ensuring everyone could hear. "Since you clearly don't care whether your mother lives or dies, I've made a decision. I'm cutting off all medical payments for her treatment. Completely. Permanently."
She paused for effect, her eyes cold and triumphant. "That way, you can't keep stealing life-saving money to feed your pathetic vanity."
"How terrible," someone whispered.
"The poor woman," another voice added. "Imagine having a son like that."
Joshua's laugh was harsh and bitter, cutting through the judgmental murmurs. "Medical payments? When have you ever actually paid them, Natalie?"
Natalie's expression flickered with confusion. "What are you talking about? I've paid your mother's bills every single month for three years—"
"No, you haven't." Joshua's voice was ice. "Every month, I had to beg your assistant for the money. Every single month, I submitted applications, hospital bills, doctor's notes. And every single time, what did I get? The same excuse: 'The company's finances are tight. Request denied.'"
Mark's face went pale. A thin sheen of sweat appeared on his forehead.
"That's ridiculous," Natalie said, but her tone had lost some of its certainty. "Mark would have told me if—"
"Would he?" Joshua's gaze fixed on Mark with laser precision. "Tell her, Mark. Tell her about all those applications I submitted. Tell her how you denied every single one."
"I—I did submit them," Mark stammered, his voice higher than normal. "Mrs. Cavesh approved the payments herself. If they didn't reach the hospital, that's not my fault—"
"You submitted them?" Joshua's laugh was dark. "Then where did the money go?"
The question hung in the air. Mark's face flushed red, then went white again. His hands clenched on the table.
Natalie's eyes narrowed as she looked between Joshua and Mark. "Mark?"
"He's lying!" Mark said quickly, desperately. "He's trying to create conflict between us! You know how manipulative he is!"
"Then show her the records," Joshua said quietly. "Show her the approved payments. The bank transfers. Prove me wrong."
Mark's mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. The silence was damning.
Just as Natalie's expression began to shift from certainty to doubt, Mark's eyes suddenly lit up. He pulled out his phone, his fingers flying across the screen.
"Wait! I remember now!" Mark's voice was triumphant. "I saw the news earlier today. There was a story about some mysterious tycoon who donated one hundred million dollars to Mercy General Hospital. He established a fund to help poor patients!"
He held up his phone, showing a news article. "That's why Joshua isn't afraid of you cutting off payments! He must have applied for assistance from this mysterious benefactor. That's how his mother's getting treatment now!"
Natalie's expression transformed from doubt back to cold contempt. She leaned back in her chair, her voice dripping with disdain. "So that's it. That's why you've been so fearless. You found another sugar daddy—some bleeding-heart philanthropist who doesn't know what kind of person you really are."
"Must be nice," Mark added, his confidence returning now that he'd deflected attention away from his embezzlement. "Living off other people's generosity. First Mrs. Cavesh, now some random billionaire. You're like a professional leech."
"I bet he manipulated that poor man," a nearby diner said loudly. "Probably told him some sob story."
"People like that have no shame," another agreed.
Natalie stood up from her chair, her voice carrying throughout the entire dining hall. "Let me make something very clear, Joshua. I will never extend a helping hand to someone as morally corrupt as you. Never."
She turned, addressing the room as if making a public declaration. "And I sincerely hope that whatever kind soul donated that money realizes what kind of person he's supporting. Joshua Hart is a liar, a manipulator, and a disgrace. He doesn't deserve anyone's charity."
Mark stood beside her, nodding vigorously. "Absolutely right, Mrs. Cavesh. The philanthropist should know the truth about who he's funding."
"The man has no principles," Natalie continued, her voice like ice. "No work ethic. No ambition. He's content to live off others while contributing nothing to society. And now he's found a new victim to exploit."
"Someone should tell that billionaire," a woman at a nearby table said. "He deserves to know his money is going to someone like this."
"What a waste of a hundred million dollars," her companion agreed. "Helping scum like him."
Joshua stood perfectly still, his face expressionless as the insults washed over him. Every word Natalie spoke, every judgment from the strangers around him—it all bounced off the armor he'd built over three years of humiliation.
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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
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