I failed my mother and sister, Returned as a Billionaire

CHAPTER 6

"You think you can just take that old bag and leave?" Mrs. Reed's voice had gone shrill enough to cut glass, and she was pointing at him with a finger that shook not from fear but from pure hatred. "Go ahead. Carry her out. She won't survive the night. Not one hospital in this city will touch her. Do you hear me? NOT ONE."

Kevin stopped in the hallway and turned his head just enough to see her face.

"Do you even know who my daughter is with right now?" Mrs. Reed was on her feet again, standing over Tyler like a hen over a broken egg, and her chin was lifted so high it looked like she was trying to smell something above the clouds.

 "Damon Whitlock. Young Master Whitlock. His family owns the Whitlock Medical Group. Every major hospital in this city, every specialist, every surgeon worth a damn, eighty percent of all medical care in this region belongs to them. If Damon says your mother does not get treated, she does not get treated. Period. You could carry that old sack of bones to every emergency room from here to the coast and they would leave her on the curb like a dead cat in a cardboard box."

Tyler coughed blood onto his own shirt and managed a wet, broken laugh from the floor. "You're DEAD. YOU BASTARD….No doctor in this city will even look at her. She is going to die in your arms on some hospital sidewalk and they won't even let you inside to use the bathroom.

Something shifted behind Kevin's eyes. Not anger….. Like something quieter, something colder, something that lived in a place most people never need to visit. 

A smile appeared on his face, slow and thin, and it was the kind of smile that made both of them stop talking at the same time.

"Eighty percent," Kevin repeated softly. "So eighty percent of the hospitals belong to the Whitlock family."

Mrs. Reed blinked at him.

"Then what about the remaining twenty percent?"

Her mouth opened and closed once before the arrogance found its way back into her spine. 

She lifted her chin even higher and looked at him the way a queen looks at a peasant who has asked to sit on the throne.

"The remaining twenty percent? Those are places like the Royal Hospital, you idiot. Those are reserved for people who actually matter. Government officials. Billionaires. Old money families who have been running this country since before your grandmother was scrubbing floors for a living. Trash like you would not even know which street to turn on to find the front gate."

Kevin shifted his mother's weight against his chest and pulled out the phone Elena had programmed her number into less than an hour ago. But it was not Elena's number he dialed. It was the other one. 

The one his master had written on a scrap of paper and tucked inside the silver ring six months before he disappeared, the number the old man had told him never to use unless the world was falling down around him.

The phone rang twice.

A voice answered on the other end. An old voice, thin and careful, belonging to a man whose face appeared on medical journals and international news broadcasts and the walls of every teaching hospital in the country. The voice was trembling.

"Master, are you back? “

“No.”

“This number," the old man on the other end whispered. "This number has not been active in twelve years. Who is this?"

"My name is Kevin Hale. I am Master Song's final disciple."

The silence on the other end lasted three full seconds. When the voice returned, every trace of authority had been replaced by something close to reverence.

"What do you need from me, sir? Anything. Name it."

"Prepare your highest-level VIP ward at the Royal Hospital. Mobilize every senior specialist on staff. My mother is critically ill and I am bringing her in now."

"It will be done before you arrive, sir. I will oversee her care personally."

Kevin hung up without another word.

Mrs. Reed stared at him with her mouth hanging open, but only for a moment. Then she laughed, loud and sharp, and slapped her own thigh like she had just watched a dog try to open a refrigerator.

"Oh that is rich. That is absolutely precious. You just pretended to call the Royal Hospital." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Tyler, did you hear that? The jailbird just called the Royal Hospital and ordered them around like he owns the place. What did you do, Kevin, save the number from a TV commercial?"

Tyler wheezed a laugh from the floor despite the blood on his chin. "Bro is delusional. Absolutely delusional. The Royal Hospital would not admit his mother if she was the last patient on earth."

Kevin did not look at either of them.

His eyes had moved past them now, scanning the rooms, the hallways, every corner of the house he could see from where he stood.

"Where is Lily?"

The laughter died.

"Where is my sister?"

Mrs. Reed's face twitched, just once, just enough for Kevin to see the truth hiding behind her teeth before a single word came out.

"Your sister?" She waved one hand like she was shooing a fly. "That little tramp? She left on her own. Ran off chasing some rich man, same way stray cats follow whoever puts out a bowl of milk. Nobody forced her. Nobody even noticed when she walked out the door. She is probably on her back somewhere living her best life, just like her brother taught her."

"You're lying."

"I am telling you what happened. If that little alley cat decided to spread her legs for someone with money, that is her choice, not mine."

Kevin set his mother down on the couch, very gently, very slowly, the way a man sets down a glass he knows will break if he lets go too fast. Then he crossed the room in three steps and his hand closed around Tyler's throat like a vice.

Tyler's eyes went wide. His feet left the ground. His hands clawed at Kevin's wrist and found nothing but iron under the skin.

"I will ask you one more time." Kevin's voice was so quiet it barely disturbed the air between them. "Where is Lily?"