My Ex-Convict Beggar Husband Is Now a Trillionaire

Chapter 3

Adrian scrambled to his feet and ran after the nurses, shoving his phone screen in front of the head nurse's face.

"Wait! Look at this. I have money. I can pay everything right now. Please don't throw her out!"

The nurse glanced at the screen for half a second. Then she looked at the other nurses, and all three of them burst out laughing at the same time. The sound bounced off the lobby walls, sharp and cruel.

"Oh my God, are you serious right now?" The head nurse wiped her eye with the back of her hand, still laughing. "You just watched the news about that billionaire and now you're showing us a fake screenshot? What did you do, edit it in the bathroom? You couldn't even wait five minutes to make it believable."

"It's not fake. That's my account. I own those shares."

"You?" She looked him up and down, from his hollow cheeks to his prison clothes hanging off his body like rags. "You own eighty billion dollars? A man who smells like he hasn't seen soap in a year? A man whose own mother couldn't afford a hospital bed?"

The other nurses were still giggling behind her, covering their mouths with their hands like schoolgirls watching something pathetic.

"You know what this is?" The head nurse grabbed his wrist and shoved him backward so hard his phone nearly flew out of his hand. "This is harassment. If you don't get out of my face in the next ten seconds, I am calling the police. And trust me, a man who just got out of prison does not want the police showing up again."

Adrian hit the ground for the second time that day. His palms scraped against the concrete outside the hospital entrance. His mother was lying on the bench where they had dumped her, barely conscious, her thin arm hanging off the side like she did not have the strength to hold it up.

He crawled over to her and held her hand. It was cold. Too cold.

Then he heard the engines.

Not one car. Several. The sound was deep and smooth, the kind that only comes from machines that cost more than most people's houses. Adrian looked up and saw a fleet of black luxury vehicles pulling into the hospital driveway, each one carrying a small silver logo on the door. Skyward Technology.

The doors opened in unison. From the lead car, a woman stepped out. She was tall, dressed in a tailored black suit, her hair pulled back in a way that made her look like she had never been late to anything in her life. Her eyes scanned the scene, and the moment they landed on Adrian, something shifted in her expression. Recognition. Relief.

She walked toward him with long, purposeful steps and stopped just in front of him, then lowered her voice so only he could hear.

"Mr. Adrian. My name is Sarah. I am the Executive Secretary of the Board at Skyward Technology." She glanced at Mary on the bench and her jaw tightened. "We have investigated everything that has happened to you over the past three years. We know what was done to you. And we are here to help."

Adrian's eyes burned. Three years of cold cells and silence and nobody caring whether he lived or died, and now this woman was standing in front of him like he mattered.

"My mother." His voice cracked on the word. "Please. Save my mother first. She's barely breathing."

Sarah smiled, warm and certain, and raised her hand. The doors of the trailing vehicles opened and several men stepped out. They were not ordinary doctors. They wore immaculate suits with gold pins on their lapels, carrying cases of equipment that gleamed under the hospital lights.

The head nurse, who had been watching from the entrance with her arms folded, suddenly went pale. Her clipboard slipped a few inches in her grip.

"That's the Hands of God," she whispered to the nurse beside her. Her voice was completely different now. Small. Afraid. "That's the national premier medical team. They only treat presidents and billionaires."

The hospital doors burst open and a man in a grey suit came rushing out, straightening his tie as he ran. Peter, the hospital Dean, was sweating through his shirt as he hurried toward the convoy with his hands already extended for a handshake.

"Welcome, welcome! This is such an honor. What brings you to our hospital?"

Sarah did not take his hand. She looked at him the way someone looks at a stain on a tablecloth.

"We are not here for your hospital. We are here to retrieve a patient."

Peter's smile faltered. He turned to the nurses with wide, panicked eyes.

"What patient? What is she talking about?"

The head nurse's face had gone from white to grey. She swallowed hard and looked at the floor.

"We were just removing a defaulted patient, sir. She hadn't paid her bills in over a year."

Adrian stepped forward, and this time his voice did not shake.

"I tried to pay. I showed them my phone. I begged them to let my mother stay. They laughed in my face. They called us dogs. They shoved me to the ground twice and didn't even bother to look at the screen."

Peter's head snapped toward the nurses. His face was red and getting redder.

"Is this true?"

The head nurse opened her mouth, but the younger one beside her muttered under her breath, just loud enough for everyone to hear.

"Well, he was dirty and smelly. How were we supposed to believe him?"

Peter's hand moved before anyone could react. The slap caught the young nurse across the face so hard her head turned sideways. She gasped and stumbled, pressing her palm to her cheek with tears already forming.

Sarah watched the whole thing with a thin, cold smile.

"Save the performance, Dean. We will settle whatever bill is owed and take the patient with us."

Peter spun around to Adrian, his hands clasped together like a man praying.

"Sir, please. There is no need to leave. We will give your mother the finest room in this hospital. Everything free of charge. I will personally oversee her care."

Adrian looked at him for a long moment, then looked at the nurses trembling behind him, then looked at his mother on the bench, still barely moving, still cold.

"You want to know something? If you had refused to treat my mother because she couldn't pay, I would have understood. That's business. Hospitals need money to survive." He took a slow breath. "But your people dragged a dying woman across the floor in her bare feet. They called her a stray dog. They threw her on a bench outside in the cold like she was garbage. That is not business. That is cruelty."

He turned to Sarah and nodded.

"Take us out of here."

Peter stood frozen in the driveway with his mouth half open and nothing left to say. Behind him, the nurses huddled together like animals caught in headlights, their faces white, their hands shaking at their sides.