The Consortium Heir: My Stepsisters are obsessed with me

Chapter 2: Half a Million

The hospital waiting room smelled like bleach and bad coffee. Anthony sat beside his mother's bed, but he wasn't really there.

Just a few hours ago, she had been standing in their kitchen, smiling at him and joking about calling Linda. Now she was unconscious, surrounded by machines keeping her alive.

His fingers tightened around the hospital bracelet on his wrist.

The doctors had stabilized her. That was the good news. But now they were coming to give the verdict, to tell him exactly what had gone wrong.

And the way they looked at him when they walked past made his stomach twist.

He'd been here for hours. He'd held her hand until his fingers went numb. He'd begged every god he could think of, and now all he could do was wait.

A few seconds later, or maybe it was an hour, time had stopped meaning anything, the doctor pushed through the double doors, scanning the room.

"Anthony Hudson?"

Anthony shot to his feet so fast he nearly stumbled over his own chair. "Yes!"

The doctor approached, his face calm but exhausted. "I have bad news."

Anthony's stomach tightened. "What… what's wrong?"

The doctor sighed, rubbing his forehead before meeting Anthony's eyes “Your mother’s condition is much more serious than we initially thought.”

Anthony felt his stomach sink. “What’s wrong with her?”

The doctor took a breath before answering.

"She has an aggressive metastatic spinal cancer. It has progressed to an advanced stage, and she needs emergency surgery."

The words slammed into Anthony like a sledgehammer.

"Surgery?" The words felt foreign in his mouth. "But… but she was doing fine. The medicine was helping—" His voice cracked.

"I understand," the doctor said, softening slightly. "Unfortunately, some conditions progress faster than expected."

He hesitated, then pushed himself to say the rest.  "The truth is, your mother is currently on life support as her body's too weak to keep her breathing and her vitals stable. She needs immediate surgery."

"Then do the surgery! What are you waiting for?!"

The doctor sighed, his shoulders sagging like he'd had this conversation a hundred times and hated every one of them.

 "Unfortunately, we can't proceed."

"Why not?!" Anthony's voice cracked, panic creeping in like a cold tide.

The doctor hesitated again. Then he said it, flat and careful, like he was reading from a script.

"The surgery is very expensive. Your mother doesn't have health insurance, and based on her financial history, the hospital won't move forward without payment upfront."

Anthony clenched his fists so hard his nails bit into his palms. "How much for it?"

"I need you to understand, this isn't a normal medical bill. Isn’t there somebody you can call, like your father?"

"No, it’s just me.” Anthony's breath hitched “I will pay for it. Just tell me how much it costs!"

"The surgery itself is not the problem. Your mother needs a specialist team, experimental treatment, and post-operative care.”

“How much, Doctor?” Anthony demanded.

The doctor looked away. “The estimated cost is $500,000."

For a few seconds Anthony couldn't hear anything at all — the beeping, the voices in the hall, all of it just dropped away.

Five hundred thousand dollars wasn't a number. It was a wall, and he had no way to climb it.

"I don't have that kind of money," he said finally. “Can we at least keep her here until, I am able to raise the money?”

The doctor sighed. "Keeping her on life support alone requires an immediate payment of twenty thousand dollars."

Anthony went still. Twenty thousand — just to keep her alive. "That's only the life support?"

“Yes and…” The doctor checked his watch. "I'm sorry, but if the money isn’t arranged within six hours, we will have no choice other than to take her off life support”

Take her off. The words echoed in his skull.

"You mean if I don't find the money," he said slowly, "you're going to let her die?"

"I understand this is difficult, but the hospital has rules it has to follow." He answered, then turned and walked away.

Half a million dollars for the surgery and twenty thousand dollars just to keep her life for an extra day.

Those numbers might as well have been a death sentence. His legs gave out and he collapsed into the nearest chair, and turned to her.

She looked small. That was the worst part. His mother, the strongest person he knew, lay unconscious with tubes running in and out of her arms, the machines beeping in a slow, steady rhythm that was the only proof she was still fighting.

Anthony reached out and held her hand. It was cold.

"I'm here, Mom," he whispered. "I'm going to fix this. I promise."

"Fuck." The word came out broken. "Fuck." He lowered his head. "What am I supposed to do?"

He pulled out his phone and checked the bank balance. $314. He stared at it, then let out a laugh that had no humor in it at all.

$314.

The number glowed up at him like a bad joke. Every cent he had in the world. It wasn't even one percent of what she needed.

And that was when the guilt really sank its teeth in.

Because he should have had more. He could have had more. All those years of double shifts, all that money that had passed through his hands — and where had it gone?

His fingers tightened around the phone, and the anger that rose up wasn't really anger — it was regret, deep and ugly, because he knew exactly where the money had gone.

Linda.

He'd spent it all on Linda. On her social media influencer life. The photoshoots, the fancy dinners, the trips she "needed" for content.

His chest went tight thinking about it, all of the money he should have been putting toward his mother's medicine. Instead, he'd spent it on dinners, designer clothes, gifts.

The Chanel bag he'd saved months for because Linda said every influencer needed to maintain a certain image, because she'd told him it mattered, and even when he barely had enough for himself, he'd done it anyway, because he loved her and wanted her happy.

And all of it had gotten him nothing. His mother was dying. His job was gone. His savings were gone. And the woman he'd given everything to had betrayed him for it.

His chest tightened until it hurt to breathe.

His nails dug into his palms. "How did I let this happen?" His voice shook. "How?"

The tears came before he could stop them, hot and silent, running down his face while the machines kept beeping.

He pressed his fist against his mouth to keep from making a sound. His mother hated seeing him cry. Even unconscious, he felt like she'd know.

"Fuck," he breathed into the empty room. "Fuck."

What the hell was he going to do? Four hours. Half a million dollars. No job, no savings, no family, nobody.

How could things possibly get any worse?

He actually asked the question out loud, alone in that hospital room, like an idiot.

The universe, it turned out, took that personally.

His phone rang. It was a call from his best friend Patrick. For a second, he almost let it go; he didn't have the energy for a conversation. But he picked up anyway.

"Hey, man. Not really a good time." Anthony wiped his face with his sleeve.

"Yeah, I bet it isn't." Patrick's voice was strange. "What's up with Linda? Your girlfriend?"

Anthony closed his eyes. "Patrick, I really can't do this right now."

"Have you seen the video she posted?"

"What video?"

"Man… you need to check it out. I'm sending you the link now."

The call ended.

A few seconds later, a notification slid in from Patrick with a link.

Anthony's first instinct was to ignore it; he had bigger problems, his mother's life hanging by a thread was the only thing that should have mattered right now.

But something in Patrick's voice had bothered him enough that he tapped it anyway.

It opened straight to Linda's I*******m, and sitting at the top of her page, posted an hour ago, was a video that already had thousands of views.

He pressed play.

Linda appeared on screen, sitting in front of a perfectly arranged background, eyes red and glossy, camera angled in that perfect, practiced way that made her look fragile and beautiful at the same time.

She looked like she'd been crying. But knowing Linda, Anthony couldn't tell whether those tears were real or something she'd rehearsed in front of the mirror.

"Hi, everyone." Her voice trembled — on cue. "I really didn't want to make this video. But after what happened today, I don't have a choice anymore."

Anthony's stomach turned to stone.

"I honestly didn't want to talk about this," she said, sighing for the camera. "But people deserve to know the truth."

Anthony's heart started pounding.

"I spent years trying to support someone who refused to appreciate me."

Comments were already piling up underneath — people cheering her on, calling him names, calling him selfish.

"Let me tell you what that relationship was really like. I carried that man. I managed him. I took care of him like a charity project. In two years, do you know how much money he gave me? Nothing. Not one cent. I paid for everything myself, because I'm an independent woman."

Nothing? I bought you a Chanel bag with my lunch money. I paid your rent when your sponsorships dried up. YOU—

Anthony's vision went red but kept watching. He couldn't stop. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion, and he was the car.

The comments exploded further. "A person like him should be grateful someone like me even gave him a chance."

Anthony's breathing turned heavy. Then she said the words that made his whole body go cold.

"All he ever cared about was one thing." A pause. "His sick mother."

The video cut to a photo — his mother, lying in a hospital bed, weak, exposed. He recognized it instantly.

"Yes, I visited his sick mother," Linda's voice continued over the image. "I tried to be supportive. But instead of appreciating everything I did for him, he had the audacity to abandon me."

The comments kept scrolling — people furious, but not at her. At him.

"Omg the audacity of that guy 😤"

"Wait, he broke up with HER? With a face like that? 💀"

"Poor Linda, she's too good for him fr"

"Find this man's @, he deserves to be exposed"

Anthony sat there in the dark hospital room, phone shaking in his hand, his mother's quiet breathing the only sound in the world.

"What the fuck," he whispered.