The Loser Programmer Husband is a Quadrillionaire

Chapter 5

The morning traffic moved in a slow, heavy crawl, and Ethan tapped his fingers against the steering wheel while his mind replayed the night before in fragments. He kept glancing at the rearview mirror out of habit, and that was when he noticed it. A black sedan, three cars behind him, matching his every turn.

At first he told himself it was nothing. A coincidence. But when he switched lanes twice and the sedan followed both times, a cold feeling settled into his gut.

He reached for his phone, his thumb already hovering over the emergency call button, his eyes flicking between the road and the mirror.

Before he could press it, the sedan surged forward.

Metal crushed against metal. The impact threw Ethan sideways, his head cracking against the window, the world tilting and spinning as his car spun off the road in a shriek of tires and shattered glass. A scream tore out of his throat, raw and involuntary, before everything went black.

The last thing he saw, through a haze of blood and pain, was three men climbing out of the other car. One of them crouched near his window and lifted a phone, snapping a photo of him slumped against the wheel.

"Mission accomplished," the man said, his voice carrying a note of pride that made Ethan's stomach turn even as consciousness slipped away from him.

When Ethan opened his eyes again, the world was white and sterile. A steady beeping filled his ears. He tried to shift his legs, but nothing happened. No pain, no movement, nothing at all, like his body ended at the waist.

Panic rose fast and sharp in his throat.

The door opened, and Clara rushed in, her eyes red and swollen, mascara smudged beneath them like she had been crying for hours. She dropped into the chair beside his bed and took his hand in both of hers, pressing it to her lips.

"You're awake," she whispered, her voice trembling. "Thank god you're awake."

"Clara." Ethan's throat felt like sandpaper. "What happened to me? Why can't I feel my legs?"

Clara's face crumbled for half a second before she forced a shaky smile. "You were in an accident. But you're going to be fine, the doctors are taking good care of you."

"Clara." Ethan's eyes locked onto hers, sharp despite the fog of medication still clouding his mind. "Don't lie to me. Tell me what the doctor said."

Clara's lip trembled. She looked away, toward the window, toward anywhere but his face, and that silence told him everything before she even spoke.

"They said..." Her voice cracked. "They said there's a risk you might be paralyzed. The damage to your spine, it's severe. They won't know for certain until the swelling goes down, but the doctor said the chances are..." She couldn't finish the sentence.

Ethan stared up at the ceiling, and something inside him went completely still and hollow. His eyes lost their focus, glazed over with a pain too deep to show on his face anymore.

Clara squeezed his hand tighter, tears spilling down her cheeks freely now. "I'm going to find whoever did this to you," she said, her voice shaking with a fierce kind of anger. "I swear to you, Ethan, I will find them and make them pay for what they've done."

Ethan turned his head slightly and watched her cry over him, watched her make promises with such conviction in her wet eyes. But somewhere underneath the pain, a small bitter voice whispered that words were easy. Words cost nothing.

He said nothing back.

A nurse came in not long after and gently told Clara that Ethan needed rest. Clara kissed his forehead, promised she would return the next morning, and walked out of the room with her shoulders shaking.

Ethan watched her disappear through the door, and once she was gone, a short, humorless laugh escaped his lips, more breath than sound.

Will you really find him, Clara? Or will you find every excuse in the world to protect your precious business partner instead?

He knew exactly who was behind this. There was no other possibility. John Carvesh had lost face in front of the entire restaurant, had been kicked to the ground in public, and men like John did not forgive that kind of humiliation quietly. This was retaliation, plain and simple, and Ethan had no doubt at all.

He lay there in the dim hospital light, swallowed whole by despair, his legs numb and useless beneath the thin blanket. A soft knock came at the door, and the doctor stepped inside, his expression carefully neutral in the way doctors trained themselves to be when the news was bad.

"Mr. Morrison," the doctor said gently, pulling a chair closer to the bed. "I want to go over your test results with you."

"Just tell me the number," Ethan said quietly, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

The doctor hesitated. "The probability of permanent paralysis, based on the damage we're seeing, is very high. I won't give you false hope. We'll continue monitoring you, but you should prepare yourself for that possibility."

Ethan closed his eyes and said nothing for a long moment.

"I'd like to be alone now," he finally said, his voice flat and quiet. "Thank you, doctor."

The doctor nodded and left without another word, closing the door softly behind him.

Ethan lay in the silence of the room, staring up at the white ceiling tiles, his mind a storm of rage and grief and something colder underneath it all. He thought about Clara's tears, about her promises, about the way she had looked at John on the phone the night before with such relief in her voice. He thought about the blood type report still folded somewhere in his jacket pocket. He thought about his legs, dead weight beneath the blanket, and the life he had built now crumbling around him piece by piece.

He reached for his phone on the side table, his fingers trembling slightly as he scrolled through his contacts until he found the number he was looking for, buried deep, a name he had not called in years.

He pressed call and lifted the phone to his ear.

It rang twice before a voice answered, cool and composed, a woman's voice carrying an edge of authority that made even exhausted, broken Ethan sit up a little straighter against his pillows.

"It's me," Ethan said softly, his voice hoarse. He explained everything in a low, measured tone, the accident, the hospital, the paralysis, all of it laid bare without a trace of emotion left in his words.

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Several seconds of complete silence.

Then the voice spoke, calm and certain. "I'll be there."

The call ended. Ethan let the phone slip from his fingers onto the blanket, and exhaustion finally dragged him down into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

The next morning, the door to his hospital room opened again, and Clara walked back in.