The Prisoner Son Returns as the Medical Saint

Chapter 12: Cheated

"That is completely different," she replied immediately, the coldness in her voice cracking slightly at the edges. "Peter and I have a business arrangement. It is professional."

"And so is mine with Vivien."

"It is not the same thing."

"Then explain to me how it is different," Edward replied. "Take your time. I am listening."

Silence.

Not a short one.

Eliza stood at the hospital window with the phone pressed to her ear and the city spread out below her, glittering and indifferent, and she found that the explanation she had been so certain existed a moment ago was not forming itself into words the way she needed it to.

Peter Henderson had taken her to three dinners in the past month. 

He had sat across from her in restaurants that cost more per plate than most people's weekly salary and talked about synergies and investment pipelines and what the Henderson name could do for her company's valuation. 

She had let him. She had worn dresses selected for those evenings and smiled across candlelit tables and accepted it all with the composure of a woman who had decided that practicality was more honest than sentiment.

And she had told herself it was professional.

Edward was still on the line, waiting.

"You need to apologize to my mother and brother," she said finally, her voice going flat and hard, retreating behind the only ground she had left. "What was done to them today was excessive and wrong and I expect you to acknowledge that."

Edward's voice came back without heat, without cruelty, without anything she could grab hold of.

"The day your family acknowledges what they did to me for three years," he replied quietly, "I will consider acknowledging something in return." Another pause. "I think we are finished here, Eliza."

The call ended.

She stood with the phone at her side and looked at the window without seeing it. 

The anger that moved through her chest was hot and immediate and she recognized, underneath it, something else entirely, something she pressed down before it could take a clear shape.

She turned and walked back to the bed.

Jenna looked up at her face and read it immediately with the accuracy of a woman who had spent thirty years studying her daughter's expressions.

"Forget him," Jenna said briskly, waving one hand as though clearing smoke. "He is trash. He was always trash and he will die trash. He is not worth the ten seconds it takes to think about him." She sat up slightly in her chair, her eyes sharpening. "Your company is what matters. That is where your focus needs to be. Was there not something coming up? Something important?"

The shift in topic worked the way Jenna always intended it to, pulling Eliza back into practical ground where she was steadier.

Eliza exhaled slowly and nodded, her mind beginning to move again.

"The Holden investment conference," she murmured, almost to herself. "Our company was approved to participate this year. It is one of the biggest opportunities we have had."

 She paused, her brow pulling together. "But I heard something recently. That something major has happened within the Holden family. Something serious."

She looked at the wall, thinking.

If the Holden family patriarch was unwell, which the hospital situation today seemed to confirm, then the annual conference, the one her entire public listing strategy had been partially built around, might not happen at all.

The thought settled in her chest cold and heavy.

"Do you think it will still go ahead?" Jenna asked, her voice dropping the performance entirely, genuine concern replacing it for the first time all evening.

Eliza did not answer.