When the Loser Became rich heir

CHAPTER 4

"It went through!" Luca shouted, his voice echoing down the corridor. "The payment was successful! One hundred thousand dollars! Check it!"

The crowd had gone quiet. Every eye fixed on Patricia, whose face had shifted from pale to an ugly mottled red. She stared at her phone, then at Luca, then back at her phone.

"So what?" she snapped, her voice regaining some of its bite. "Who knows how much you actually paid? Your phone was frozen solid for five minutes. Maybe you sent ten dollars. Maybe ten cents. With that piece of junk, you probably couldn't even type the right numbers."

Luca's heart stuttered. He hadn't seen the confirmation clearly—just the flash of green, the word "Success." How many zeros had he actually entered? Ten thousand? Twenty? He'd been so desperate, so frantic—

"I can check," he said quickly. "Let me see my transaction history. I'll show you exactly what I paid."

"Sure you will." Patricia's lip curled. "Pull up a fake screenshot? Photoshop some numbers? We see that every day, Mr. Billionaire." She made air quotes around the last word, drawing fresh snickers from the crowd.

Luca grabbed for his phone, but Patricia held it behind her back.

"Security!" she called out. Two burly guards appeared at the end of the hall. "Remove these people. Both of them. Off hospital property immediately."

"You can't do that! My mother needs surgery!"

"Your mother needs a miracle." Patricia's voice dripped with contempt. "And you need a reality check. You're a liar and a beggar, and I'm done wasting hospital resources on trash." She gestured at the stretcher where his mother lay, barely conscious. "Take them both. Let them beg on the street corner. That's where people like them belong."

The guards moved forward. The crowd parted to watch.

Luca positioned himself in front of his mother's stretcher. "Touch her and I'll—"

"You'll what?" One of the guards, a mountain of a man with a shaved head, loomed over him. "Sue us with your ten dollars? Call your lawyer with your broken phone?" He grabbed Luca's shoulder and shoved him hard against the wall. "Move, or I'll move you."

Luca's head cracked against the tile. Stars exploded behind his eyes.

The second guard grabbed the stretcher and began pushing it toward the elevator. His mother moaned—a thin, pathetic sound that cut through Luca like a knife.

"Mom!" He tried to push off the wall, but the guard held him pinned.

Patricia watched with a satisfied smirk. "That's right. Take out the trash. This hospital is for people who can actually pay, not—"

"Excuse me." A harried voice cut through the chaos. A middle-aged man in a rumpled suit came rushing down the stairs, nearly tripping over his own feet. His tie was askew, his forehead beaded with sweat. "Is the director here? Is anyone from administration available?"

Patricia's expression shifted from smug to obsequious in an instant. "Mr. Ricci! Finance director! What are you doing down here?"

Ricci waved a tablet frantically. "We have a situation. A major situation. The hospital just received a transfer—one hundred million dollars."

The corridor went dead silent.

Patricia blinked. "I'm sorry, what?"

"One hundred million dollars." Ricci thrust the tablet toward her as if she could somehow absorb the information through proximity. "It came through about four minutes ago. I've never seen anything like it. No prior communication, no negotiation—just a straight wire transfer of one hundred million dollars into our operating account."

Patricia stared at the screen. Her lips moved silently, counting zeros.

"This is enough to buy this entire hospital," Ricci continued, running a hand through his thinning hair. "Twice. I need to find the director. I need to find out who sent this. The name on the transfer is—"

He squinted at the tablet.

The guard still held Luca against the wall.

The crowd held its breath.

Patricia's face had gone white again. Whiter than before. Almost translucent.

"Well?" she demanded, her voice shrill. "Who sent it? Some tech billionaire? One of the Benedetti family's holding companies?"

Ricci frowned, tapping the screen. "No, it's an individual. Name's familiar, actually. I just saw it somewhere—" He looked up, scanning the crowd absently. His eyes landed on Luca. Passed over him. Then snapped back.

"Wait a minute."

Patricia followed his gaze. Her mouth opened.

Ricci walked toward Luca, tablet extended. "You're Luca Romano? The Luca Romano whose mother is a patient here?"

The guard's grip loosened slightly. Luca pushed free, straightening his shirt with shaking hands.

"Yes. That's me."

Ricci looked at the tablet. Looked at Luca. Looked at the tablet again.

"The transfer," he said slowly, "came from an account registered to Luca Romano. The payment memo says, and I quote, 'For Margaret Romano 's surgery and any additional care she may require. Use the rest however you want.'"

The silence in the corridor was absolute.

Patricia's face had gone through white, through green, and was now settling on a sort of grayish-beige. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

The guard who'd been pushing the stretcher had frozen mid-step. His partner slowly released Luca's shoulder as if realized he was touching something radioactive.

The crowd—patients' families, orderlies, nurses, the young woman who'd been recording on her phone—all stared at Luca with identical expressions of disbelief.

Patricia found her voice first. It came out as a croak.

"That's—that's not possible. He's—he's—" She gestured vaguely at Luca, at his Payless shoes, his cracked phone, his desperate, frantic eyes. "Look at him! He's nobody! He's trash!"

Ricci's frown deepened. "The bank confirmed the transfer. It's real. One hundred million dollars, from Luca Romano to this hospital." He looked at Patricia with sudden suspicion. "What exactly is going on here? Why was I just called down to deal with a hundred-million-dollar transfer while you're having this man physically removed?"

Patricia's mouth opened and closed like a fish on dry land.

The younger nurse with the POS machine suddenly gasped. "The payment! The hundred thousand—if he sent a hundred million, then the surgery payment must have—"

Ricci's head whipped toward her. "What surgery payment?"

"For his mother. He was trying to pay for emergency surgery. We were—" She stopped, her eyes darting to Patricia.

"You were what?" Ricci demanded.

No one answered.

Luca stepped forward. His voice was steady now, though his hands still trembled.

"I tried to pay one hundred thousand dollars for my mother's emergency surgery. Your head nurse accused me of lying. She called security to throw us both out on the street." He paused. "While I was pinned against that wall, apparently I accidentally transferred one hundred million instead."

Someone in the crowd laughed—a shocked, nervous sound.

Ricci stared at Luca for a long moment. Then he turned to Patricia.

"Is this true?"

Patricia's face crumpled. "I didn't—he looked—how was I supposed to know—"

"You weren't supposed to know." Ricci's voice was cold. "You were supposed to follow protocol. Process payments in good faith. Treat patients with dignity regardless of their appearance." He looked at the crowd, at the stretcher, at the guards who'd been manhandling a dying woman. "Instead, you nearly threw out a man who just donated one hundred million dollars to this hospital."

Patricia swayed on her feet.

Ricci turned back to Luca. His entire demeanor had shifted—respectful, almost deferential.

"Mr. Romano, on behalf of this hospital, I apologize profusely for the treatment you and your mother have received. Your mother will be moved to the best private room immediately. The finest surgeons will handle her case. All costs are covered, and any additional funds you've provided will be used to establish a charitable foundation in your name."

Luca barely heard him. He was watching his mother's stretcher being gently turned around, the guards who'd been pushing her toward the elevator now carefully guiding her back toward the ICU.

"She'll be okay?" he asked quietly.

"She'll receive the best care money can buy." Ricci hesitated. "Mr. Romano, if I may ask—who exactly are you? One hundred million dollars isn't something ordinary people have lying around."

Luca looked at him. Then at Patricia, who seemed to be shrinking into the floor. Then at the crowd, still staring, still processing.

"I'm just someone who invested in a company a long time ago," he said quietly. "And forgot about it until today."

He walked toward his mother's stretcher, leaving Ricci, Patricia, and the stunned crowd behind.

Behind him, someone whispered, "Did he really just donate a hundred million?"

And someone else answered, "Did you see that nurse's face? She's done. So done."

Patricia stood frozen in the middle of the corridor, surrounded by people who wouldn't meet her eyes, holding a tablet that proved her entire world had just collapsed.