Before leaving, Maria adjusted his blanket as if tucking in a child and said softly, “Your children came today. I saw them in the hallway. They weren’t allowed in, but they’ll come back. They love you very much, Mr. Hayes. You can see it all over them.”
Then she left.
Alexander remained still, yes, but he was no longer the same man who had decided to pretend in order to catch his enemies. Now he held another truth in his hands, one he had never expected: goodness still existed in a world he had believed was ruled entirely by calculation.
That night, the room filled with silence again. But it was no longer empty silence. It was a silence full of decision.
At exactly nine o’clock, the door opened with confidence. Fast heels. Expensive perfume. A designer bracelet. Alexander recognized Vanessa before he even heard her voice.
She walked in talking on speakerphone.
“Yes, sweetheart, I’m here,” she said in a sugary tone Alexander had never heard from her before. “He’s the same… basically a vegetable.”
A shiver ran down his spine.
The male voice on the other end was unmistakable.
Grant Mercer.
His partner. His friend. The man he had trusted with contracts, strategies, signatures, and business secrets for years.
“I’m so tired of this act, Grant,” Vanessa continued. “Coming here, pretending to care, talking to doctors… I’m sick of it.”
Alexander felt his jaw tighten.
Vanessa lowered her voice, slipping into that poisonous intimacy of people who share both a bed and a plan.
“And the brakes were done perfectly. No one is going to look too closely. I told you you were the best man for the job.”
Grant let out a short laugh.
“If he doesn’t wake up, everything gets easier,” he said. “The insurance, control of the company… we’ll finally have what we deserve.”
Alexander’s heart slammed against his bandaged ribs.
There it was.
The confirmation.
Not paranoia. Not intuition. The truth.
Vanessa sighed in annoyance, as if the only real problem were inconvenience.
“And the kids… what a headache. Noah keeps crying, Sophie keeps asking questions, they want to see him all the time. Once this is over, we’re going to Dubai for a month. I need to get out of here.”
Alexander felt rage rise into his throat when he heard his children’s names spoken with contempt. He pictured Noah with a soccer ball under his arm, Sophie holding one of her drawings, both waiting behind a door.