Broken by son, claimed by father

Chapterfour

MARCUS POV

The morning started with the kind of silence that felt deliberate.

Jeremy and I hadn’t spoken since we got into the car. He’d taken the front seat beside the driver, tapping through his phone with the restless energy of someone who couldn’t bear stillness. I sat in the back, watching the city slide past the tinted glass.

We were heading to St. Gabriel’s Medical Center ,one of the top hospitals in the state for a meeting about a new surgical research partnership between Hesse Biotech and the hospital’s cardiovascular department. It was supposed to be routine. A formality.

But lately, nothing in my life had been routine.

“You could at least pretend to look interested,” Jeremy said suddenly, not looking up from his phone.

“I’ve been to enough of these meetings to know how they go,” I replied. “They talk, we fund, and you handle the press release.”

He smirked, still scrolling. “Maybe that’s why people say you’re intimidating. You make every room feel like a business transaction.”

I glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “Coming from you, that sounds like a compliment.”

He finally looked up, met my eyes, and for a moment I saw something in his face , exhaustion, maybe. Or bitterness. “You trained me to be like this, remember?”.I kept looking at him.Jeremy looked so like his mom.His hair, the color of his eyes and now his attitude, just like her, his mom was evil but I had to accept it was my fault.

Jeremy was the only child to my previously divorced wife, Kirsten Hesse.She had bad mouthed me to Jeremy and I looked like the devil when in actual sense no one really knew how I felt within.Kirsten and I had an affair far back in university at a house party that got her pregnant . Kirsten’s parents were powerful in wealth too.Before Kirsten and I married , I never knew she existed till she told me she was pregnant.I lived a miserable life in my prime, doing drugs and changing girls as most of the other handsome guys did. I would shut them with my family’s power, well, I guess it’s the power they say money carries.I couldn’t be the heir when I had children all over.It had been a family thing and I couldn’t change that.I was so broken when I had to marry Kirsten but I thought I’d be fine after while .She was evil , she had no aorta of love in her heart, never , only presence when my family was around.My family was not going to make me destroy their reputation so I was forced to marry her.I had tried my best to at least show Kirsten some love, but she never reciprocated it and that led to our divorce.It was this pain that I had used to train Jeremy into the man he is and now that I’m older, I’ve begun to see the consequences of my training.

Before I could answer, the car turned into the hospital’s private lot. The sleek glass structure rose like a monument to precision and control ,things I’d once believed I had mastered.

The irony wasn’t lost on me.

Inside, the atmosphere was brisk and clinical.Muted lighting and the faint scent of disinfectant. I had walked these kinds of halls my entire life.

A young coordinator in a navy suit greeted us. “Dr. Hesse, Mr. Hesse …..welcome. The director’s waiting upstairs in Conference Hall B.”

Jeremy walked ahead, as if he owned the place. I followed, half-listening to the introductions, half-lost in my thoughts.

The conference room was large, lined with windows overlooking the city. The table gleamed with documents and digital tablets. Around it sat several doctors and administrators ,all of them smiling the way people do when money is in the room.

“Dr. Hesse,” said the hospital director, a balding man with a warm handshake. “We’re honored to finally meet you in person. Your contributions to the field have inspired many of our surgeons.”

“Thank you,” I said, offering the kind of polite smile that came automatically by now.

Then, the door opened again.

And she walked in.

For a heartbeat, the world tilted.

She was in scrubs , blue, neatly pressed, with her badge clipped to her chest: Dr. Reyna Martinez, Cardiothoracic Surgery. Her red hair was tied back, her face calm, composed, utterly professional.

But I knew her.

The woman from the bar. The one I’d driven home in silence, whose name had stayed with me like a whisper I couldn’t forget.

Reyna froze too. Just for a second ,barely perceptible to anyone else but I saw it. Her breath caught, her eyes widening before she schooled her expression back into something neutral.

“Dr. Martinez,” said the director, smiling at her. “Glad you could join us. Dr. Martinez will be leading the surgical team for this project.”

Jeremy turned slightly, glancing at her with polite interest and in that single glance, everything inside me stilled.

He smiled. “Reyna?”

The sound of his voice saying her name hit me like a blow.Even I couldn’t explain why.

Her eyes flicked to him and off of him very swiftly.

I had expected at least to hear her say hello to my son but she didn’t.While Jeremy looked, all she could do was stay avoidant, how rude of her, I thought.

“You two know each other?” the director asked, pleasantly surprised.

“Yes,” Jeremy replied easily, leaning back in his chair. “ Reyna is my girlfriend I would soon introduce you to. Small world, huh?”

“ Girlfriend???Oh yes , I was before you broke up , remember?Thats not why we’re here Jeremy”, she said and walked away.

Gosh!!Small world?. He had no idea.