The Billionaire's Cursed Heir

Chapter 4: Nineteen Days

CHARLOTTE

The call comes at 8:42 in the morning, before I've even made it through security, and I know before I answer it that whatever it says will be worse than yesterday's message.

"Ms. Rivers, this is Dana from Cedar Grove Medical." Her voice is calm in that careful, practiced way that always means bad news is coming. "I'm calling about Ethan Grayson's file."

My stomach drops before she says another word. "Is he alright?"

"He's stable for now. But Dr. Patterson wants to move up the timeline. His last labs showed some changes we don't like. We need the surgery scheduled within nineteen days, not thirty. And the updated cost estimate came back higher than the original quote."

Nineteen days. Not twenty. Not enough time to breathe, let alone find $47,000, and now not even a fixed number.

"How much higher?" My voice comes out thin.

"I'll have the exact figure by this afternoon. I wanted you to have the new timeline first."

"I understand," I say, because what else is there to say. I hang up and stand frozen in the lobby, my badge still in my hand, people moving around me like the world hasn't just gotten smaller and more expensive in the same breath.

I make it to my desk on autopilot. I don't remember the elevator ride. I don't remember sitting down. The only thing that breaks through the fog is my phone buzzing with a message from Damian's assistant, Priya.

Mr. Blackwood wants to see you. Nine sharp.

I check the clock. Eight fifty six. I have four minutes to compose myself into someone who doesn't look like her whole life just tilted sideways twice before nine in the morning.

I fail, but I go anyway.

His office door is closed this time, which feels different, heavier somehow. I knock once and let myself in when he says nothing, because waiting for permission feels like something I don't have the strength for today.

He's standing by the window, not sitting behind his desk like usual. That alone tells me this conversation is different from the last one.

"You look pale," he says, turning around. His eyes move over my face with an attention that unsettles me, like he's cataloguing every c***k.

"I'm fine."

"You're not." He doesn't ask again. He just watches, patient in a way that makes the silence stretch too long. "What happened?"

I almost lie. I almost say nothing happened at all. But I'm too tired to keep pretending in front of a man who already seems to know more about my life than I've told anyone.

"The hospital moved up the surgery date," I say. "Nineteen days. Not thirty. And the cost went up again. I don't even have a number yet, just the promise that it's worse."

Something shifts behind his eyes, quick and sharp, gone before I can name it.

"That changes things," he says quietly, almost to himself.

"Changes what things?" My voice comes out thin. "You keep talking like there's some plan already in motion, like you already know how this ends. What is it? Just tell me."

He walks toward me slowly, hands in his pockets, every step measured like he's still deciding how much to give me.

"Before I tell you anything," he says, "I need to understand exactly what you're facing. All of it. Not the parts you think I already know."

"Why does that matter?"

"Because I don't offer half of anything, Ms. Rivers. If I'm going to help you, I need the whole picture."

I could refuse. I could walk out and go back to my desk and pretend this conversation never started. But nineteen days is nineteen days, and pride doesn't pay hospital bills, especially not hospital bills that keep growing every time my phone rings.

"Fine," I say, and the words come out before I can stop them. "The surgery is a heart valve replacement. It's not optional and it's not getting cheaper the longer we wait. I've sold everything I can sell. I've asked family who don't have money to give. My old boss offered to help once, but only if I stayed late with him after hours, and when I said no, he made sure I understood exactly what saying no was going to cost me at that job."

Damian's jaw tightens, just slightly, just enough that I notice.

"He touched you," he says. It isn't a question.

"He tried." My voice shakes despite everything I do to keep it steady. "I left before he could do more than that. But I lost the job over it anyway, because apparently reporting your boss doesn't protect you, it just makes you inconvenient to keep around."

For a moment, neither of us says anything. The silence isn't empty, it's full of something I can't name, something that looks almost like anger on his behalf instead of mine.

"And Ethan," he says finally. "How long have you been together?"

"Four years." My throat tightens around the words. "He proposed the week before he got sick. I still have the ring in a drawer because I can't wear it and think about anything except how close I am to losing him."

Damian goes quiet again, longer this time, long enough that I start to wonder if I've said too much, given him too much of myself to use however he wants to use it.

"Nineteen days," he says at last. "That's not much time for what I have in mind."

"What do you have in mind?"

He studies me, and for the first time since I've known him, I see something c***k in that careful, controlled expression. Not softness exactly. Something closer to a man standing at the edge of a decision he can't take back.

"Come back tomorrow morning," he says. "Same time. I'll have an answer for you, and a number, and everything you need to save him."

"Why not now? Why wait another day when we don't have days to spare?"

"Because what I'm about to offer you will change your life completely, and I need one more night to be sure I'm willing to live with what it costs me too."

He turns back to the window before I can ask what that means, and something about the set of his shoulders tells me this conversation is over whether I'm ready for it to be or not.

I leave his office with my heart pounding, nineteen days circling louder in my head than before, and one new fear settling deep in my chest, sharper than anything the hospital's numbers ever made me feel.

Whatever he's about to offer me, some part of me already knows I won't be able to say no, and some part of me is starting to wonder if he's known that from the very first night he saw me still at my desk.