Chapter 395
[ 500 words ]
Chapter 395:
She held up a hand, stopping him. “The supplemental funds are from… my birth father. It’s complicated, and he’s… he’s the one currently funding the specific neuro-oncology protocol.”
Just as he was about to press for the name, her phone buzzed in the pocket of her scrubs. A text message.
Instinctively, she pulled it out. The screen lit up. The sender was Donovan Sinclair.
The message below was short: Funds confirmed. Keep him stable.
Jarrod’s eyesight was military-grade sharp. He was standing close enough to read the screen over her shoulder. He saw the name.
The change in him was instantaneous. The warmth and sympathy vanished, replaced by a mask of cold, analytical observation. He had known Donovan Sinclair was her biological father since he had intercepted him in the hospital corridor days ago, but seeing the man explicitly directing her actions triggered a flare of possessive territoriality he struggled to contain.
“So that’s your ‘benefactor’?” he asked, his voice dripping with a dangerous, razor-thin sarcasm. “You take money from Sinclair? Behind my back? What am I to you? Just the muscle you call in when things get messy, while he keeps a leash on your decision-making?”
𝘚to𝗋і𝗲𝘀 y𝘰𝘂 𝘸o𝗇’𝘵 p𝘶t d𝗈w𝗻 𝗼ո 𝗀а𝘭ո𝘰𝗏𝖾𝘭s.с𝗼𝗆
His words were like daggers, striking a fresh, bleeding wound. After everything they had just been through, the intimacy, the vows, the shared vulnerability—it all felt secondary to his sudden, biting accusation of her duplicity.
The injustice of it, the sheer, blinding unfairness, choked her. All the stress, the fear for her father, the pain from her arm—it all crested into a single, overwhelming wave of hurt.
She wasn’t going to have this fight. Not here. Not now.
“I didn’t keep it a secret to hurt you,” she said, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands as she locked her phone. “I kept it a secret because I knew how you’d react. And clearly, I was right.”
She pushed past him, her shoulder brushing his chest, and started walking quickly down the hall, away from his accusations, leaving him to stare after her in the sterile, unforgiving silence of the corridor.
She didn’t look back. She walked fast, her sneakers squeaking on the polished linoleum, her vision blurred by tears. Her destination was the small, spartan dorm room the hospital assigned to residents and on-call staff. It was a sterile, impersonal box, but it had a lock. It was a place to hide.
Jarrod stood frozen for a second, the shock of her retreat warring with the white-hot rage in his chest. He watched her retreating back, the determined set of her shoulders, and his anger won. He was not going to be walked away from. Not after this.
He started after her, his long, powerful strides eating up the distance between them.
K.C. Bell, who had been maintaining a discreet watch at the far end of the corridor, saw the entire exchange. He saw Caroline storm off and the Colonel follow, his face a thundercloud. K.C. wisely flattened himself against the wall, making himself as invisible as possible.
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