Chapter 5: The Mountain That Had Been Crushing Me

Amanda's POV

Less than an hour after signing the contract, my phone buzzed with a bank notification.

Five million dollars—a clean, unremarkable number on the screen—plus a hundred thousand for the first month's living expenses, already sitting in my account like it had always been there. I stared at those digits until my eyes ached, before I finally set the phone down.

My first instinct was to look up appointment availability for a pediatric cardiac specialist. I'd done this research before—the shortest waitlist I'd ever found was three months out, and that was before factoring in the cost. I hadn't even gotten to the search bar when my phone rang—Shirley.

"Ms. Amanda, the doctor is already waiting at the hospital. Would you be able to come now?"

I paused. "Which doctor?"

"The one who will be seeing Emma."

It was a private hospital under the Morrison Corporation's umbrella. The entire building was quiet in a way that felt deliberate—because it was. Shirley told me on the way over that every staff member on the premises today was there exclusively for Emma and me.

I recognized the doctor the moment I saw him, not because I knew him personally, but because I knew his face. He'd been on the cover of Time magazine. He was a top-three specialist in congenital heart disease, globally ranked. I had looked him up once, found his clinic's website, and closed the tab immediately—you couldn't just buy your way onto his schedule. He only took the most exceptional cases—or patients whose last names opened doors.

He was sitting in the consultation room, Emma's test results spread before him, and he told me in the same easy tone someone might use to talk about a minor inconvenience: "It's a small issue. Honestly, it's not much more complicated than treating a bad cold. We can perform the surgery in three days. There won't be any lasting complications."

I didn't respond right away.

I was thinking about five years ago—how this same diagnosis had left me sitting alone in a parking lot, crying for an entire afternoon. For a family like mine, this condition had been a death sentence in slow motion, the kind of thing that could hollow out a household over years.

And now, a single phone call had put the world's best specialist in front of us before the day was out. The mountain that had been crushing me for five years turned out to be, for someone who lived a different kind of life, barely worth a mention.

I didn't know whether to call that lucky or grotesque. Maybe both.

The surgery went smoothly three days later. Recovery was uneventful. Two weeks after that, Emma was discharged.

She ran out of the hospital on her own.

I was standing at the entrance when I saw her coming down the corridor at full speed, her little legs pumping hard, still wearing her white hospital gown, her braids half-undone, her cheeks gone red as summer cherries from the effort.

She had never run before. Not once since she'd learned to walk. Her heart hadn't allowed it.

I crouched down and reached up to wipe the sweat from her forehead with a tissue. My hands were trembling slightly. She was breathing hard—the honest, hard-won breathlessness of a child who had finally been allowed to run.

I pinched the tip of her nose. "Worn out, aren't you, baby?"

"I'm not tired!" she protested, tilting her head back to look up at me. "Mommy, I can keep running!"

I didn't say anything. I just stayed crouched there, holding her nose, working very hard to keep the burning at the corners of my eyes from spilling over.

Good. You can run. You can run for the rest of your life.

Emma suddenly glanced past my shoulder, her brow wrinkling. "Mommy, who's that lady? Why does she keep staring at us?"

I turned around.

She was a young woman, early twenties at most, strikingly pretty—sharp, well-set features, the kind of face that turned heads. But there was something in the way she carried herself that was harder to name: chin tilted slightly upward, arms folded across her chest, her gaze moving over my face before dropping to Emma, then sliding away.

She walked toward us and spoke. "I'm Heidi. I'm Ethan's caregiver." Her tone was polite, but courtesy was only the surface of it. "I'm here to take you to the estate."

Emma pressed herself closer behind me, her small fingers closing around my sleeve.

I lifted her into my arms and stepped to the side, then crouched to meet her at eye level. "Emma," I said quietly, "do you remember what Mommy told you? I'm going to go take care of another little boy now."

Emma's fingers curled around my collar, her eyes wide and attentive, taking in every word.

During the two weeks of her recovery, I had told her about this—kept it simple, kept it light. Mommy has a new job. There's a sick little boy who needs a mommy too. Emma had thought about it for a long time before asking whether that little boy ever cried.

I told her he did.

Then you should go, she'd said. Go take care of him. I'll take care of myself.

Now she rose up on her tiptoes and pressed a firm, wet kiss to my cheek, leaving a damp little mark behind. Then she let go, stepped back, and arranged her face into the most serious expression a five-year-old could manage.

"Go, Mommy," she said. "I'll be good."

My throat tightened. I stood up and passed her to Shirley.

Shirley would handle everything. My mother Lyra would arrive later that day to stay with Emma. I would be allowed to visit once a week.

I drew a slow breath and turned around. "Let's go," I said to Heidi.

Heidi made a quiet sound and got in the car without a word.

---

The gates of the Morrison estate looked taller in the evening light than they had the first time I'd come. The car stopped on the gravel drive, and I climbed out with my luggage while Heidi walked ahead, not saying a word.

After a moment, I called after her. "I'd like to meet Ethan."

Heidi turned. Her expression remained composed, but something shifted behind her eyes. "That wouldn't be appropriate," she said, each word measured and deliberate. "Ethan is very sensitive to strangers. Introducing yourself too suddenly would frighten him."

"I know he's sensitive to strangers," I said. "That's exactly why I want him to start getting used to me sooner rather than later."

"You just arrived. You don't know his routines yet." Her tone didn't waver, but something in her gaze had gone flat. "It would be better to let me handle the introduction."

I looked at her steadily. "Heidi," I said. "I am Mr. Morrison's wife. And I am Ethan's mother."

Heidi was quiet for a beat. Then she smiled—a smile with teeth behind it, the kind that looks like courtesy and cuts like something else entirely.

"Mrs. Morrison," she said, "I have been with Ethan since the day he was born. Every habit, every reaction, every single thing that unsettles him—I know it better than anyone else in this house."

She let that sit for a moment.

"As for you?" The careful smile dropped. Her eyes were cold and flat and completely unguarded now. "Charles isn't here, so you can drop the act. I don't know how you managed to get chosen, but Ethan is a different story. That boy depends on me more than he depends on his own father. So I'd strongly suggest you show me some respect—because if you don't, I'll make sure you're gone before you've had time to unpack."