Chapter 4
Alina's POV
The next morning, I was jolted awake by my phone alarm.
Pain came flooding back before I was fully conscious—a full-body reminder of everything that had happened the night before. I pushed myself upright using the edge of the bed, and the moment my right leg took any weight, I hissed through my teeth.
I looked down. My lower leg had swollen grotesquely, bruising spreading in deep purple and black all the way down to my ankle.
I swallowed the sound that wanted to come out, clenched my jaw, and limped into the bathroom.
The woman in the mirror looked like a stranger. Colorless, hollowed out.
I splashed cold water on my face, managed to change into clean clothes through gritted teeth, and took a cab to NewYork-Presbyterian.
The whole ride there, I was doing math in my head.
Years of underground fighting, and what did I have to show for it? My foster father had given me an allowance in name only—most of what I earned in the ring went straight to him. He'd made sure of it, so I could never accumulate enough to leave. The money I'd quietly set aside on my own was barely enough to cover ordinary expenses. Medical bills were a different order of magnitude entirely.
I watched the city slide past the cab window and tried not to think too hard about the numbers.
Deal with it when you get there, said the voice in my head.
At the hospital, the intake nurse took one look at me and sent me straight to emergency.
By the time I'd been through X-rays and a CT scan, I was drenched in sweat from the pain alone.
I sat in the waiting area, holding myself carefully still, dreading the moment the billing paperwork arrived.
Half an hour later, the doctor came out with the results and a serious expression. "Miss, you have a fracture in your right leg, hairline cracks in three ribs on your left side, and a mild concussion. You'll need to be admitted for observation—at least a week."
"Admitted?" I felt my brow pull together. "Can't you just give me medication to manage at home?"
The doctor gave me the look of someone who had heard this before and stopped being surprised by it. "My recommendation is inpatient care. If a fracture like this isn't properly treated, it can cause long-term complications. Difficulty walking, chronic pain."
I sat with that for a few seconds. When I spoke, I stumbled a little over the words. "What would the… rough cost be?"
"Hospitalization, diagnostics, medication, and follow-up rehabilitation—conservatively, around forty thousand dollars."
Forty thousand dollars.
The number landed like cold water poured over my head.
My account had less than three thousand dollars in it. And a portion of that was already earmarked for Lowell.
"Let me just—"
Before I could finish the sentence, a nurse appeared beside me with a thick folder of papers. "Miss, this is your current diagnostic bill. Four thousand, three hundred and twenty dollars. If you could go to the billing window when you're ready."
Four thousand three hundred. On top of the forty thousand still to come.
My savings were already gone before the treatment had even started.
I took the papers from her. My fingers weren't quite steady.
"Doctor." I put together what I hoped passed for a composed smile and got to my feet. "I won't be staying. Just give me something for the pain, please."
The doctor exhaled—the sigh of someone choosing their battles—and started to say something. Before he could, the door from the corridor swung open.
"Coming through—excuse us, please—"
Two orderlies moved quickly into the waiting area, pushing a wheelchair. The woman in it was elderly, white-haired, her face drained of color and her eyes closed. She looked fragile in a way that suggested it had come on fast.
Behind her: a man in a dark suit, flanked by a cluster of security personnel that filled the doorway.
I followed the sound and stopped.
It was Lowell.
He was wearing a deep charcoal overcoat today over a black turtleneck, and the severity of it sharpened everything about him—the line of his jaw, the set of his expression. He was watching the woman in the wheelchair with an attention that looked a great deal like worry.
One of the men beside him was already talking to the medical staff, low and rapid: "Mrs. Vadalishi began experiencing chest tightness and shortness of breath after breakfast. Please arrange an assessment as quickly as possible."
I edged back instinctively. Men who moved through the world the way Lowell did—men who arrived at hospitals with security teams and spoke in that quiet, certain way that assumed things would be handled—they were the kind I had learned to give wide berth.
And then there was the other thing. The auction. Director. The cold that moved through me had nothing to do with the temperature.
I was already calculating the distance to the exit when a familiar voice stopped me.
"Alina. You're here too?"
He had already spotted me and was crossing the room.
"It's you." Something shifted briefly in his expression—not quite surprise, but close to it. "You haven't had that treated yet?"
His attention made me feel suddenly exposed. I looked down at my feet. "I came in for a check-up. It's done. I was just leaving."
"Leaving?" He closed the last few steps between us and his gaze dropped to the papers in my hand. Something in his face went still. "What did the doctor say?"
"Nothing serious," I said.
He glanced at the aide beside him. One moment the papers were in my hand; the next they weren't.
"Hey—give those—"
I reached for them and missed.
He scanned the diagnosis without speaking, a slight furrow between his brows. Then he handed the papers back to me, reached into his coat, and produced what appeared to be a hospital platinum card. He held it out to the doctor, who had been watching this exchange with admirable neutrality.
"Settle this patient's bill. VIP ward—put her in the same suite as my grandmother."
I watched the doctor take the card and walk away, and then I looked up at Lowell, something tangled moving through me—discomfort, and underneath it, an embarrassing amount of relief.
"You really don't have to do that," I said. "I can manage—"
"Besides my grandmother, I have almost no use for that card." He wasn't looking at me. He was watching the nurse at the desk process the payment. "The annual fee on it is absurd. The credit limit is something I never get close to. It's wasteful not to use it."
I couldn't tell if he meant that, or if he was giving me a way to accept without feeling the weight of it.
Since last night—since the castle, and the car, and now this—he had done more for me than anyone had in years. And I had nothing to offer in return. The imbalance sat in me like something I couldn't put down.
I was still trying to find words for it when he spoke again.
"My grandmother needs someone attentive with her. Everyone on my staff is male, and I don't trust them to manage the details properly. I could hire a professional caregiver, but I have no way to verify the character of whoever they'd send." A brief pause. "Would you be willing to look after her? While you're recovering here."
I blinked at him. Then looked at the clean, steady line of his profile.
"Yes," I said. "Of course."
There was more I wanted to add—something about what it meant, about the debt I was already accruing—but one of his aides appeared at his elbow, leaning in to murmur something I couldn't fully catch. From what I could make out, the hospital director wanted to meet with Lowell, and was asking when he might have time.
Lowell considered for a moment. "Not today. Tomorrow evening—have him come to me."
Come to me.
I turned the phrase over in my mind. The way he said it. The way the aide simply nodded and moved to carry it out, as though the question had already been settled before it was asked.
I thought about what I actually knew about this man—which was almost nothing. And about what the evening before had suggested—which was that whatever his position was, it exceeded anything I had imagined.
The uncertainty of it built into something that felt uncomfortably close to fear.
I had gotten myself entangled with someone like this. And I had no clear picture of what it would take to walk away clean when the time came—or whether that would be possible at all.
