Chapter 7 Confrontation

~Victoria's POV~

The alarm cut off twenty minutes later, and a nurse popped her head in to explain it away.

"Faulty sensor in the kitchen downstairs," she said, a little breathless from the stairs. "Nothing to worry about, Mrs. Cole. Sorry for the scare."

I nodded and thanked her, and the moment she left, I slid the black rose and its card into the drawer of my bedside table, closing it like that alone could make the words disappear.

I didn't tell her about it. I didn't tell anyone. Because what would I even say? Someone left me a wilting flower and a threat while I was asleep, and I have no idea who or why. It sounded unhinged even inside my own head. I could already picture the look on a nurse's face, the careful, pitying tone, the note in my chart about stress and paranoia after cardiac trauma.

So I sat with it alone, my hand resting on the closed drawer, and waited.

—----------

Ethan came in a little after ten, later than he'd promised, his coat still on, his tie loosened like he'd pulled at it in the car.

"Victoria." He crossed the room fast and took the chair beside my bed, reaching for my hand before he'd even fully sat down. "I'm sorry I'm late. It's been an impossible night."

"You said everything would be explained."

"It will be." He exhaled, long and unsteady, and for the first time since I'd known him, he looked genuinely afraid to speak. "I need you to just listen to me for a minute before you say anything."

"Okay."

"Cole Technologies almost collapsed months ago." His voice was low, tight, like each word cost him something. "A merger fell through, an investor pulled out, and within weeks we were staring at liquidation. Every single person who works for me, gone. Their families, gone. I didn't know how to stop it."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I was ashamed," he said. "Because I built that company from nothing and I couldn't stand the thought of you watching me lose it. And because Harold Ashford offered to save it, and the terms he gave me felt like the only door left open."

My stomach turned. "Terms."

"A partnership agreement. With his daughter, Selene." He said her name like it burned his mouth. "There's a clause in it, a marriage stipulation, for tax structuring and inheritance purposes. It's paperwork, Victoria. It's not a real marriage. It doesn't mean what it sounds like."

"It doesn't mean what it sounds like," I repeated slowly. "Ethan, I saw a photo of the two of you at a gala six weeks ago. Your hand was on her back."

His jaw tightened. "It was a business event. I was playing a part I hate every second of."

"For six weeks?"

"For six weeks," he admitted, and at least he didn't try to lie about the timeline. "I should have told you the day I signed it. I was a coward. I kept telling myself I'd find a way out before you ever had to know, and instead you found out yourself while you were recovering from cardiac arrest, and I will never forgive myself for that."

I studied his face for a long moment, searching for the lie the way I used to search for it when we were newly married and I still hadn't learned all his tells.

"Do you still love me?" I asked, because that was the only question that actually mattered to me right now.

"Yes." No hesitation. Not even half a second. "Victoria, I have never stopped loving you. Not for one single day since that alley four years ago. Everything I've done, even the terrible, stupid things, I told myself I was doing to protect us. To protect what we built."

I wanted so badly to believe him. I wanted it so much it physically ached somewhere behind my ribs, worse than the bruising from the paddles, worse than the catheter site still throbbing under my hospital gown.

I didn't mention the rose. I didn't mention the card in the drawer, the words about a wedding, the threat wrapped in dying petals. Some instinct told me that if I said it out loud right now, it would become real in a way I wasn't ready for, and it would take the choice away from me entirely.

Instead, I made a decision. A quiet, private one, the kind you make when you're too exhausted to fight and still desperate enough to hope.

Five days.

I would give him five days to fix whatever this was, to find his way out of Harold Ashford's contract and back to the life we'd built, before I let myself burn everything down asking questions I already half knew the answers to.

"Fix it," I said quietly. "Whatever this is. Fix it, Ethan."

"I will. I promise you, I will."

He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around me carefully, mindful of the IV line and the bruising across my chest, and for a moment I let myself sink into it, let myself pretend the last twelve hours hadn't happened at all.

Then the room tilted.

It came on so fast I didn't even have a second to brace for it, a wave of dizziness that swept through my skull and down into my stomach all at once, and my fingers dug into his arm without me telling them to.

"Victoria?" His voice sharpened instantly. "Victoria, what's wrong?"

"I don't…" The words wouldn't line up right. The ceiling seemed to tilt sideways, the light fixtures smearing into long white streaks. "I feel dizzy, I don't…"

"Nurse! I need a nurse in here!" Ethan's voice cracked as he shouted toward the door, one arm locking tight around my shoulders to keep me upright.

The room spun harder, sound folding in on itself, his voice and the beeping monitor and the rush of footsteps all blurring into one long note.

And underneath the dizziness, underneath the fear that my heart was failing again, something else registered. Something sharper, lower, unfamiliar. A cramping deep in my stomach, tight and cramping, nothing like the ache from the transfer, nothing like anything I'd felt before.

That was the last clear thought I had before the room went dark around the edges and swallowed everything whole.