The Real Heiress Don't Need Your Love novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Hospital

The cardiac wing of Greenwich General smelled of floor wax and burned coffee.

Portia was crying on a plastic chair outside the double doors.

My father stood over her with one hand on her hair, tall and gray and grieving.

"They've got her stable, my girl," he said, when he saw me. "The doctors are with her now."

"What happened?" I asked.

"She fainted in the rose garden." His voice shook. "Twenty-five years of worry. It finally caught up with her."

I looked at his hand on Portia's head, and at his kind wet eyes.

"Thank you for bringing her, son," my father said to Anson, and clapped him on the shoulder.

"Sir," Anson said. He didn't move under the hand.

"The doctor says it's her heart rhythm. Stress, he thinks. No damage."

"Thank God," Portia whispered.

Anson came up beside me and said nothing more.

Portia lifted her blotchy face. "Abby, I'm so glad you're here. I couldn't stand being alone."

I sat down and put my arm around her.

I didn't know what else I was supposed to do with the part of me that still liked her.

My father went to speak to a nurse.

Anson dropped into the chair on my other side.

For a while, we watched the double doors together.

"I want to say something," he said, very low.

"Say it."

"You asked me why I was cruel to you, at the party. I'll tell you what your speech cost me."

"Four hundred people work for Rotherham Logistics."

"My father hired every one of them by hand. By Monday morning they had all seen a video of a stranger telling a room full of strangers that I was going under."

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