Chapter 4
Lila’s asthma got worse that week.
The stress. The nightmares. The constant, low hum of fear that hung over the house like a storm cloud.
One night, she woke up at two a.m. gasping so hard she could barely get a breath in.
I grabbed her inhaler and shook it, my hands shaking so bad I almost dropped it.
Two puffs. Nothing.
Two more. Still nothing.
I screamed for Nathaniel.
He was there in ten seconds, his hair messy, wearing only sweatpants. He took one look at Lila’s blue-tinged lips and grabbed his car keys.
“Let’s go,” he said.
He drove us to the hospital so fast we made it in seven minutes flat.
The doctors got Lila stabilized in the ER. They said it was a severe attack brought on by acute stress. They kept her overnight for observation.
I sat in the chair beside her bed, holding her small hand, watching her sleep.
Nathaniel sat beside me. He didn’t say anything. He just put his arm around my shoulders and let me cry into his shirt.
“I’m so scared,” I whispered, when I could talk again. “I can’t lose her. She’s all I have.”
“You’re not going to lose her,” he said, his voice steady. “I won’t let anything happen to either of you. I swear it.”
The next morning, Lila woke up smiling. The first real smile I’d seen on her face in days.
Nathaniel brought her a giant stuffed unicorn from the hospital gift shop. He sat on the edge of her bed and told her silly stories about when he was a kid and got stuck in a tree for three hours.
Lila laughed so hard she snort-laughed.
I watched them, and something warm and soft unfurled in my chest.
Something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Hope.
That afternoon, when we got back to the estate, Nathaniel told me he’d decided to testify against Victoria himself.
“I never loved her,” he said, leaning against the kitchen counter while I made Lila a peanut butter sandwich. “I was thirty-eight. My business partners kept telling me I needed to settle down. Get married. Have an heir. Victoria was beautiful. Charming. She said all the right things. I was too stupid and too busy to see what she really was.”
He paused, looking at me.
“I haven’t told anyone this yet. But the night before the… the accident. My mom called me into her room. She told me Victoria had been asking her for money. For access to the family trust. She said Victoria had threatened her once before, when no one was around. Told her she’d be sorry if she didn’t sign over control of her accounts.”
My breath caught.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I said.
“Because I didn’t believe her,” he said, his voice breaking. “I thought my mom was just being paranoid. She’d never liked any of the women I dated. I told her she was overreacting. And then the next day… she was on the floor.”
He covered his face with his hands.
“I almost lost her because I didn’t listen,” he said. “I will never make that mistake again.”
Lila came running into the kitchen then, her unicorn tucked under one arm.
“Mr. Whitmore!” she said. “Can we go to the park later? Please? I want to swing.”
Nathaniel wiped his eyes and smiled at her.
“Of course we can, sweetheart,” he said. “Whatever you want.”
He looked at me again.
“Whatever both of you want,” he said, softer.
That night, after Lila was asleep, I found Nathaniel in his study, going through a box of old photos of Eleanor.
He showed me a picture of her when she was young, standing on a beach, laughing, holding a tiny Nathaniel on her hip.
“She’s the best person I know,” he said. “She raised me alone. Worked three jobs to send me to college. Built this whole family from nothing. And I almost let a gold-digging monster take her from me.”
I sat down beside him.
“You didn’t let her,” I said. “We’re going to make sure Victoria pays for what she did. And Eleanor is going to be okay. I know it.”
Nathaniel looked at me. His hand came up and brushed a strand of hair off my face.
His touch was gentle. Warm.
“Thank you, Clara,” he said. “For everything. For Lila. For being brave when I wasn’t.”
My heart skipped a beat.
For a second, I thought he was going to kiss me.
Then his phone rang, loud and sharp, shattering the moment.
He answered it. His face went pale.
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll be right there.”
May you like
He hung up and looked at me, his eyes wide.
“That was the hospital,” he said. “They’re waking Eleanor up.”
