The Hundred-Dollar Wife Owns His Empire

I stared at my pale reflection in the vanity mirror until my own dry eyes blurred. Less than an hour later, I was driving to Hudson Memorial to confirm my mother's surgical deposit in person when a drunk driver ran the light at Lexington and hit me broadside.

I woke beneath the harsh fluorescent glare of the emergency department ceiling.

My right arm hung heavy in a canvas sling, pinned awkwardly against my chest. A brutal, purple seatbelt burn slashed diagonally across my collarbone, the skin raw and weeping. Blood crusted over my right eye, dripping a slow, steady rhythm onto the thin paper covering the gurney.

I fumbled with my phone, my uninjured left hand clumsy and shaking. My thumb smeared blood across the cracked screen as I typed.

"Totaled the car. ER needs a copay before they reset my shoulder," I sent to Julian.

I waited. The hospital monitors beeped in a steady, maddening rhythm.

The screen lit up. A transfer notification for $100.

Message: *Cover it first. In a meeting.*

I dropped the phone onto my lap. The exact same dismissal. The exact same words he used tonight in the kitchen. A hundred dollars to make the inconvenience of my existence go away.

The curtain rings scraped across the metal rod. A doctor stepped into the cubicle with a draft from the corridor. He was tall and dark-haired, without a trace of bedside warmth. His name tag read Dr. Sebastian Reed.

Without a greeting, he pulled a stainless-steel suture tray to the bedside. A curved needle gleamed against the sterile gauze.

"Hold still," he instructed. His tone was flat, clinical, leaving no room for argument.

"I don't have the copay yet," I said, keeping my gaze fixed on the ceiling tiles. "The front desk said I couldn't get treated until I paid."

"The front desk says a lot of things," he replied. "I say you need eight stitches before that eye swells shut."

"I can't pay you right now."

"Did I hand you an invoice?" He snapped a pair of latex gloves over his wrists, the sound loud in the small space. "I told you to hold still."

"I can leave," I offered, shifting my weight. The movement sent a blinding spike of agony through my dislocated shoulder. I swallowed a groan, my spine going rigid against the thin mattress.

"You can try," Sebastian replied. "You won't make it to the sliding doors."

He leaned over me. The sharp scent of rubbing alcohol cut through the metallic tang of my own blood. I braced my legs against the metal bed frame.

The needle pierced the torn skin above my right eyebrow. I made no sound, focusing on the mechanics: the pinch, the pull of nylon, the tightening tug.

One stitch. Two. Three.

He worked with ruthless efficiency. "Most people flinch," he remarked, his eyes locked on the laceration.

"I am used to fixing things on my own," I replied, keeping my voice level.

"You call a fractured collarbone and a split brow fixing things?"

"I call it surviving a drunk driver running a red light."

Four. Five. Six.

The nylon pulled through my flesh. Each tug felt like a tiny, burning wire. I kept my eyes locked on the fluorescent light above, counting the microscopic dead bugs trapped in the plastic cover. Anything to avoid looking at the man leaning over me.

The sharp point bit into the highly sensitive, tender skin near my eyelid. Seven.

I held my breath to keep my head still. Pain burned down my cheekbone, but I refused to wince. My left hand gripped the edge of the gurney until my knuckles blanched.

Sebastian paused. The needle hovered mere inches from my face. The thread hung loose against my cheek.

He shifted his gaze from my forehead to the digital tablet resting on the metal counter. He swiped the screen once with a gloved finger.

"Cordelia Vance," he read aloud.

I blinked, my left eye focusing on his face. "Yes."

"Ms. Vance." He tested the syllables. His tone shifted, dropping the clinical detachment for something heavier, something observant.

My jaw tightened. Julian had not called me by my full name in three years. To him, I was just Cordelia. A fixture in his home. A lucky charm for his business. The Vance part of me belonged to a ruined past he preferred to ignore, a bankruptcy he paid to sweep under the rug.

"Is there a problem with my chart?" I asked, my voice hardening.

"No problem." He turned back to my face, adjusting his grip on the forceps. "Just verifying the spelling."

"You already read it when you walked in."

"I prefer to be precise."

"Why does my last name matter to you?" I asked.

"Vance is a heavy name in this city," he said smoothly. "Or it used to be."

My stomach dropped. "My father's company went under three years ago. There is no weight left to it."

"Money disappears," Sebastian said, driving the needle through the skin for the eighth stitch. "Reputations linger."

"Why did you say it like that?" I demanded. The thread pulled tight, stinging fiercely.

"Like what?"

"Like you know me."

"I know your chart says you took a steering wheel to the ribs and a side window to the skull," he replied, his movements never slowing. "I know your emergency contact sent you a hundred dollars instead of showing up to drive you home."

My left hand curled into a fist on the crinkling paper sheet. "That is none of your business."

"It became my business when you bled on my trauma bay floor." He tied off the final knot with a quick, fluid twist of his wrists.

He reached for the surgical scissors on the tray. The metal blades glinted.

"You don't know anything about Julian," I said, defensive out of sheer, exhausted habit.

"I didn't mention Julian."

Sebastian snipped the excess thread. The tiny metallic snip echoed in the quiet cubicle. He dropped the scissors back onto the metal tray. The clatter made me jump slightly.

He stripped off his gloves, tossing them into the red biohazard bin in the corner. He turned back to me, bracing both bare hands on the metal rails of my gurney. He leaned down. His face was inches from mine, his dark eyes stripping away every layer of armor I had built up over the last three years.

"Your father left instructions," Sebastian said, his voice dropping to a low, rough murmur. "If you ever got hurt, I am to be notified first."

I froze, the air trapped in my throat.