Semua Bab Professor Grayson's Favorite sin : Bab 191 - Bab 200

The hospital waiting room had forty chairs and their group occupied twelve of them.Nobody was sitting in them correctly. Archer had both elbows on his knees and his head down. Evelyn was standing near the window because she could not make herself sit. Damien was in a chair against the far wall and had been in it for two hours without moving. Roman was on his feet, phone in hand, moving between the corridor and the waiting room in the specific pattern of someone who needed to be doing something or he would do something else.Lennon was sitting on the floor beside Scarlett's chair.Her chair. The one she had been sitting in before they moved her into surgery. He was not in her chair, he was beside it. He did not examine the logic of this."She pushed me," he said.Archer looked up."She pushed me," Lennon said again. "She saw the direction and she moved before I did. I did not even understand what the sound was yet and she was already moving.""She knew what it was," Archer said quie

Lennon did not speak for a long time.The courtyard held them. The cold, the overhead light. The single bench neither of them was sitting on.He looked at Damien.Damien looked back."Say it again," Lennon said."Lennon…""Say it again. I need to hear it again.""The bullet caused internal damage that did not present immediately. The surgeons missed it in the initial repair. Three weeks ago a follow-up scan identified progressive arterial damage that is not operable." Damien held his gaze."The doctors gave me between eight and fourteen months."Lennon looked at him."Eight months.""At the lower estimate.""And you have known for three weeks.""Yes.""While the board hearing happened and the kidnapping and the photographs and all of it.""Yes.""You carried that for three weeks without..""Lennon," he said quietly."Come home," Lennon said.They went home.The penthouse was quiet. Roman was still handling whatever Roman was handling. Archer was somewhere. Evelyn was managing communic

The heir looked at him."No," they said. "I am not Volkov. I used the Volkov network. I paid for access. The obsession with destroying the Grayson name was mine. I pointed their infrastructure at a target they were already interested in and paid them to run it.""The kidnapping, the fabrications, the office device. The Volkov involvement was contracted.""You are a professor," Lennon said.He was looking at the face, the books and the specific quality of the academic space and the pieces were assembling."Department of comparative literature," the person said. "Fourteen years."Damien stared at them."Fourteen years," he said."Yes.""You have been in the building for fourteen years.""Yes." The heir's voice was steady. "I watched you build your career, your reputation and relationships." They looked at Lennon. "When you appeared I thought it would pass. It did not pass."Roman stepped forward."The antidote," he said. "I am not asking again."The heir looked at him."It is in the des

The hospital room his father was in was three floors up from the one Evelyn was recovering in. Lennon was in the corridor when the cardiologist came out. The doctor was composed and specific in the way of someone who had delivered this information many times and had developed the precise language for it. "The cardiac event was significant," she said. "He is stable now. We have him on monitoring and medication. The next twelve hours are critical." She looked at Lennon. "You can see him. Briefly." Lennon went in. His father was in the bed with the lines and the monitoring sensor and the diminished quality that hospitals gave everyone. But his eyes were open. He was looking at the ceiling when Lennon came in and he turned his head when the door opened. "You watched it," his father said. "Yes." "All of it." "All of it." Lennon sat in the chair beside the bed. "You did not have to say the last part." "Yes I did." His father held his gaze. "I have been not saying things for

The ambulance arrived in four minutes.Archer rode with Roman.Nobody stopped him. Nobody asked if he had the right to be in the vehicle because the specific quality of his presence beside Roman on that floor had answered the question before it could be asked.Lennon and Damien followed in the car.The drive was silent.At the hospital they were directed to the surgical waiting area, which Lennon knew too well now, the specific configuration of the chairs and the lighting and the desk with the staff who gave you information they were permitted to give and none of the information you actually needed.Archer was not sitting.He was standing near the corridor that led to surgery with both hands at his sides and the specific contained quality of a person who was holding something at the surface by pure discipline.Lennon crossed to him."Tell me what happened in the car," Lennon said.Archer looked at him."He was conscious when we got in the vehicle," Archer said. "He was conscious for mo