Semua Bab I AM BILLIONAIRE DAMON'S REPLACEMENT BRIDE : Bab 131 - Bab 140

I ignored the buzz of my phone the second it lit up...news alerts about the accident, texts from numbers I didn’t recognize, probably reporters who’d dug up my info somehow. I swiped them all away and opened my chat with Lara Jean instead. Me: Is it true the divorce decree doesn’t go into effect for 30 days? Her reply popped up almost instantly. Lara Jean: Yes. Standard waiting period in NY. Why? What’s wrong? Me: Damon was in a car accident. He’s in surgery. Am I still legally his wife? Lara Jean: Yes. Until the 30 days are up, you’re still married in the eyes of the law. You’re his next of kin. Is he okay? Me: I don’t know. I’m going to the hospital now. Lara Jean: Call me if you need anything. Anything at all.I watched JFK shrink in the rear window, watched my escape route disappear, watched London turn into something that might never happen now. I tried not to think about what I was doing. Tried not to question whether this was right. Tried not to wonder if I was making th

The doctors gathered us in the same small consultation room where I'd gotten the first update. Me, Catherine, Richard, and Marcus who'd insisted on being there even though he wasn't family. Dr. Patel, the neurosurgeon, looked exhausted. Like he'd been in surgery for days instead of hours. "Mr. Sterling's condition has stabilized for now," he began. "But I need to be very clear about the severity of his injuries. The traumatic brain injury is significant. We've managed to control some of the swelling with medication, but his brain is still under considerable stress." "What does that mean exactly?" Richard asked. "It means we're keeping him in a medically induced coma to give his brain time to heal. We're controlling the sedation levels carefully, monitoring his intracranial pressure constantly. But even with all our interventions, the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours are critical." "Critical how?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. Dr. Patel looked at me directly. "T

EVEThey started reducing Damon's sedation Monday morning.Three days after the accident.Two days after the emergency surgery that had almost killed him.Dr. Patel explained the process carefully...they'd decrease the medication gradually, watch for signs of consciousness, monitor his brain activity constantly."It could take hours or days," he said. "Everyone responds differently. We're looking for purposeful movement, eye opening, any indication that he's becoming aware. But you need to prepare yourselves. We still don't know what cognitive effects there will be.""The memory loss," I said."Yes. And potentially other issues. Speech, motor function, personality changes. We won't know until he's fully awake.""When can we see him?""You can be in the room when he starts to wake up. In fact, familiar voices might help orient him. But I need to warn you, the process of waking from a medically induced coma can be disorienting and frightening. He might be confused, agitated, not recogni

I woke up to bright lights and the sound of machines beeping.My head felt like it had been split open.Which, according to the doctor who kept appearing and disappearing, it essentially had been."Mr. Sterling, can you tell me your full name?""Damon James Sterling.""Good. And do you know where you are?""Hospital. Mount Sinai, you said.""That's right. And do you know why you're here?""Car accident. I crashed. I don't...I can't remember the accident itself but you told me that's normal.""It is normal. What's the last thing you do remember clearly?"I tried to think.My head hurt when I tried to think.Everything was fragments.Pieces that didn't quite fit together."Work," I said finally. "I remember being at the office. A meeting with Marcus about the Singapore expansion. And then..."I stopped.Tried to grab hold of the memory but it slipped away."And then what?" Dr. Patel prompted gently."I don't know. It's gone. The next thing I remember is waking up here."That wasn't quit

DAMON The hospital room was starting to feel less like a cage and more like a strange kind of home. Six days in now, and the machines had become background noise instead of a constant alarm in my skull. The headache was still there, a low throb behind my eyes, but the fragments of memory weren’t quite as jagged. I could hold onto the good ones longer: Eve’s laugh in the kitchen at the penthouse, her fingers tracing lazy circles on my chest during lazy Sunday mornings, the way she’d looked at me when I slipped the ring on her finger in the park. The darker pieces...arguments I couldn’t quite place, my mother’s tight mouth whenever Eve’s name came up, Marcus warning me about something I couldn’t remember still floated just out of reach. I didn’t push them. Not today. Today I was winning at small victories, and that felt like enough.I was sitting up in bed, the adjustable frame cranked high enough that I could almost pretend I wasn’t wearing a hospital gown. Eve had brought me another