All Chapters of Dumped by the Heir, Claimed by his Brother : Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

99 Chapters

CHAPTER EIGHTY

CHAPTER EIGHTYA cafe. Elena chose a cafe, small and deliberately ordinary. It had mismatched chairs and a chalkboard menu and didn't take reservations and wouldn't recognize either of their faces, which was, Cassie understood, entirely the point. Elena was already there when she arrived, seated at a corner table away from the window, both hands wrapped around a cup she wasn't drinking from.She looked different outside the shadow of Gregory. Smaller in some ways, steadier in others, like a woman who had been holding a particular posture for so long that removing the reason for it had left her briefly uncertain of how to stand.Cassie sat down across from her. The waitress came and Cassie ordered tea she didn't want because her hands needed something to do and she had learned in recent weeks that the discipline of ordinary actions, ordering, pouring, holding a cup, kept her functional in situations where functioning was the only option."Thank you for coming," Elena said."You said yo

CHAPTER EIGHTY ONE

CHAPTER EIGHTY ONECassie had finally decided, it was time to talk. Three days of sitting beside him while he did his exercises and eating breakfast with him at the kitchen counter and watching him navigate the penthouse suite on the crutches with the particular grim determination that had replaced the cold withdrawal of the hospital weeks, three days of smiling at the right moments and asking the right questions and being exactly the wife he needed her to be while the information sat inside her chest like something with a heartbeat of its own, alive and insistent and impossible to ignore.On the third morning she woke up before him and lay in the dark and listened to him breathe and made the decision.She couldn't do it anymore. Not because she was weak or because the weight had become too much but because she understood finally that carrying this alone was its own kind of betrayal. She had spent weeks watching Dom shut people out and then watching him come back from it and she had

CHAPTER EIGHTY TWO

CHAPTER EIGHTY TWOLeo arrived within the hour.He came in as always, reading the room in the first three seconds and adjusting accordingly. He looked at Cassie with a questioning look and she nodded and his eyes shifted to Dom. He stared at him like someone who already knew the conversation had moved to a different place.Dom told him what Cassie had told him and Leo listened without interrupting. When Dom finished, Leo put his coffee down. "I want to bring the investigator in this week and have him sit with Chen's team," he said. "Make the evidence chain official so it's usable.""Do it," Dom said. "But first I want to see my dad."Leo looked at him carefully. "Is that a good idea right now?""Probably not," Dom said. "Do it anyway."Cassie called Elena, who answered on the second ring and asked her to please help them find a way that her father in law would be at the house the following morning and that she would find a reason to be absent. Her voice on the phone was steady in the

CHAPTER EIGHTY THREE

CHAPTER EIGHTY THREE By morning, it was everywhere.Cassie woke up to forty- seven notifications and a missed call from Officer Chen. The early morning light she was beginning to associate with bad news because bad news seemed to prefer arriving before she had fully woken up. She sat up and looked at her phone and scrolled through the alerts and felt something cold settle in her stomach.The story had legs. It had been picked up overnight by four major outlets and by morning it had spread to the kind of coverage that didn't disappear with a news cycle, the kind that fed on the family name and the wealth and the dramatic shape of a story about a man who may have tried to have his brother killed. Every headline had some version of the Hale name in it and every version of it was worse than the last.Dom was already awake. He was exercising his leg with his phone in his hand and the expression he wore when he was processing something at depth."Chen called," she said."I know, he called

CHAPTER EIGHTY FOUR

CHAPTER EIGHTY FOURMarcus was arrested on a Thursday.Cassie found out from a news alert the same way the rest of the world did, which was not how she had imagined finding out, not that she had spent much time imagining the specific mechanics of it, but somehow she had assumed there would be a call from Chen. Like some sort of direct line from the process to her, some acknowledgment that this was not just a news story but the resolution of something that had been trying to kill her.Instead her phone buzzed on the kitchen counter while she was making coffee and she picked it up and read the words and stood very still for a moment and then set the phone face down and finished making the coffee.Dom came in from the therapy room with his crutches and looked at her face."What happened?"She picked the phone back up and handed it to him.He read it with a look of indifference then he set it down on the counter and picked up the cup she had just poured and drank from it. Then he looked o

CHAPTER EIGHTY FIVE

CHAPTER EIGHTY FIVE“Babe, are you sure about this? You haven't left this hospital since you got here and the doctor says you need to sit still.”“But I am healing very fast and tired of walking around this room. I need some fresh air.”“Then we can take a walk to the back.”“Which is still inside the hospital.”“But… what if.. what if your leg can't carry the pressure?”“We won't know if we don't try.”“Babe… okay, how about the doctor?”“The doctor doesn't have to know until I am gone and the cafe is just two blocks away from the hospital. I was strategic about it. He comes in for the check at seven and doesn't come again till twelve. If we leave by nine, after the first check, we will be back before twelve.”Cassie sighed heavily and shook her head. “Looks like your mind is already made up.”“I am afraid, it is.”………….The cafe was Dom's kind of place.Cassie noticed it the moment they walked in. It didn't need to advertise its own exclusivity because the exclusivity was structural

CHAPTER EIGHTY SIX

CHAPTER EIGHTY SIXA wheelchair was waiting by the entrance when we got there. He was helped in and rolled to the ward. David came in and said no words but Cassie could see how upset he was in his eyes. Dom sat quietly like a puppy, making it obvious to Cassie that he had seen it too.He examined Dom's leg with careful hands, asking questions in a measured sequence, watching Dom's face for the answers his words wouldn't give. Dom answered everything in the clipped cooperative manner he used when he was trying to speed a process along that couldn't be sped.When David finished he sat back and looked at his notes and Cassie watched his face for any hint. She saw none. "The knee joint," David finally said, "is showing a stress response that I was starting to see indicators of two weeks ago and was hoping would self-resolve if you modulated the intensity." He paused. "It hasn't self-resolved because the intensity hasn't modulated."Dom said nothing."This isn't catastrophic," David con

CHAPTER EIGHTY SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHTY SEVENLeo barely came around these days. The work load was becoming too much for him to handle with Dom being in the hospital. Most times, they were on call, talking about what to do next and what not to do. Dom had even offered for some work to be brought to him here in the hospital but Leo strongly refused. Said he could handle it. He came to the hospital on a Wednesday afternoon with his laptop and a taunt expression that meant that he had something that required a table and their full attention.He sat down and opened the laptop and turned it to face them and on the screen was a name neither of them recognized attached to a photograph of a man she had seen before. She had seen him at a business dinner months ago and at a charity event the previous spring and she had shaken his hand and moved on without a second thought because he was the kind of person who existed in the background of rooms occupied by people like Gregory Hale, present and unremarkable and apparent

CHAPTER EIGHTY EIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHTY EIGHTIt was 7 : 43am.Dom was in the therapy room doing the gentle morning routine David had mapped out for the two-week protocol and she was at the counter with coffee and her phone when the notification came through. GREGORY HALE, PATRIARCH OF HALE GROUP, ARRESTED IN CONNECTION WITH HIGHWAY CONSPIRACY INVESTIGATION.She read it twice. She set the phone face down on the counter, picked up her coffee and drank from it. She tried to steady her shaky fingers as she tried to digest it and map up a way to break the news to Dom. He was prepared, but can you really be prepared enough to see your father trending on the tabloids for an attempted murder? The other morning they had stood in the room and read Marcus's arrest alert together and even though it was a relief, it still carried some weight. She was still sitting there when she heard the therapy room door open and Dom's careful steps in the hallway and then he appeared in the doorway with a towel around his shoulders

CHAPTER EIGHTY NINE

CHAPTER EIGHTY NINECassie turned back toward Dom with a distant look in her eyes. "I love your bromance."Dom looked at her. "My what?""Your bromance."He made a face. "That sounds disturbing.""It isn't. I wish I had a best friend who has my back like Leo has yours. It's just me in my little world.""Ouch… that hurts. What about me?"Cassie chuckled. "Are you a woman?"They fell into a comfortable silence, the question hanging over them, neither of them in a hurry to fill it."I want to see Marcus." Dom said out of nowhere. "I want to see if he feels any slight remorse.""Okay…"He turned his head and looked at her in the dark, searching her face for something, hesitation maybe, or fear."You're not going to stop me?""No… if that would make you feel better, do it. My priority is you being fine."A mist grew in his eyes. "I love you.""I love you too," she replied. "Now go to sleep."He almost smiled. "Bossy.""Always," she said.She felt him exhale slowly beside her and she stayed

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