All Chapters of The Wife He Used as a Scapegoat : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

~ Isabella ~I sat on a hard plastic chair next to Leo’s hospital bed. The room smelled like soap and cold metal. I kept my laptop closed on my lap. For the last week, Vanguard Capital had been in a quiet corporate war. We were trying to trace a company called Coldwell Holdings. We knew someone named "C" was behind my past frame-job . But right now, none of those multi-billion-dollar problems mattered. The only thing that mattered was the pale boy sitting in front of me.Leo wore a blue hospital gown that was too big for him. His wrists looked thin, almost like twigs. He's twenty-four, but in this light, he looked much younger."Bella, you are staring," Leo said. He did not look up from his phone. His thumb swiped slowly across the screen. "You have your serious business face on. It is making me nervous."I forced my mouth to slide into a smile. I reached out and patted his knee through the heavy green blanket. "I do not have a business face on. I am just resting my eyes.""Sure you a

~ Isabella ~"There is very little time left, Ms. Hart," Doctor Evans said, his voice a flat, clinical executioner.He stood in the quiet hospital hallway, looking down at his clipboard as if the tragedy of Leo's life was just another statistic to file away. I gripped the strap of my purse so hard my nails bit through the leather, my fingers turning a bloodless white."What do you mean?" I asked, my voice trembling, trying to build a wall of money against the inevitable. "We have the best treatments now. I can pay for whatever my brother needs. Whatever it takes.""Money cannot buy back the time they stole from him," the doctor replied, his slow head shake cutting deeper than any scalpel. "The years of neglected care have taken their toll. His heart is giving out, and his kidneys are failing. If we do not find a donor match within days, his organs will shut down completely. Money won't mend a shattered body, Ms. Hart."The words didn't just hurt; they suffocated me. A sudden, piercing

~ Isabella ~I sat in my office at Vanguard Capital. The clock on my computer showed 7:58 AM. I had been here since six, reading through the Coldwell files again. The name Damian Cole sat on the screen, glaring back at me. I picked up my coffee cup. The coffee was cold, but I drank it anyway. I needed something to do with my hands. My desk phone buzzed. "Ms. Hart," my assistant said through the speaker. "Mr. Wolfe is here. He's early." "Send him in," I said. I set the cup down and straightened the papers on my desk. I did not want to look like I had been waiting for him.The door opened. Nathan walked in. He wore a dark suit, but it looked loose on his shoulders. His tie was straight, but his eyes had dark circles under them. He looked like he had not slept in days. He stopped a few feet from my desk. "Thank you for seeing me, Isabella," he said. "Don't thank me yet," I said. "I said we would share information. That does not make us friends." "I know," he said. "I'm not asking for fri

~ Isabella ~I sat inside the glass war room at the Vanguard Capital headquarters. My cup of coffee sat on the edge of the dark steel table. The coffee was already cold, but I did not care to drink it. I kept my eyes fixed on the huge television screens mounted on the wall. The screens showed rows and rows of green and white numbers. These numbers tracked how much money our company was worth every single minute. Everything looked completely quiet. The room smelled like clean carpet and printer paper.Suddenly, a bright red flash blinked on the middle screen.The main number, which showed Vanguard’s stock price, jumped downward. It did not drop slowly. It fell like a heavy stone dropped from a high roof. A long red line stretched across the chart, pointing straight down toward the floor."What just happened?" I stood up so fast that my leather chair rolled back and hit the concrete wall with a loud thud.The door to the war room burst open. Maya ran inside. She did not have her usual b

~ Nathan ~The big clock on the boardroom wall ticked loudly. Every tick felt like a tiny hammer hitting my forehead. I adjusted my blue tie for the fourth time in five minutes. My palms were sweaty, leaving damp marks on the smooth, dark wood of the conference table. On the large wall screen, the Wolfe Enterprises stock price was glowing in bright red numbers. It was already dropping, and I hadn't even opened my mouth to the public yet."Nathan, you cannot do this," Harrison said. He was one of the oldest board members, and his face was completely red. He slammed his hand down on a stack of financial reports. "If you walk into that press room and tell the world what your father did, the company will fall apart. Institutional investors are already running away. We will lose everything by Friday!"I looked at Harrison. Then I looked at the ten other board members sitting around the glass table. They were all leaning forward, their eyes wide with panic. They looked like people on a sink