All Chapters of He had always been mine : Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

KILLAN POVBrandon did not try to touch me again.He stayed where he was after I shoved his hands off my face, close enough that I could still see the tension in his jaw, far enough that the air between us stopped feeling like another set of fingers. The penthouse held the quiet of money and thick glass. Beyond the windows the city looked arranged and distant. Inside it, I could still smell restroom soap and the metallic edge of panic.“You’re shaking,” he said.“I’m fine.”“You’re not fine. You walked in here looking like you’d seen a ghost and flinched when I checked your face.” His voice stayed low. Controlled. Under it something rawer kept pushing up. “Remington told me who that man was. Ambrose Ward. Your uncle.”The name in Brandon’s mouth made my stomach turn.“Don’t.”“He’s been in the file,” Brandon said, as if that were a normal sentence. “For a while. Standing authorizations. Old access. Things that never sat right. I didn’t have the full picture until today. Now I do.”I l

KILLIAN POV Two days after Brandon’s penthouse, the hospital stopped sounding like a place that was waiting.Leigh’s fever had not broken the way the overnight team had hoped. The second echo looked worse than the first. Antibiotics were running hard and still the markers in her blood climbed in the wrong direction. She slept more. When she woke, she asked for water in a voice so small that Maya had to lean in to hear it. The tiger stayed under her arm even when the nurses moved her for checks. I had stopped counting how many times I had pressed my hand to her forehead and found the heat still there.We lived in the bay. Maya’s mother brought clothes and left again because the room was too small for three adults and a child on monitors. I learned the names of the day nurses. I learned which beeps meant nothing and which ones brought someone in at a walk that was not casual. Brandon’s offer sat in the back of my head like a closed door I refused to look at directly. The forgery freeze

KILLIAN POV Three days left.The number sat on every surface of the hospital like it had been written there in permanent marker. Whiteboards. Chart notes. The surgeon’s schedule held with a pencil that could still be erased if authorization failed. Case management had come back with figures that made Maya go still in a way that was worse than shouting. Insurance would cover a portion. The portion left was not a portion we had. Deposit to hold the operating room. Projected out-of-pocket. Possible secondary team fees. Numbers that did not care about forgery freezes or friends with renovations or seed rounds or meal deliveries.No one had come through.I had called the list twice over. I had waited for callbacks that did not arrive. I had opened messages that started with *thinking of you* and ended with nothing that could pay for a pediatric cardiac suite. Derrick’s renovation. Marcus’s truck. Priya’s board. Omar’s empty account. The collector who had gone silent when the word *forgery

BRANDON POV He arrived looking like a man who had already been broken once that day and had come back for the second pass.Hospital still clung to him disinfectant, sleeplessness, the gray under his eyes. He stood in my living room as if the floor might burn him. I did not offer a chair. I did not offer water. I walked toward him until he had to either hold his ground or step back, and when he held, I took the last inch anyway.“Say it.”Killian’s throat worked. “Leigh needs surgery in three days. The valve is damaged. Insurance won’t cover the gap in time. I’m asking you to pay what they need.”I laughed once, low and without humor.“You’re asking.” I caught his jaw in one hand—hard, fingers digging in just enough that his breath hitched—and turned his face up to mine. “You blocked me. You hit me. You shoved my hands off your face like I was filth. And now you walk into my home with your daughter’s heart in your mouth and you *ask*, like manners still apply between us.”He tried to p

KILLIAN POVThe next morning the hospital started treating Leigh like a surgical patient instead of a maybe.Consent forms. Anesthesia questions. A child-life specialist with stickers and a careful voice who explained the breathing tube with a doll so Leigh would not only hear the adult words. Maya answered everything. I signed where they pointed. My handwriting looked like someone else’s.Leigh wanted to know if she would dream.“Maybe,” Maya said, smoothing her hair. “And when you wake up, we’ll be right there.”“Will it hurt?”“You’ll be asleep. After, they’ll give you medicine so it doesn’t hurt too much.”Leigh nodded, small and serious, and held the tiger tighter. I sat on the other side of the bed and let her count my fingers the way she used to when she was smaller, as if the counting could keep the room from tilting toward an operating table.Case management came by before noon with a different tone than the day of the crisis numbers. The hold was confirmed. Authorization was