Chapter 2 - THE AMBULANCE AND THE ASHES
The back of the ambulance smelled of rubbing alcohol, diesel exhaust, and the sharp, ozone scent of the defibrillator pads still attached to Jude’s chest.
The sirens wailed overhead, a high-pitched, rhythmic scream that tore through the midnight rain of downtown Seattle. Outside the narrow rear windows, the city lights blurred into long streaks of red and yellow against the wet glass.
I sat on the narrow bench opposite the gurney, monitoring Jude’s vitals on the wall-mounted screen. His rhythm was stable now—a steady, eighty-beats-per-minute sinus rhythm—but his skin remained dangerously pale, coated in a fine sheen of cold sweat.
Beckett sat on the small jump-seat at the head of the gurney, his massive frame hunched over, holding Jude’s limp, small hand between both of his own.
He hadn't spoken since the doors slammed shut at the hotel. His eyes were fixed entirely on his son’s face, his shoulders rigid beneath his wet tuxedo jacket.
"He’s going to be okay, Beckett," I said quietly, the noise of the siren forcing me to speak louder than I wanted to. "The AED delivered a single shock within ninety seconds of collapse. His neurological function should be completely intact."
Beckett didn't look up immediately. His thumb gently rubbed the back of Jude’s small fingers.
"He was five years old when Maeve died," Beckett said softly, his voice barely audible over the roar of the engine. "Breast cancer. Stage four by the time they found it. She fought for eight months."
I felt a sharp, painful pang in my chest. For ten years, I had hated Maeve. In my mind, she had been the calculating, beautiful woman who had stolen my fiancé hours before our engagement dinner. I had imagined them living a charmed, golden life in the high-society circles of Chicago while I put myself through residency on coffee and spite.
"I'm sorry," I said, and meant it. "I didn't know."
"Of course you didn't know," Beckett said. He finally looked up, his dark eyes hollow and red-rimmed beneath the harsh fluorescent lights of the ambulance ceiling. "Because the moment I tried to reach out to you—the moment I tried to explain what had happened—your brother told me that if I ever contacted you again, he would ensure Whitmore Development pulled their entire twenty-million-dollar credit line from my family's hotel group."
I froze. The ambient noise of the ambulance seemed to drop away.
"What?" I breathed.
"June 14," Beckett said, his voice shaking with a decade of buried fury. "My father was hospitalized in Chicago that morning. Maeve was his business partner's daughter. Her father was killed in the same crash that put my dad in the ICU. I was twenty-nine years old, Maren. I was trying to save my family's business while holding together two dying men."
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his hands locked together.
"I called Julian at three in the afternoon," Beckett continued. "I told him I couldn't make the dinner. I asked him to give you the ring, to tell you I had to fly to Chicago immediately, and that I would be back in seventy-two hours to explain everything."
"Julian told me..." My throat felt like it was full of glass. "Julian came to my room at midnight. He showed me a text message from your number. It said... it said you were sleeping with Maeve at the Drake Hotel. It had a picture."
Beckett let out a harsh, bitter laugh that sounded like dry leaves scraping across concrete.
"The picture was from a charity gala six months earlier," Beckett said, looking directly into my eyes. "Julian took that picture himself when he attended the conference in Chicago. He sent it to you from a burner phone, Maren. And when I landed in Chicago that night, Julian called my hotel room. He told me that you had taken the ring, thrown it into the lake, and spent the evening in bed with Richard Vance."
Richard Vance. The son of the city’s most powerful real estate developer—and Julian’s primary business partner in the Bellevue land acquisition that had launched my brother's career.
I sat back against the hard plastic bench, my head hit the padded wall with a soft thud.
The world I had lived in for ten years—the narrative that had shaped every choice I made, every relationship I avoided, every wall I built around my heart—was crumbling into dust.
"Why?" I whispered, tears finally burning the backs of my eyes. "Why would Julian do that? He was my brother. He loved me."
"Because your trust fund was tied to your marital status," Beckett said coldly. "Your father's will stipulated that if you married before the age of twenty-five, your fifty-percent share of the Bell Family Estate would convert into an independent trust managed by your husband. But if you remained unmarried until thirty, the management rights stayed with the executive trustee."
He looked at me with an expression of profound, agonizing pity.
"Julian needed your fifty percent, Maren. He used your voting shares as collateral to secure the loans for the Bellevue project. If you had married me on June 14, he would have lost control of the estate within thirty days. He would have been ruined."
The ambulance lurched violently as it took a sharp turn onto the emergency bay ramp of St. Catherine Hospital.
The red lights flitted across the ceiling.
I sat in the dark, my hand buried in my pocket, my fingers wrapped around the small, cold band of platinum.
Ten years.
Ten years of believing I was unlovable. Ten years of believing the man I loved had traded me for a wealthier, better woman. Ten years of building my life on a foundation of absolute, calculated lies told by the brother who had tucked me into bed when I was a child.
The ambulance came to a sudden stop.
The rear doors flew open, revealing the bright, harsh lights of the St. Catherine trauma bay and a team of nurses running toward us with a transfer gurney.
"We have a nine-year-old male, post-resuscitation!" I shouted, my physician’s voice instantly taking over, cutting through the fog of my own devastation. "Let's get him to Trauma Bay Two! I want a twelve-lead ECG, full metabolic panel, and an immediate cardiology consult!"
I jumped out of the ambulance, helping the team guide Jude's gurney down the ramp.
Beckett stepped out behind me, his hand resting briefly on the small of my back as we pushed through the double glass doors of the emergency department.
The touch was light, brief, and electric—a ghost of the past slamming into the reality of the present.
As we crossed the threshold into the sterile, white world of the hospital, my phone vibrated violently in my dress pocket.
I pulled it out with my left hand while keeping my right on Jude’s gurney.
It was a text message from Julian.
Maren. Don't speak to the press. Don't speak to Beckett. I am coming to the hospital right now with the estate attorneys. We need to handle this quietly.
May you like
I stared at the screen for two seconds.
Then, with absolute, cold precision, I blocked his number, shoved the phone back into my pocket, and walked into the trauma bay.
