Chapter 4 - What Was Stolen
"I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry," Victor repeated like a mantra, his face buried in the crook of Catherine’s neck. He could feel every rib through her thin cotton shirt. He was weeping openly, tears soaking into her collar, unbothered by his ruined composure or his expensive suit touching the dusty floor.
Catherine lay frozen in his embrace for several long seconds before her fragile arms slowly rose to wrap around his back.
"You... you came?" she whispered, her tears overflowing. "She said you hated me. Maris said... she said you signed the papers... that you threw us away because I was sick..."
"She lied!" Victor pulled back, holding her face between his large, warm hands. "Catherine, look at me. I never saw those papers! I never stopped searching for you, but every investigator I hired was paid off by her! I transferred fifty thousand dollars every single month thinking it was going to a private clinic for you and Annie!"
Catherine’s eyes widened in horror. "Fifty thousand? Victor, we haven't had fifty dollars some weeks. I’ve been sewing clothes for a local market just to pay the four hundred dollars rent for this room! Maris came here two years ago... she found us in the hospital when Annie had pneumonia. She told me if I ever tried to contact you, she would use your corporate legal team to put me in prison for fraud!"
"She will never touch you again," Victor swore, his thumb gently wiping away her tears. "Neither of you. Ever again."
He stood up, his posture shifting from broken husband to ruthless executive in an instant. He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed his personal physician, Dr. Harrison, head of internal medicine at St. Jude’s Private Hospital.
"Harrison," Victor said, his tone sharp as a scalpel. "I need the executive isolation suite prepped immediately. Private ambulance, full medical transport team, top rheumatology specialist on standby. I am bringing my wife in within twenty minutes."
"Victor, what's going on?" Dr. Harrison asked through the speaker. "I thought your wife—"
"My wife is alive, and she has been systematically deprived of care," Victor interrupted. "If that suite isn't ready when my transport arrives, I will buy your hospital and fire you by midnight. Do you understand me?"
"We'll be waiting at the bay, Victor. Bring her in."
Victor scooped Catherine up into his arms as if she weighed nothing—and to his horror, she practically did. He wrapped his wool overcoat securely around her frame, while Annie clutched his belt loop tightly, her little eyes wide with a mixture of fear and wonder.
As they descended the dark stairwell of the Northside tenement, Catherine rested her forehead against Victor’s chest, listening to the rapid, strong thud of his heart.
"Victor..." she whispered weakly. "Your mother... she took more than money. She took my father's old journal before she locked us out. The one with the land deeds from the northern district."
Victor stopped on the third-floor landing. "What land deeds?"
"The ones my father left me before he died," Catherine said, her breathing shallow. "She said... she said it was compensation for the embarrassment I caused your family."
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Victor’s jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. He didn't just have a financial fraud on his hands; his mother had executed a calculated, criminal land grab targeting an invalid woman.
"She’s going to give back every grain of dirt she stole," Victor promised softly. "And then she’s going to answer to the law."
