He Sent Me Away So I Took His Crown Chapter 07
I woke up in the private hospital the Moretti family used. Outside the window, the sky was already dark.
Every breath scraped my raw throat, and my head throbbed as if I’d been struck.
Elias sat beside the bed. His tie was gone, and his shirtsleeves were rolled once at the cuffs.
He held a cup of coffee that had long since gone cold.
The second he saw my eyes open, he set it down.
“Don’t talk yet.”
He held a glass of water to my lips, then pressed the call button for the doctor.
After the exam, the doctor explained that I had inhaled a storage fumigant. Luckily, the exposure had been brief. Otherwise, it could have caused permanent neurological damage.
That was enough. I didn’t need a list of chemical names to understand that the door to that room had nearly been my coffin.
Once the room was quiet again, I asked, “Lark?”
Elias didn’t even blink at the fact that the first thing I asked about was my horse.
“The surgery went well. Mara’s there, along with the doctors from Denver. She’ll be able to stand in a sling for a while tonight.”
Tears instantly spilled down my cheeks.
Elias pulled a tissue from the box and offered it to me, his hand hovering nearby but not touching my face.
“I have the first batch of records. Do you want to see them now, or wait until you feel better?”
“Now.”
He set a tablet on my lap.
The first file was audio from the hallway.
Luca’s voice, telling the two enforcers: *“If she won’t apologize, don’t open the door.”*
The second was security footage from the control room.
Two minutes after the broadcast began reading the statement, someone wearing a silver-bell bracelet entered the equipment room.
The camera didn’t capture her face.
But it captured her hand flipping open the safety cover, entering the code, and activating the old quarantine wing’s fumigation system.
The third file was a document log.
The so-called apology statement from Elena Mercer had been uploaded late Friday night by Bianca’s event assistant, then approved for release using Luca’s account.
The electronic signature had been lifted from one of my veterinary authorization forms from the previous year.
“Once the broadcast started, I had someone cut the microphone,” Elias said quietly. “The host stopped speaking, but that statement kept scrolling on the inner hall screens. The backend server retained the original file.”
The evidence was all there, cold and irrefutable.
I suddenly remembered all the times Luca had told me I was too sensitive, that things were not as serious as I imagined.
But what had really happened did not become lighter simply because he said it softly.
I handed the tablet back to Elias.
“Please send me copies.”
“I will.”
“And thank you.”
He looked at me, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep.
“Elena, you can thank me for saving you.”
“But don’t thank me for believing you. You were always entitled to that.”