The Heiress They Left To Die Chapter 08
Blackwood security escorted us out of the room.
The livestream became a national scandal within hours.
But it didn’t end there.
Josie was thrown out of the Hawthorne estate that same day. The Hawthornes filed criminal charges against her for fraud and medical fraud, and began clawing back every asset in her name.
Years of abusing digoxin and beta blockers had done exactly what you’d expect — her heart had sustained real, irreversible damage.
Twenty years of faking an illness, and in the end, she’d made herself sick.
Three days after the livestream, the woman who’d stormed into the suite was identified.
She couldn’t hold up under the pressure and walked into a police station to turn herself in, admitting she’d been paid to fabricate a malpractice claim.
She also posted a video, sobbing, confessing that her son wasn’t dead at all. Every word she’d said in that room had been fed to her — and paid for — by Hawthorne staff.
Once that video went public, the questions aimed at the Hawthornes only multiplied.
Hawthorne Group’s stock tanked day after day. Investors started pulling out. The board began distancing itself from Richard and calling for his resignation.
Which was exactly the moment Arthur had been waiting for.
The friction between Blackwood and Hawthorne had never really been my personal matter.
For years, Hawthorne Group had been muscling in on Blackwood’s hospital contracts and poaching several core R&D teams.
When Arthur showed up in that room, it wasn’t only to stand behind me.
He’d been ready — ready to ride this scandal all the way in, and finally take Hawthorne down.
Hawthorne Group didn’t last two weeks before filing Chapter 11.
Accounts frozen. Investors gone. The board seized control.
The Hawthorne family, once untouchable at the top, lost their grip on the company, and got tangled in a mess of debt and litigation.
Ethan went from heir apparent of Hawthorne Group to a name in ruin, hunted by creditors and lawsuits.
Later, someone spotted him at the front steps of the group home in South Boston.
He was clutching the Hawthorne crest necklace — repaired now.
The crack in the mother-of-pearl shell was still there.
He’d sit on those steps sometimes, for an entire day.
As for me, I hung up the white coat from St. Catherine’s and put on a suit from Blackwood Medical.
I stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows on the top floor of Blackwood Medical Group’s headquarters.
Arthur walked over and clapped a hand on my shoulder.
“You’ve carried it for a long time.”
I turned to look at him.
This old man didn’t share a drop of blood with me.
But he’d given me a home. A name. And the freedom to choose my own life.
“Dad. I’m okay.”
Arthur smiled and didn’t say anything more.
Outside the window, the lights of Boston were coming on.
In this life, I would never need anyone’s charity again. I would never need to please anyone again.
From now on, I lived by my own choices — and no one else’s.
THE END