The Man I Thought Had Saved Me
Chapter 06 - The Man I Thought Had Saved Me
Daniel was waiting in our living room when I arrived home.
No jacket.
No tie.
Just anger.
"How long?"
I rolled past him.
"How long what?"
"How long have you been seeing Ortiz?"
"Why do you care?"
"I'm your fiancé."
"Then you should be happy."
His expression didn't change.
That hurt more than I expected.
I wanted him to cross the room.
I wanted him to kneel beside me and ask what the doctor said.
I wanted the man I thought loved me.
Instead, Daniel asked, "Who told you about the referral?"
That was the moment the last piece of denial inside me cracked.
"You did know."
He looked away.
"Daniel."
"It's complicated."
"No. It's one question. Did you cancel my appointments?"
He walked toward the window.
"Yes."
The word nearly broke me.
"Why?"
"Because you were destroying yourself."
"What?"
"Every new doctor. Every experimental therapy. Every possibility. You wouldn't accept what happened."
"I wasn't given a choice!"
"You were depressed. Vulnerable."
"So you made medical decisions behind my back?"
"I made decisions when you couldn't."
I stared at him.
Perhaps he had once convinced himself that was true.
Maybe that was the most frightening part.
Daniel didn't see himself as a villain.
He saw himself as the hero of a story in which I was too weak to survive without him.
"I want access to everything," I said. "My medical records. My legal documents. My company authorizations."
His face changed.
"Your company has nothing to do with this."
Now I understood.
During my recovery, Daniel had become acting chief operating officer of Whitmore Home.
I had signed temporary authority agreements while heavily medicated.
He'd told me they were necessary.
"You've been running my company for eighteen months."
"Successfully."
"Give me the documents."
"Claire—"
"Tonight."
He laughed once.
Not kindly.
"You can't just roll back into a boardroom after disappearing for a year and a half."
I felt something inside me become very still.
"I didn't disappear."
He looked at me.
"You made everyone believe I had."
That night, Daniel slept in the guest room.
I called my attorney.
By morning, I learned something worse.
My temporary authorization had been amended six months earlier.
May you like
The document carried my electronic signature.
I had never signed it.
