SWNOVELS Chapter 40
40. Who’s pissed?
It takes only one more hour for the police to contact Gerald and me. They swing by the hospital and get the statements. It’s the
same detectives from before, and they look much paler this time around, the creases on their foreheads seemingly permanently
etched. They mutter about suspects and urge us to notify them if we see any sort of suspicious activity. There are still no leads
from the last case.
It is only after they leave the premises after taking our statements that I realize that I forgot to ask them if they had paid Aiden a
visit.
When Coraline’s parents arrive, the time is around 03:00 AM in the morning. They see me in the hallway in front of the
emergency unit and come to a stop. I have a good idea of what I look like, my eyes bloodshot and half-closed from sleepiness,
my hair barely held down by running my hand through it a couple of times, still dressed in that wrinkled, blood-stained suit that is
starting to smell.
Coraline’s parents take one look at me and demand that I leave the hospital that instant to go home and get some sleep because
I look dead on my feet
I put out the obligatory protests until they threaten to not let me into the hospital room to see Coraline when she woke up (“Don’t
make us pull the family-only card. I swear to god, Jace, you can barely function! We’re here now, she’s safe. You can take a
break now “Says her mother with her hand caressing my cheek, and I lean into it in my addled mind, because it’s been such a
long time since I had a mother take such tender interest in me) Gerald, who had been sitting next to me, takes this as his
permission to drag me home. He tells me that he will spend the night at my father’s place so we can visit her first thing in the
morning. But I know that he is staying with me because he can sense the fear I was trying to tamp down
оп.
I mean, my best friend was shot right in front of me. Forgive me for being a bit jittery and jumpy.
I take a shower while falling asleep on my feet, and stumble onto the bed, with just my towel around my hips. So of course, when
I wake up the next morning after a nightmare of Coraline bleeding in front of me, I am naked as the day I was born. The sun
shines cheerfully outside the window, and there is a raging headache playing ping-pong in my skull. All my joints hurt as if I am
seventy years of age, and I am still so very tired.
Cursing and grumbling, I drag myself out of the bed and take another shower to wake myself up.
Gerald is in the kitchen, cooking some breakfast. I peek over his shoulder to see him stirring oatmeal in a pot. That is a good
choice, I don’t think I will be able to handle anything else.
“Good morning,” Gerald greets me, looking well-rested unlike myself. I swear the man has regenerative superpowers. He never
looks anything but prim and proper first thing in the morning. I grunt a greeting and plop myself on the counter, grimacing at how
blindingly white it is. In fact, everything in this kitchen is either white or grey.
Who the hell designed this place?
“Coffee?” Gerald asks, bringing over a pot filled with life-giving darkness, and I grunt again, this time nodding.
Bad move, my headache pounds.
“I thought you would be well-rested come morning.” Gerald muses as he carefully fills a cup with coffee and dissolves a cube of
sugar in it. Then he tops it with my favorite creamer, “but it seems that I have
mistaken”
“Thank you,” I say reverently as he offers me the coffee, and I take a scalding sip, disregarding the burn in
my tongue.
Gerald makes two bowls of oatmeal, complete with a dollop of peanut butter and various crushed nuts and dried berries in mine
and takes a seat in front of me. He observes me for a moment
“You look like death warmed over,” he notes, “so much so that I think you should just return to your room and sleep for a couple
more hours. Coraline has still not woken up, I asked her parents to confirm. Why are you squinting at the sunlight?”
“Headache,” I reply, “and no, we’re going to the hospital”
“Jace, I know that you feel like you’re responsible for this girl-
“Not just that,” I wave him off. And of course, I feel responsible for Coraline, she got shot right in front of me after we were
walking to our car from a business dinner.
“Then what? Did the director ask you to meet him again?”
“Nope. I just want to see if he fired the nurse Clara, the one who took one look at me and decided that I was trouble? I tried to
get Pat to not fire her, so wanna see for myself
Gerald shakes his head, “is that really necessary right now Jace?”
“Yep,” I
chirp, and get up with the bowl, stirring in the peanut butter with a spoon, I’ll get dressed After that, we’re going to the police
station.
“Oh,” Gerald nods, “that’s a good idea. I was thinking that we should talk to your father about this as well, as soon as returns
home.”
My father had gone to the Caribbean earlier this week to take care of some exclusive business deal that had something to do
with a government of a country. He was awfully secretive about it all that I didn’t even get the name of the country. Knowing that
my father owned a weaponry manufacturing company did not ease my mind off this matter. When it came to business, my father
had an interesting portfolio He peddled everything from technology to textiles, from food to medicine, and even banks According
to Gerald, he was a genius-level strategist, and the most business savvy individual of the twenty-first century, on his way to
becoming the world’s richest man in a few years’ time. If he was not already.
And I was supposed to be this man’s heir. I didn’t have half the brains he did, nor the brawn. And not an ounce of his charisma.
Just thinking about it made my blood run cold. How was I supposed to shoulder. this entire empire after his retirement which was
to come by the end of this year? We were already four months into the said year. I still felt like a fish out of the water, hell, I was
still learning the ropes with Zelt Tech.
I push down those thoughts to the depths of my mind and lock them over to hyperventilate later.
So, getting a one-on-one appointment with my father was difficult, to say the least. But talking with him. about the recent
shooting is necessary.
Because who the hell knows who my old man had pissed on his ascend to greatness but himself?