Chapter 2 - Room 904
My recovery in Room 904 was slow and agonizing. It was during my third week there that I first met Sloane Pierce. Grant brought her in one afternoon, introducing her breezy as a "consultant for the foundation." She was stunning, wearing a tailored blazer and an air of absolute entitlement. She stood at the foot of my bed, looking at my pale, swollen face and the IV bags dripping into my arms. "Your room is beautiful, Evelyn," she had said, her eyes darting around the space as if she were measuring the curtains.
Something about her presence made my stomach churn, but I blamed the medication. I dozed off shortly after she left. But later that night, I woke up to hushed voices outside my door. It was slightly ajar. I couldn't move my body, but I could reach my phone on the bedside table. I pressed record.
May you like
It was Grant. And Sloane. "She looks terrible, Grant. How long is this going to drag out?" Sloane whispered, her voice stripped of the sweet tone she had used earlier. Grant sighed, a sound of profound annoyance. "The doctors say it's touch and go. If her heart fails because of the sepsis... it's over." There was a pause. Then Grant said the words that shattered my entire world: "If she dies, her shares pass to me. The trust dissolves into my accounts. We just have to wait."
I lay there in the dark, the phone heavy in my trembling hand. He wasn't praying for my recovery; he was counting down to my funeral. He was sleeping with this woman while I was bleeding out on an operating table. In that solitary moment, the Evelyn who had tried to win Regina’s approval, the Evelyn who had loved Grant Whitaker, died. What was left in that hospital bed was a woman made of ice and anger. That was the night my marriage ceased to be a relationship and became a crime scene. I sent the recording to my attorney, Helena Cross, before my breakfast tray arrived the next morning.
