Chapter 197
He turned and walked back through the lobby and into the parking lot. The morning air was cold and sharp. He pulled out his phone and typed into the search bar: Jocelyn Wolfe Collins family connections. He needed to understand what kind of power she was genuinely connected to — what leverage she held that he had so catastrophically underestimated.
The results were a frustrating dead end. Public records. Society pages from the Met Gala. The official wedding announcement. Nothing that explained this level of fortification.
“What are you hiding, Jocelyn?” he muttered, looking up at the hospital windows reflecting back the grey sky.
It came to him then, slowly and with a cold clarity: he was playing a game whose rules he had never been given. And for a man who had built his entire life on control, that was the most frightening thing he had ever encountered.
The ICU room was quiet — a stark contrast to the storm raging in Jocelyn’s mind. The only sound was the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor. Beep… beep… beep.
Jocelyn sat in the uncomfortable plastic chair beside the bed, holding Grandma’s hand. It felt frail, like dry parchment stretched over bird bones.
Her phone vibrated against the bedside table. She picked it up. A news alert from The NY Chronicle.
Headline: Schneider Family Severs Ties with ‘Troubled’ Daughter Jocelyn Wolfe.
𝘠о𝘂𝘳 𝖽𝖺𝗶𝘭𝗒 𝖽o𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝗇о𝗏elѕ on g𝗮l𝗇𝗈ve𝗅ѕ.cо𝘮
Her breath hitched. She unlocked the phone with trembling fingers and read the statement.
Deeply saddened by Jocelyn’s mental instability… recent violent outbursts force us to distance ourselves for her own good… a regretful but necessary decision.
She lowered the phone onto the bed. It landed like a physical blow to the stomach. They had not simply disowned her. They had destroyed her credibility. They had painted a target on her back for every gossip column in the city.
“They didn’t just disown me,” she whispered to the unconscious woman beside her. “They destroyed me.”
The tears came then — not the hot, angry tears of the night before, but something rawer. Tears of total abandonment. She was an orphan now. Truly and legally alone.
The room began to tilt. The exhaustion of the last twenty-four hours — the confrontation, the adrenaline, the lack of sleep, the cascading heartbreak — crashed down on her all at once.
Her vision blurred. The edges of the room went dark.
She tried to stand to get water.
Her knees buckled. She fell.
The door opened at precisely that moment.
Gaston walked in. He saw her going down. He dropped the coffee cup he was carrying. Hot liquid splashed across the linoleum.
He lunged.
“Jocelyn!”
He caught her inches from the floor, his arms locking around her, solid and warm.
She was limp. Her head fell back against his arm. Her skin was pale as paper and clammy to the touch.
“Nurse! Get a doctor!” Gaston roared. His voice shook the walls, stripped of all composure — something raw and primal underneath.
Nurses poured in. They helped him lift her onto a gurney.
“She’s exhausted,” a doctor assessed swiftly, checking her pulse. “Dehydrated. Shock. Her blood pressure is dangerously low.”
Gaston held her hand as they wheeled her to the adjacent empty room. He would not let go.
“Don’t leave me,” she murmured, half-conscious, her eyes fluttering.
“Never,” Gaston swore. “I’m here.”
.