Chapter 258: Cost Of Revenge
When Catherine arrived at the hospital, Maximilian had already been wheeled out of surgery.
The neurosurgeon met the family outside the intensive care unit, exhaustion written across his face, but so was cautious relief.
"The surgery went well," he said. "The bleeding has been controlled. Now... we wait."
Those words had become painfully familiar.
There was nothing anyone else could do.
Catherine quietly thanked the surgeon before entering the ICU. Maximilian lay there... silently...
The steady rhythm of the cardiac monitor echoed through the room. The oxygen cannula was beneath his nose. His face looked peaceful despite the fresh dressing hidden beneath his hair.
She brushed his fingers once.
"I’m here, Maximilian. You’ll be fine. You have to be."
Then she pulled out her notebook.
Her mind refused to remain still.
Thoughts collided one after another, each branching into five more before she could finish the previous one. Dorian. Jonathan. The clinical trials. The modified protein sequence. Fitzgerald’s movements. Maximilian’s surgery. Bernice’s experiments.
Everything connected.
Everything mattered.
She scribbled equations so quickly that the graphite snapped twice beneath her fingers. Entire pages filled within minutes before she photographed them and sent them to Bernice.
Check this pathway.
Compare it with batch seventeen.
Run both models.
Replies returned almost immediately. Bernice was keeping up. For a while. Then... something changed.
Catherine frowned.
Her thoughts were still racing ahead with perfect clarity... But her hands weren’t.
She reached for the next page and accidentally grabbed two. She wrote one formula twice...
Her pencil slipped...
"...No."
She stared at her own hand.
It was trembling. Not much, but just enough.
Her forearm felt strangely heavy, almost detached from the thoughts pouring through her head. Her pulse hammered against the nicotine pouches tucked discreetly beneath her upper lip.
"I have to focus," she muttered.
She replaced the page and kept writing.
The faster her thoughts became, the slower her body seemed to respond.
It was infuriating.
Hours passed unnoticed.
When Alexander finally entered the room, he expected to find his sister sitting quietly beside Maximilian, perhaps talking to him as she always did.
Instead, he stopped in the doorway.
Something was wrong.
Her eyes were unnaturally bright.
She hadn’t blinked in what felt like an entire minute.
Three empty coffee cups sat scattered across the desk beside an untouched bottle of water. The mug in her hand trembled just enough for the spoon inside to produce a constant metallic rattle.
She answered his greeting before he had finished speaking.
Then, halfway through her own sentence, she abruptly stopped, frowned at the notebook, and began writing again as though she’d forgotten he existed.
A thin sheen of sweat glistened across her forehead despite the cool air circulating through the ICU.
Alexander slowly walked toward her.
"Cathy."
No response.
"Catherine."
She looked up.
"What?"
He rested both hands on her shoulders. She was trembling. "Catherine... you’re shaking."
"I’m fine."
"You look sick."
"I’m almost done."
She gently shrugged his hands away and bent over the notebook again.
Alexander’s stomach tightened. He couldn’t understand the science filling those pages, but he knew his sister.
This wasn’t random scribbling. Every line followed another. Every arrow meant something.
The terrifying part... Was that she was still making sense. She simply couldn’t stop.
His thoughts drifted somewhere he desperately wished they wouldn’t. She had willingly walked into Blackwood Manor. She had spent days living beneath the same roof as the man she hated most.
What had happened in that house?
Had something finally broken inside her?
He stepped behind her before she noticed. Without warning, he caught both her wrists.
"What are you doing?" Catherine protested, trying to twist free.
Alexander rolled up the sleeve of her blouse.
His heart pounded.
Please...
Not needles.
Not this.
Relief washed over him the moment he saw unmarked skin.
Then his eyes moved higher. Nestled against the inside of her upper arm, hidden beneath the sleeve, were two beige nicotine patches.
His relief vanished.
"Catherine..."
His voice became dangerously quiet.
"Two patches?"
She instinctively tried to pull her arm back.
"I need them."
"Cathy..."
His jaw clenched.
"You’ve got nicotine pouches in your mouth too."
Silence.
His heart sank.
This...
This was exactly what had frightened him since she was little. Catherine’s mind was extraordinary. But brilliant minds often sought something to make themselves move even faster.
She had always shown that tendency.
Coffee became three coffees. Three became six. One project became four. She didn’t know how to stop once something captured her.
He had spent years quietly steering her away from that cliff.
And somehow... He had still failed.
Alexander reached for the patches. "Cathy, enough."
"No."
She jerked away with surprising strength.
"I have to think."
Her breathing had become shallow.
"The animal trials are progressing, but the human sequence still isn’t stable. Maximilian must have anticipated that. If I refine the protein folding before phase two..." She suddenly stopped, her gaze darting toward another notebook. "No... wait... I have to send this to Bernice first."
She reached for her phone.
"Maximilian must have planned something the day Dorian met me outside the brownstone." Her words came faster and faster. "I know he buried something inside all this. I can feel it. I just haven’t found where yet. If I compare— What does Dorian value the most? What?"
Alexander could barely listen anymore.
Every sentence was brilliant. Every sentence was coherent. Every sentence proved she was driving herself further past exhaustion.
He caught her arm again.
"Cathy."
She struggled.
"I don’t have time."
"You do."
"I don’t! I only have a few hours left!"
To return to Dorian...
Before Catherine could pull away, Alexander tore both nicotine patches from her arm. She gasped, more from shock than pain, her hand instinctively flying to her sleeve.
"No." Her eyes widened. "Alex... I need them."
"You don’t." His voice was firm. "And you’re not going back."
Something inside Catherine finally snapped. "I am close, Brother." Her voice trembled, not with fear but with exhaustion. "So close."
Alexander remained silent, letting her continue.
"I’m close to destroying him." Her breathing grew uneven as tears blurred her vision. "For killing my son... for trying to kill Maximilian... for ruining two lifetimes because he couldn’t bear to lose."
Her fists clenched until her knuckles turned white.
"For obsessing over me as though I were some prize to be won."
She took a shaky breath before looking straight into her brother’s eyes.
"No."
"I’m going back."
"There is nothing any of you can do to stop me."
Alexander’s expression hardened. "There is."
"You’ll lock me up?" Catherine laughed bitterly, tears spilling down her cheeks. "Drug me? Tie me to the bed?"
Her smile broke.
"My only other choice..."
Her voice cracked.
"...is death."
The room fell silent.
Alexander froze.
Every argument died in his throat.
He had expected anger. He had expected stubbornness. He had even expected Catherine to hate him.
He had never expected her to speak so calmly about death.
Outside the ICU, Samantha had just reached for the doorknob.
The words drifting through the partially opened door, stopped her hand.
My only other choice... is death.
Her fingers slowly slipped from the handle. She quietly closed the door again without making a sound. Tears gathered in her eyes almost immediately.
This... This was heartbreaking.
She lowered her head and walked down the corridor, dabbing at her cheeks with the tissue she carried in her hand.
No one in that room needed another witness to Catherine’s pain.
As she rounded the corner, she collided with someone.
"Oh..."
She instinctively stepped back.
"I’m sorry."
She barely looked up. Her gaze dropped first to a pair of worn cowboy boots.
Odd.
Who wore boots like that inside a hospital?
Then she noticed the faded jeans... The weathered jacket... The new plaid shirt...
Finally...
The old cowboy hat.
Her breathing caught.
She knew that hat.
She had chosen it herself years ago, choosing every single detail on it, before buying it as a birthday present for the first boy she’d ever fallen in love with.
Slowly... Very slowly... She lifted her eyes.
The man’s face had changed.
Older. Sharper. His jaw more defined.
But those eyes...
She would recognize those eyes anywhere.
"...Fudgie?"
Her brows knitted together in disbelief.
"You’re Fudgie... aren’t you?"
The grey eyes looking back at her, widened in shock.