I Traded Eight Nights for His Father’s Fortune

The paramedics didn't rush.

That was the first thing I noticed. They moved through the master suite with the unhurried efficiency of people who already knew the outcome, and one of them — young, with tired eyes — glanced at me in the hallway and gave a small, apologetic shake of his head.

I nodded. Pressed my thumbnail into my palm.

Matthias Carroll was dead.

I stood there in my silk robe, the one he'd picked out, and waited for something to move inside me. Grief. Relief. Anything with a name. What came instead was a kind of cold, crystalline clarity — the same feeling I used to get right before a difficult exam, when everything narrows down to what you know and what you need to do next.

What I needed to do was call Mount Sinai.

I walked to the far end of the hallway, away from the noise, and dialed Dr. Holt's direct line. He picked up on the second ring.

'Ms. Webb.' His voice was careful. 'I heard about Mr. Carroll. I'm sorry for your loss.'

'How is she?' I said.

A pause. 'Her creatinine levels are up again. We've moved the transplant timeline forward. The deposit deadline is in ten days, Florence. I need you to understand — ten days.'

I understood. I'd understood for two years.

'I'll have it,' I said, and hung up before he could say anything else.

The brokerage account was the plan. It had always been the plan — Matthias had told me himself, in that flat, transactional way he had of discussing money, that the portfolio was mine upon his death. Eight figures. Enough to cover the transplant, the aftercare, everything. Enough to finally stop counting.

I sat down at Matthias's desk that same night and pulled up the account portal.

Eight-digit passcode required.

I tried his birthday. His mother's birthday. The year Carroll Capital was founded. The address of his first office.

Locked. Locked. Locked. Locked.

I stared at the screen until the numbers blurred.

Then I remembered what his attorney had mentioned once, offhandedly, at a dinner I wasn't supposed to be paying attention to: Matthias had given the passcode to Castiel. His son. His real heir, in every way that mattered.

I closed the laptop.

I pressed my thumbnail into my palm until I felt steady.

Then I went to find Castiel Carroll.

---

He was already at the penthouse when I came downstairs the next morning — standing at the floor-to-ceiling windows with a coffee cup, looking out at the Manhattan skyline like he owned it, which, I supposed, he now largely did. He was tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in a dark suit at seven in the morning. He didn't turn around when I walked in.

'Florence,' he said. Just my name. Like a period at the end of a sentence.

I had met Castiel Carroll exactly four times before this. At the wedding, where he'd stood in the back row with an expression I couldn't