Marry Ex's Billionaire Uncle After Divorce (Aurora and Jasper) novel Chapter 88

Chapter 60: A False Hope

(Aurora’s POV)

I got to the hospital early.

Claim

Leo was awake when I arrived, sitting up against his pillows with a paperback balanced on his knee that he clearly wasn’t reading. He looked better than yesterday. Marginally. The color in his face was still off, but his eyes were sharper.

Martha was already there, occupying the chair beside his bed, talking. She’d been talking since before I arrived, apparently – Leo gave me a look the moment I walked through the door, the particular look he’d perfected over years of shared suffering, the one that said *I have been enduring this for forty–five minutes, please help me.*

I set my bag down and pulled up the other chair.

“You look tired,” Martha said to me immediately. “Are you eating properly? You’re too thin. You always were too thin.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You should be home resting, not running around hospitals-”

“I’m fine, Mom.”

Leo caught my eye and made a face. I pressed my lips together.

Jasper arrived at ten. I heard him in the corridor before I saw him – the particular cadence of his footsteps, which I had apparently memorized over three years without meaning to.

He walked in, and Sienna was right behind him.

My stomach turned. I kept my face neutral.

Sienna looked immaculate, as always. Soft grey dress, hair down, expression arranged into something that managed to suggest both composure and concern. She looked at Leo with what appeared to be genuine warmth. She looked at me with something more careful.

“The donor’s already with Dr. Mercer,” I said, before anyone could speak. “They’ll come find us when the initial consultation is done.”

Jasper nodded. He didn’t look at me directly.

We waited. The room was too small for the five of us and whatever we’d all brought into it. Martha made conversation with Sienna in the low, deferential tone she’d always used with

3/4

Chapter 60: A False Hope

her, and I sat beside Leo and looked at the wall.

Leo nudged my foot with his under the blanket.

I nudged back.

Claim

Dr. Mercer came in twenty minutes later with a tablet and a careful expression. He sat down, pulled up the results, and walked us through them.

Half–match. The compatibility was there, but partial. Combined with Leo’s current condition – the infection markers, the suppressed counts, the stress on his system – the surgical success rate was thirty percent.

Martha made a sound that wasn’t quite a word.

I looked at the number on Dr. Mercer’s tablet and felt something cold move through me. Thirty percent. I turned it over in my mind, trying to find a way to make it bigger, to find the angle that made it workable.

I couldn’t.

“No,” I said. “We’re not doing the surgery.”

“Aurora-” Martha’s voice broke. “Thirty percent is still a chance-”

“It’s a thirty percent chance of success and a seventy percent chance of losing him on the table.” I kept my voice steady. “That’s not a chance. That’s a gamble. And I’m not gambling with Leo’s life.”

Martha covered her face with her hands and started to cry properly, shoulders shaking. I sat with it. I understood it. I just couldn’t change my answer.

Then Sienna spoke.

“Dr. Mercer.” Her voice was soft, almost tentative. “Is the donation process difficult? For the donor, I mean – is it painful?”

Dr. Mercer looked at her. “It depends on the method. There’s some discomfort involved, but it’s generally well–managed.”

Sienna nodded slowly. Then she looked at Leo, and something shifted in her expression. “I could get tested. If it would help. I know it’s probably nothing, but – I could try.”

I looked at her.

I knew exactly what this was. A performance, timed and targeted, designed to land in front of Jasper with maximum effect. She was a natural actress, always knowing exactly which role

2/4

< Chapter 60: A False Hope

Claim

to play at the right moment. The words had barely left her lips when a touched expression appeared on Jasper’s face.

This bitch was too clever. Martha had always doted on her like a biological daughter, and she knew that even if I agreed to this request, Martha would certainly refuse politely. A sincere invitation, elegantly declined. Everyone was happy.

I opened my mouth to deflect it.

But Martha moved faster. She reached out and grabbed Sienna’s hand with both of hers, her eyes red and streaming.

“Please,” she said, her voice barely holding together. “Please, Sienna. We’ve tried everyone we can think of. We’ve run out of options. Please just try.”

Sienna’s gaze slid sideways toward Jasper. Her teeth caught her lower lip. For just a second, something real flickered across her face – a flash of genuine alarm, quickly buried.

I saw it.

She hadn’t expected this. She’d miscalculated Martha entirely.

–

I saw the moment she realized what she’d stepped into. The slight recalibration behind her eyes. She’d made the offer expecting Martha to deflect – to say oh no, we couldn’t ask that of you – because that was how Martha usually treated her. Like something precious that needed protecting.

I laughed wildly in my heart. She always found it too easy to use my mother against me, making her believe she was the most important person in Martha’s heart.

But she hadn’t accounted for Leo being the exception to every rule Martha had.

“That – well. I’ll go try, then,” she said.

“Thank you.” Martha was barely holding herself together. “Thank you so much.”

I said nothing. I watched Sienna’s face smooth back into its careful arrangement of warmth and willingness, and I thought: the odds of a match are almost nothing. This will come to nothing. She knows it, and I know it.

But if it made Sienna uncomfortable, I had absolutely no intention of stopping her.

And honestly? Watching Sienna stand there, realizing she’d talked herself into a medical procedure she’d never intended to actually take, was the most entertainment I’d had all week.

Chapter 60 A False Hope

Comments

LUCK DRAW >