The Scorned Heiress's Hidden Empire (by Jade Quinn) novel Chapter 437

Chapter 437

A knock came from outside the hospital room.

Chris lifted his eyes slightly, his dark gaze narrowing.

He was here.

At Chris’s signal, Gavin walked over and opened the door.

Zac stood outside in a black suit. The damp chill of early morning clung faintly to his gentle features, and his tall figure looked thinner than before.

He took a few steps inside before he saw Chris leaning against the hospital bed.

In his hospital gown, Chris didn’t look badly injured at first glance. Aside from the scratches on his face and his unnaturally pale complexion, he looked almost the same as always.

But the fact that he was leaning against a hospital bed was alarming enough.

Chris wasn’t the kind of man who showed weakness unless his life was truly in danger. In all the years Zac had known him, leaning back against a hospital bed was the closest Chris had ever come to looking vulnerable.

At that thought, Zac frowned slightly.

Was he really hurt that badly?

Gavin followed him over to Chris.

Watching the two men who had once been like brothers stand there in silence, now estranged because of one woman, Gavin felt nothing in particular. Dominic, on the other hand, had refused to face this scene and had stayed in the ICU to watch over Richie.

“You didn’t come to my engagement party two days ago,” Zac said, breaking the silence.

Chris had kept everything on his side under such tight wraps that Zac would still have been in the dark if his fiancée, Nina, hadn’t heard about it through an internal report from her unit.

On the day of his engagement, Winter had been taken by Fabian’s men.

After Zac had thrown the engagement ring he had once prepared for Winter into the river, he had deliberately stopped paying attention to anything related to her. The engagement had been his choice. Since he had taken that step, he shouldn’t cause her any more trouble.

What he hadn’t expected was a call from Chris early that morning.

Chris had said only one thing on the phone.

“I’m hurt.”

So Zac came.

Chris’s lips moved slightly.

“You didn’t send me an invitation.”

Zac’s tone was calm, almost as if nothing had changed between them.

“Since when do you need an invitation from me? Besides…”

He paused.

“If I had sent one, would you have come?”

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“Maybe,” Chris said, the corner of his mouth lifting faintly.

His lung had been injured too, and he coughed softly a few times.

Zac stepped forward on instinct. Without thinking, he raised a hand and patted Chris lightly on the shoulder.

Chris looked up at him.

“During your premarital checkup, did you give a blood sample and register with the bone marrow registry?”

Zac’s hand stilled. Then he withdrew it.

“Yes. The hospital where we had the checkup happened to have a registration site. It was convenient, so I signed up.”

He didn’t notice Chris’s fingers slowly tightening.

“How did you know?”

Chris wasn’t the kind of person who paid attention to something that trivial.

Unless…

“You…”

Before Zac could finish, Chris said in a low, solemn voice, “I need your help.”

Chris had checked everyone around him.

The only person he had missed was Zac.

At the time, Zac had been overseas. After Zac came back, he kept appearing around Winter and getting under Chris’s skin, so

Chris had overlooked him.

So much time had been wasted.

In the ICU, Richie’s attending doctor grew worried when he heard that the matching donor was Zac.

“I wonder if Dr. Davis will agree,” he said. “Or whether he’ll ask for something in return.”

Zac had once been a doctor at the hospital too. Although they had never worked together directly, the attending physician still thought of him as a colleague.

He had heard on the news that Zac and Chris had fallen out, though he had never known why. Then one day, he had accidentally

୮ overheard a few words between Chris and Gavin in the ICU.

From those fragments, he had guessed that it had something to do with Winter.

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