Snatched a Billionaire to Be My Husband — Episode 23
Darkness swallowed the hospital corridor, but emergency power restored the monitors inside Evelyn’s room. Byron’s security team sealed both doors while detectives moved Margaret away from the windows. Cora kept one hand on her mother’s shoulder and the other over the life she had only just begun to imagine. The darkness made every footstep outside sound like an approaching threat.
The threatening message remained on Malcolm’s old phone. Investigators traced it to an encrypted service, but the timing proved someone knew Margaret had surrendered the device. Either the room was being watched or Malcolm still had an informant inside the hospital. Both possibilities demanded immediate action.
“He cannot be doing this from jail alone,” Margaret said. Fear made her look older than Cora remembered. “Malcolm kept favors everywhere—police, judges, hospital boards. He collected people the way Byron collects companies.”
Byron’s voice came through the secure tablet. “Move Evelyn and Cora to the protected wing.” Cora heard the frustration beneath his command. Being confined to a recovery bed while danger approached them was its own form of torture.
The outage lasted six minutes. Security found a maintenance panel forced open but no intruder on the floor. Detectives took possession of Margaret’s phone and placed her under protective supervision, warning that cooperation did not erase her role in concealing evidence.
By morning, the greater breach became public. A gossip site published Cora’s positive pregnancy result beside photographs from Byron’s hospital arrival. The headline accused a bankrupt heiress of trapping a wounded billionaire with an heir.
Cora stared at the stolen record in disbelief. The date, laboratory code, and physician’s name were visible. This was not speculation produced from her collapse. Someone had invaded the most private fact of her life and turned her child into another accusation. Even the baby’s first heartbeat now felt exposed to people who treated tenderness as weakness.
Evelyn wanted the screen removed, but Cora forced herself to read the reactions. Strangers debated whether the baby belonged to Easton, Byron, or some imaginary third man. The cruelty resembled the treatment of her father’s death: repeat a lie loudly enough, and grief became entertainment.
Byron arrived before noon in a wheelchair, accompanied by an furious nurse and two attorneys. He had signed himself out of his room against medical advice. Cora met him at the secured entrance with crossed arms. “If you tear those stitches, I will postpone the wedding until our child graduates college.”
“Then I will remain perfectly still.” He failed to convince either of them. When he saw the leaked report, anger hardened his features, but he asked Cora what she wanted before calling his legal team. The question mattered more than any threat he could issue.
“I want the record removed, the person who sold it prosecuted, and no public discussion of paternity,” she said. “Our baby is not evidence I owe the internet.” Byron relayed the instructions exactly, adding no claim of ownership and making no announcement without her consent.
The board requested an emergency statement anyway. Several directors believed silence would damage Hansen Holdings and urged a rapid wedding to legitimize the pregnancy. Cora listened from beside Byron, astonished that supposedly modern executives still treated marriage as a corporate cleansing ritual.
“Our child requires no legitimacy from you,” Byron told them. “And my marriage will occur on Cora’s schedule.” He ended the call before the chairman finished objecting. Cora looked at him with a mixture of gratitude and concern. “You enjoy hanging up on billionaires far too much.”
“Most of them improve when silenced.” His dry answer made her laugh despite everything. The moment reminded Cora why she had said yes: Byron could wield power brutally, yet he was learning not to wield it over her.
Hospital security identified the employee who accessed her file, but the woman had disappeared after receiving a transfer from one of Malcolm’s shell accounts. The leak and the threat were part of the same campaign—to isolate Cora, discredit the pregnancy, and pressure Margaret into withdrawing her evidence. Investigators issued an arrest warrant, though everyone understood Malcolm had prepared her escape.
Margaret entered under guard and apologized. The words came awkwardly from someone accustomed to being obeyed. “I helped create the man Easton became,” she said. “I taught him status mattered more than loyalty because that is what Malcolm taught me.”
Cora did not offer comfort. “Then help Easton unlearn it. Help the police convict your husband. Regret without action is only another way to protect yourself.” Margaret accepted the judgment and agreed to testify before a grand jury.
That evening, Cora and Byron chose a wedding date six weeks away, after his recovery and Evelyn’s next stage of rehabilitation. They rejected ballrooms and society pages in favor of the garden at Evelyn’s medical center, where both families’ worst days had begun turning toward hope. Cora wanted vows spoken somewhere healing had already proved possible.
Byron placed his palm against Cora’s abdomen. “Six weeks is too long.” She reminded him that he once proposed a six-month contract. “I was an idiot then,” he said. “A week ago?” Cora asked. “A particularly transformative week.”
Their quiet happiness ended when a detective rushed into the room. Malcolm’s attorneys had challenged the ledger’s chain of custody and secured emergency bail before Margaret’s phone was processed. Officers reached his residence minutes after the order—only to find his monitoring bracelet cut off and Malcolm gone.
