Reborn to Love Mr. Right – Episode 30
The threat reached Arianna at 9:14 p.m. Hayden had fewer than nine hours until sunrise, but Derek’s message offered no location or method. Police locked down the hospital, the Taylor mansion, and every Scott property connected to him. Each precaution created another place Derek might expect them to feel safe.
Hayden argued that the safest place was a secure command room where investigators could trace Derek. Arianna suspected the obvious target was not Hayden himself but something he would risk his life to protect. Derek understood his loyalty as well as he understood her fear. He would build the trap around Hayden’s best instinct and call compassion a weakness.
Donald awakened briefly and learned about the escape. His first instinct was to order Hayden away from the hospital. Hayden refused, reminding him that isolation had allowed Victor’s network to poison him in the first place. Donald recognized the stubbornness because it mirrored Arianna’s, and he reluctantly accepted protection that kept them together.
The future cloud account produced no new image. Arianna searched existing photographs for details she had overlooked. In the wedding picture, Hayden’s fading outline wore a small bandage on the same hand he cut while rescuing Jeff.
The wound had nearly healed, yet laboratory tests showed traces of S-47 beneath the skin. Hayden had been exposed when the truck exploded at the refinery. The amount was too small to cause immediate symptoms, but Derek could activate the compound with a second chemical. The fading photograph had revealed contamination before any ordinary examination would have looked for it.
Hospital staff began testing everyone who entered Hayden’s floor. A nurse discovered that the ventilation filters had been replaced during Donald’s procedure by an orderly whose identification belonged to a man working across town. Derek was already inside the building. He had entered during the confusion surrounding the antidote, when every guard watched the doors and no one questioned a worker already beyond them.
Security sealed each level. Hayden moved to an isolation room with independent air while Arianna remained behind glass. She hated the barrier, but refusing it would only give Derek two targets. Hayden kept one palm against the window until she matched it with hers.
The fire alarm activated on the pediatric floor. Smoke appeared on cameras, and evacuation orders sounded through the hospital. Hayden recognized the trap immediately: Derek expected him to leave isolation to help patients. The scheme repeated the school fire because Derek trusted successful cruelty more than imagination.
Arianna contacted the charge nurse instead of opening Hayden’s door. The smoke came from theatrical canisters placed near empty rooms, and the children were moved through a separate stairwell. Hayden stayed protected, denying Derek the heroic impulse he planned to exploit.
Then Donald’s heart monitor failed. His security feed showed a masked orderly entering intensive care while nurses responded to the alarm. Arianna ran before Hayden could stop her.
She reached Donald’s room as the orderly raised a syringe over his IV line. Derek pulled off the mask and smiled. “You chose your father,” he said. “Now watch what that choice costs.” His stolen uniform was immaculate, but a fresh cut crossed his cheek from the transport escape.
Arianna struck the syringe from his hand, but Derek caught her wrist and forced her against the wall. He had lost money, reputation, Evelyn, and the future he remembered. What remained was the need to prove she could still be made helpless. That obsession had outlived every practical reason for returning to the hospital.
Hayden entered despite the contamination warning. Derek laughed and crushed a glass ampule beneath his shoe, releasing a sharp metallic vapor. The second compound would activate the S-47 already in Hayden’s blood.
Hayden sealed the room’s ventilation and drove Derek away from Arianna. They struggled beside Donald’s bed while she triggered the decontamination system. Chemical mist flooded the room, diluting the vapor before Hayden inhaled a lethal dose. Alarms screamed above them as the glass walls clouded white, hiding the fight from security outside.
Derek reached for the fallen syringe. Donald, barely conscious, pulled the IV stand into his path. The metal pole struck Derek’s knees, giving Hayden time to pin him until officers arrived.
Doctors rushed Hayden into treatment. Because Arianna had discovered the earlier exposure, the antidote was already prepared. His heart rhythm remained normal as the compound cleared from his blood. Arianna watched each monitor until the physician repeated that the danger had passed.
At sunrise, Hayden walked into Donald’s room under his own power. The future wedding image restored his figure beside Arianna, and for one precious moment every threatened person remained alive.
Derek was transferred under federal guard with no route entered into a digital system. Evelyn, Victor, Leonard, Martin, and the cardiologist all faced separate charges. Their network had fractured, but Arianna knew consequences would take longer than a single victorious morning.
She stood between her father’s bed and Hayden’s chair, recognizing what the photographs had tried to teach her. The future changed whenever people chose differently; it did not demand a death, only reveal the price of ignoring danger. She would no longer confuse prediction with fate.
Her phone chimed once more. The cloud account deleted every previous photograph, then uploaded a live image of Arianna standing in the hospital room. It had been taken from directly behind her, and the message beneath it read: “Derek was never the one sending these.”
