Page 18 of Yours to Keep

We tossed ideas back and forth, the sillier the better, pushing back and reminding a man with too much money and too little perspective that in a work environment like ours, you had to grab onto every glimmer of happiness and hope with both hands, because they came around a lot less than devastation and bad news.

By the time we eventually hung up, the weight that had been bearing down on my chest was a lot lighter. Getting to vent and catch up with your best friend would do that for a girl.

In the process, I’d also gotten a little slice of perspective of my own. Unlike Sullivan, I could acknowledge when I’d needed that, a different view of things.

I’d signed that contract I was now locked into because I genuinely loved that hospital and the people in it. The work and the hours were brutal at the best of times and utterly heart-breaking at others, and yet, it was also a safe haven. A port in the most vicious of storms.

It was a place where people could go in their darkest hours and find a helping hand, a friendly smile, and some of the best damn doctors and nurses in the world. I wasn’t going to let Sullivan Crowne turn it into something unrecognizable.

Resolve spread through me like a wildfire, making me more determined than ever to save Saint Raphael from him—and to make him understand what made it so special in the first place.

8

SULLIVAN

Iwas on my way down to meet the head of the construction crew in the lobby when I saw a flyer taped to the bulletin board. A bright red slash against the white paper caught my eye and I slowed, irritation pricking at the base of my skull before I’d even fully processed what I was looking at.

A slice of cake sitting in a red circle with a line slashed through it, the lettering underneath printed in a crisp font. NO CAKE ALLOWED.

I stopped walking, white hot rage sweeping through my veins as I stared at it. My fingers clenched into fists at my sides, but I felt my features smooth into that iron-hard mask I knew so well before someone snapped a fucking photo of my face and posted that online too.

If this was meant to have been a joke, which I was assuming it was, it was so profoundly unfunny it bordered on defamation. Okay, maybe not, but fuck.

My eyes darted from one side of the hallway to the other. Then I reached up and tore it down, not even giving a fuck if the empty hallway should suddenly become filled with witnesses. Paper ripped satisfyingly under my fingers and I crumpled it up, shoving it into my pocket and planning on burning it later.

I took two more steps toward the elevator before I stopped again, spotting another bulletin board on the other side of the elevator bank that held another flyer. Same cake. Same smug red slash.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered, marching over and tearing that one down too.

By the third board I found bearing the same flyer, I wasn’t heading to the lobby anymore. I was on a detour, stalking the halls like this was personal affront requiring immediate correction, which frankly, it was.

Every flyer I found wound my temper tighter. Someone had planned this. Someone had designed this on a fucking computer—possibly even one that now belonged to me—and printed them specifically to fuck with me. They’d distributed them to make me a laughingstock in the very place where I had to command respect.

Bree Bennett.

Her name jumped into my head unbidden, but this had her fingerprints all over it. Metaphorically, anyway. She had the audacity and the moral superiority to come up with a juvenile prank like this and actually follow through, and she also had a grudge and a fondness for theatrical rebellion involving baked goods.

On my righteous march through the halls, I pulled down one flyer after another. Then I saw the signs—and not in an existential sense. The literal, actual signs. The brand-new Crowne Medical signage I’d had installed had been vandalized.

The r had been scratched out and replaced with an l, so they now read Clowne Medical.

Red flashed at the edges of my vision and my jaw locked as I stared at it, my chest as tight as polished steel. This wasn’t just a subtle protest. It was playground nonsense and the kind of thing I hadn’t tolerated since I’d been old enough to pay people not to waste my time.

Right then and there, I turned on my heels and headed straight for security, bursting through the double doors of their offices without breaking stride. A bank of monitors sat at one end of the room, a thick-necked man sitting on a chair in front of them.

“Pull the footage,” I barked. “Someone has been vandalizing the signage and posting unauthorized material. I want to know who and I want to know now.”

He nodded, already swiveling back toward the monitors after having briefly spun when the doors had crashed into the walls. “Sure thing, sir. Which area?”

“All of them,” I snapped. “Start with the bulletin boards.”

He clicked through feeds, fast-forwarding and rewinding through video of the hallways, the elevators, the entrances and exits, but the problem became obvious within minutes. None of the bulletin boards that had been hit were on camera.

“How is this possible?” I muttered. “This is a goddamn hospital. We treat dignitaries here. Celebrities. We have more drugs than the fucking cartels and more expensive equipment than an airport. Why do we not have a single camera pointed at any of the areas where these were posted? There were two dozen of the fucking things, and those are just the ones I’ve found so far.”

The man glanced up at me. “Sir, if you want coverage there, we’d need additional cameras installed. Our current system only covers high-priority areas and strategic points. We don’t have a birds-eye view of the entire building and property.”

I exhaled through my nose, slow and controlled. More money. More expenses.