He remembered the doctor’s voice at Stanford Medical—calm, clinical, merciless.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cole,” the doctor had said.
“The boys will survive. But they will never walk.”
“No cure. No miracle. Prepare for wheelchairs.”
“No hope.”
Those words had crushed something inside him.
So Ethan did what he always did when life broke him—he outsourced it.
Nurses. Therapists. Equipment. Schedules.
And eventually… parenting.
That’s when Aunt Elaine stepped in.
“Let me manage the house,” she’d said sweetly.
“You need time to heal.”
He hadn’t noticed when his sons grew quieter around her.
He hadn’t noticed how they flinched.
Grief had blinded him.
Now Elaine’s voice echoed again in his head.
“She’s stealing from you, Ethan. Fire her.”
He reached the iron gates of the estate and didn’t slow down. Gravel exploded under his tires as he stopped in front of the stone mansion.
“This ends today,” he growled.
He didn’t go through the front door. He stormed around the house, past the rose garden Marianne used to love.
“I’ll catch her red-handed,” he muttered.
“No excuses.”
He stepped into the backyard—ready to explode.
And then… he froze.
“What the hell…?”
Two wheelchairs lay overturned in the grass.