Chapter 170
Chapter 170
Mia
The cab ride to Marcus's office took forty minutes. I spent every second of it calling Ethan's phone, watching it go straight to voicemail, then calling again. My fingers were trembling so badly I could barely hold the device.
He's dying. He's dying and he left without telling me.
The words kept circling in my head like vultures, refusing to land, refusing to become real. I pressed my palm against my chest, trying to steady the frantic rhythm of my heart, but it was useless. Everything Julian had told me made a horrible, perfect kind of sense now.
The man I had spent two years resenting for his coldness was dying, and his final act was to make me hate him so I wouldn't have to grieve.
You noble, self-destructive idiot.
Marcus's assistant barely had time to announce me before I pushed through his office door. He was on the phone, his expression shifting from irritation to alarm the moment he saw my face.
"I'll call you back," he said, and hung up without waiting for a response. "Mia? What's wrong? Is it the twins—"
"Where is he? How's his illness?"
The question came out sharper than I intended, edged with a desperation I couldn't hide. Marcus's brow furrowed in confusion.
"Ethan? He's—" He stopped, pulled out his own phone, scrolled through something. His face went pale. "That's impossible."
"What's impossible?"
"He was supposed to fly out tomorrow. The surgery isn't until—" Marcus looked up at me, and I watched realization dawn in his eyes, followed by something that looked almost like fear. "How do you know about the situation?"
"Julian told me."
"Julian Cross? The writer?" Marcus ran a hand through his hair. "Jesus Christ. Ethan made me swear—he made everyone swear—"
"I don't care what he made you swear." I stepped closer, my voice breaking despite my best efforts to hold it steady. "I went to Northwestern Memorial. His room was empty. The doctor said he checked out this morning. Where did he go, Marcus?"
For a long moment, Marcus just stared at me. I could see the conflict playing out across his features—loyalty to his best friend warring with something else, something that looked almost like relief.
"Zurich," he finally said. "There's a clinic there. Specialists in neurological surgery. He has a brain tumor, Mia. Inoperable by conventional methods, but this team has a new technique. Experimental. High risk, but it's his only shot."
A brain tumor.
The words hit me like a physical blow. I reached for the edge of his desk, steadying myself as the room tilted slightly.
"How long has he known?"
"Not long ago." Marcus's voice was heavy with exhaustion and guilt. "He started getting headaches after your exhibition. Worse ones, with visual disturbances. He tried to hide it, but I forced him to see a doctor. When the diagnosis came back, he just—shut down. Started planning everything. Revised his will, set up trusts for you and the kids, transferred assets." He laughed bitterly. "He even asked that writer to look after you if something happened to him. Can you believe that? Asked the man he was jealous of to take care of his wife."
I remembered Julian's words at the coffee shop: He came to me a week ago. Asked me to—it doesn't matter what he asked.
"He was never going to tell me," I said. It wasn't a question.
"No." Marcus met my eyes, and I saw real pain there. "He thought he was protecting you. Thought if he pushed you away, made you hate him, you wouldn't have to watch him—" He stopped, shook his head. "You know Ethan. Once he decides something is for someone else's good, nothing can change his mind."
I did know Ethan. I knew his stubborn certainty, his need for control, his inability to ask for help. I had spent two years suffocating under the weight of his emotional walls, fighting for scraps of warmth from a man who gave his vulnerability to no one.
And now I understood why.
He wasn't cold. He was terrified. Terrified of need, of dependence, of being seen in his weakness. So terrified that he would rather die alone in a foreign country than let his wife hold his hand through surgery.
"When does the surgery happen?"
"Day after tomorrow. Maybe sooner, depending on how the pre-op goes." Marcus checked his phone again, swore under his breath. "He was supposed to wait for me. We were going to fly out together. But this email says he changed his flight to this morning, six AM. He's already there."
I thought of Ethan alone in a sterile Swiss hospital room, surrounded by doctors who didn't know him, facing the possibility of death with no one to hold his hand. The image made something inside me crack open.
"Book me on the next flight to Zurich."
Marcus blinked. "Mia—"
"I'm not asking, Marcus." I straightened my shoulders, surprised by the steel in my own voice. "He doesn't get to make this decision for me. He doesn't get to decide that I'm too fragile to handle the truth, or that pushing me away is some kind of gift. I've earned the right to be there, and I'm going."
For a moment, Marcus just looked at me—really looked, as if seeing me for the first time. Then something shifted in his expression, and he nodded slowly.
"There's a flight in three hours. I'll come with you."
"Thank you."
Marcus was already reaching for his phone, barking instructions to his assistant about flight arrangements and client reschedules. I stood by the window, staring out at the Chicago skyline, trying to process everything I had learned in the past two hours.
My husband had a brain tumor. He had been dying for weeks, and instead of telling me, he had choreographed an elaborate deception designed to make me leave him. He had filed for divorce, denied his love for me, and checked himself out of the hospital to fly alone to Switzerland—all because he thought my hatred was better than my grief.
I should have been furious. Part of me was furious, a hot coal of anger burning steadily in my chest. But beneath the anger was something else, something that felt dangerously like love.
You idiot, I thought, pressing my forehead against the cool glass. You infuriating idiot. Did you really think I would let you do this alone?