Chapter Nine
CADEN
The moment she whispered “together,” the world shifted.
The kind of shift you don’t feel in your bones until the echo hits—quiet, certain, irreversible.
But before I can even process it, before I can let the weight of what she just agreed to settle into my chest, my phone buzzes again.
“West.” I squeeze her hand once before I force myself to step back. “Stay here,” I tell her. “I need to take this.”
Her eyes track me the whole way to the windows, something fragile flickering behind them. I hate that fragility. Hate that her aunt knows exactly how to create it.
“This better be good, Ethan,” I snap in irritation.
“Buddy, you didn’t tell me you planned on going head to head with the Remingtons.”
“Trust me it wasn’t planned.”
“You’re not going to like this.”
“I already don’t.” I hear papers rustling on his end.
“Priscilla submitted a request directly to the board chair,” he says.
“Claiming her niece isn’t mentally competent…
Here’s the kicker: This petition name you, saying you and your lawyers are attempting to manipulate Kamiyah, use her position on the board to manipulate the hospital’s ethics committee into granting a petition of release from her conservatorship that would financially benefit you. ”
I laugh—sharp, humorless. “Financially benefit me how?”
“How do I know? Maybe Priscilla wants permanent conservatorship.”
I remain silent as Ethan’s words ring true. Why else would Priscilla go after Kamiyah’s future children?
“What the hell have you gotten yourself into Caden…” Ethan snaps. “What happened to not fucking with Kamiyah after she ditched you? Do you remember how miserable you were…moping around as if someone stole your admission to heaven?”
My grip on the phone tightens.
“Stop,” I cut in. “Just stop.” The words are poison. Not because they’re a lie, but because they are true. “I’m going to support her, Ethan. Are you going to help me or not?”
“What kind of bullshit question is that?”
I smile, despite the gravity of the situation.
He sighs. “What are we going to do?”
I knew it was only a matter of time before Priscilla realized I’m behind the petition to release Kamiyah from her conservatorship.
Her aunt crafted that request with surgical precision.
Using the exact phrasing that will set off alarms in a boardroom full of reputation-obsessed bureaucrats and doctors.
Ethan hesitates. “Caden… She’s dangerous. She knows exactly which strings to pull.”
“I know.” My jaw locks. “Tell me the damage.”
“The hospital’s legal counsel is now required to interview Kamiyah.”
My stomach drops.
I turn to look at Kamiyah. She’s sitting on the edge of the sofa, arms wrapped around herself. Small. Too small for someone who carries the weight she does.
She looks up, and something in me snaps.
“I’ll handle it,” I tell Ethan. I’ll have my lawyer counter-file. Challenge Priscilla’s credibility and the misuse of her role as conservator.
Ethan says quietly. “You need something strong. You need leverage.”
Leverage.
A word her aunt understands far too well.
“Find it,” I say. “I don’t care how. Find it and Ethan, I want to know everything that happens at Haven Crest.”
When I hang up, I take a moment—one long inhale, one longer exhale—to cool the edges of my anger before I face her. But it doesn’t matter. She already saw too much.
“Caden?” she asks, voice barely there.
I sit beside her, close enough that our knees brush. “Your aunt filed a formal complaint with the hospital board. She’s trying to get you labeled at mentally incompetent to make your own decisions.”
Her breath stutters. “But she—she can’t interfere with medical decisions—”
“She can if she positions it as a matter of ethics and financial misconduct.”
Her face goes white.
For a moment, we say nothing. The silence is heavy—thick with all the years of control her aunt has exerted over her, all the fear she’s lived under, all the ways she was forced to bend until she broke.
Then—
Three sharp knocks rattle the door.
Kamiyah jumps.
I stand so fast the blood rushes to my head. “Stay here.” With everything that’s happened and the emotional toll it’s taking on Kamiyah, and my need to protect her, her nerves are heightened, expecting threats at every turn.
For a brief second panic flares across her face. “Are you expecting someone?”
I shake my head. I rarely entertained before, but since my child’s…entertaining people is non-existent. I look through the peephole and my eyes widen. “It’s Priscilla.”
“Caden, she wouldn’t come here—she wouldn’t.”
Oh, yes.
She would.
And she has.
The pounding on the door comes again. It’s clipped and carries the kind of entitlement only a Remington could weaponize. I straighten. Where is my concierge? My penthouse isn’t a place people barge into. And no one—no one—comes here demanding access.
“Kamiyah Remington,” the voice snaps. “I know you’re in there.”
I meet Kamiyah’s wide eyes. “You stay put.” I grip the handle, and pull it open with deliberate calm.
Priscilla stands in the hall in a blood-red scarf loosely draping her shoulders and pearls large enough to choke on. Her hair is tightly pinned on the top of her head and her jasmine perfume tickles my nose.
“Sorry Mr. West,” my concierge says from across the hall. “I tried to stop them.” His face pales. “And her chauffeur wouldn’t let me call up.”
“It’s all right,” I assure the older man. “Go about your duties.” I dismiss him before cupping my focus back to my unwanted guest.
She doesn’t look at me at first. Instead, she looks past me—searching for her niece. When Priscilla finally raises her gaze to mine, she smiles in the way snakes probably do before striking. Her voice is chilly. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Then you’re already having a bad night,” I reply.
“But of course Kamiyah won’t come to the door and fight her own battles.” Her jaw ticks. “I’m here for my niece.”
“No, you’re not.”
“You’re interfering in family matters you don’t understand. If you don’t want me coming after you, she’ll stop her silly little tantrum and her petition to revoke my conservatorship and return home where she belongs.”
I still at the threat, because in my experience, threats are a weakness, an attempt to excerpt control. But her eyes light up, as if declaring victory. “Your niece is not your property.”
She tilts her head, amused. “Everything she has, everything she is, exists because of me.”
I step forward, lowering my voice. “Not you. Every scarp of wealth she inherited is because of her parents. It’s too bad they trusted you with their children’s wellbeing.
As for your claim that Kamiyah isn’t capable of handling her own affairs, it’s baseless.
And illegal. And you know it. That’s why you’re dangling Anna in her face like a pawn. ”
“You can fight the inevitable,” she says lightly, “but you won’t win.”
“Watch me.”
“Move aside,” she orders.
“No,” I say, then watch her eyes flash angrily, probably because she’s no use to being challenged directly. But I’ve never been good at bowing. I lower my voice, letting steel edge my next words. “You’re on my property, uninvited, and harassing a guest. That ends now.”
“She’s my responsibility.”
“Not anymore. Not tonight or any other night. Leave.”
Her eyes narrow dangerously. “I’m warning you, Kamiyah will regret defying me.”
“Not if I have anything to do with it.”
That gives her pause. She studies me like she’s reassessing a game board. “You’re making a mistake,” she hisses.
I smile, sharp and humorless. “That would be a first.”
Her lips press into a bloodless line. Then she pivots in a whirl of expensive fabric and vanishes down the hall, heels snapping against the tile with fury.
I close the door slowly, locking it. The click echoes through the quiet penthouse.
Behind me, Kamiyah releases a breath that’s half-sob, half-shudder.