Chapter 9 - The First Laughter
For the next four hours, Damian sat on a hard plastic chair in the waiting room, refusing Maya’s repeated offers to drive him back to the office. His phone buzzed intermittently with notifications from board members and European division heads, but he ignored them, keeping his eyes on the hallway floor.
Around noon, Maya walked out of Mateo’s room. Her face was scrubbed clean of tension; color had returned to her lips.
"He's sleeping," she said softly, sitting down in the chair beside Damian. "The doctor said his blood urea levels are dropping already. He asked if he could have real soup tonight."
A faint, genuine smile touched Damian’s lips for the first time. "Elena used to make terrible potato soup whenever someone was sick. It was ninety percent salt and pepper. She claimed it burned away the toxins."
Maya smiled back, looking at him with deep curiosity. "You talk about her like she’s still in the next room."
"She should be," Damian said, looking down at his hands—hands that had spent ten years building a corporate empire while letting his family drift away. "When our parents died, I took over the business because I thought money was the only real shield against the world. I thought if you had enough capital, nothing could touch you. Elena tried to tell me that wealth without purpose is just a gilded cage. I didn't believe her until the hospital called me to tell me she was gone."
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"She wasn't wrong," Maya said gently, placing her warm hand over his sleeve. "But she wasn't entirely right, either. Wealth built that machine that is cleaning my brother's blood right now. The problem wasn't the money, Damian. It was who had the keys."
Damian looked at her hand, feeling the sincere human warmth through the wool of his coat, and for the first time in six months, the knot in his chest loosened.
