The Discarded Heiress: Waking My Comatose Billionaire

"Sign it."

Byron Foster, her brother, slammed a stack of papers down on the marble coffee table hard enough to rattle the glassware.

Jillian Cantrell, the girl the Fosters had dragged out of the hills, didn't flinch. She ran her thumb along the polished edge of the table, slow, like she had nothing but time.

"Your sister Gabriella can't do it," Byron said, yanking his tie loose with one hand. "You've heard the rumors about Aris Knowles. Three months in a coma, and they say he won't last the week. The family wants a bride in that house tonight, and she can't walk down a hallway without someone catching her. So it's you."

Jillian glanced at the cover page.

Knowles Prenuptial Agreement and Power of Attorney.

Black ink, bold type. No way out printed on every line.

One corner of her mouth lifted. That was all.

Byron leaned in, both palms flat on the table. "Don't play games with me. Have you forgotten who dragged you out of that timber town? The Foster name put a roof over your head. Time to pay it back."

"Pay it back," Jillian said. "By marrying a stranger in a coma so you can keep your fifty-million merger?"

The number landed. His face went dark, a vein jumping at his temple.

"You don't get to negotiate," he said. "If Gabriella hadn't begged Mom and Dad to bring you home, you'd still be scraping dirt off your-"

"She begged you." Jillian's voice stayed level. "Good to know."

He stopped dead.

Jillian reached for the pen lying next to the folder. Montblanc. Heavy, black, the sort of thing Byron bought so he could feel rich. She rolled it between her fingers. The cap clicked against her thumbnail.

Click. Click. Click.

Nobody in the Beverly Hills living room breathed.

"I'll sign," she said. "One condition."

Byron straightened. He'd come ready for tears. He'd come ready for screaming, for a scared girl from the hills on her knees. He had not come ready for this. "What, money?"

Jillian held the nib an inch above the line. "I want to see Gabriella. Hospital. Tonight."

"No." He moved toward the door before he'd finished saying it. "The doctors-her heart can't take it, they said no stress-"

Jillian let the pen down. One dot of ink soaked into the paper, black and round.

"Then find someone else to sign," she said. "Let's see how the Knowles board takes it when the morning papers say the Fosters walked out on the contract. Will fifty million cover the lawyers?"

Byron's jaw locked. She could watch him do the math: his sister's nerves on one side, his family's firm going under on the other.

It took him five seconds.

"Fine," he said through his teeth. "Ten minutes. You upset her, Jillian, I swear to God-"

She was already signing. Two strokes, her name cut across the page, and she shoved the folder back at him across the marble.

Byron snatched it up. His shoulders dropped, relief pouring off him like sweat. Then his eyes slid over her plain dark sweater and his lip curled.

"Get a coat. Try not to look like you came in off the street."

Jillian stood and walked past him.

Her black trench hung on the brass hook by the door. Her canvas duffel sat on the bench underneath, packed and zipped. She swung the coat on, picked up the bag, and walked out into the Los Angeles night.

Gravel crunched under her boots. The Maybach was idling in the drive, engine purring.

Byron came down the stone steps behind her, barking at the driver through the open window. "Cedars-Sinai. Go."

Twenty minutes. Not one word.

Jillian leaned her shoulder to the glass and watched the neon smear across it. She stayed on the far side of the seat, a wide cold gap of leather between her and the man who had never once called her family.

The car dropped into the hospital's underground garage. It had barely stopped before she pushed the door open. Her boots rang off the concrete.

Byron caught up at the elevator. All the way up he watched her back, waiting for her spine to bow, for her shoulders to drop. Nothing. She stood straight, hands in her pockets.

The doors opened on the penthouse floor. Antiseptic rolled out into the hall.

Jillian walked out first, straight for the guarded doors at the end of the corridor.

Don Foster, her eldest brother, was standing outside room 804. He stopped pacing the second he saw her, and his face closed up like a fist.

He stepped out to block the hall. "Who told you to bring her here, Byron? Turn around. She's supposed to be getting ready for the Knowles estate."

Jillian didn't slow down. She dropped her shoulder and slipped past his arm without letting him touch her coat. "Contract's signed. I'm here to say goodbye."

Don lunged. Byron caught him from behind and said something low and fast in his ear. Don's face twisted, but he lowered his arm and stepped back with pure poison in his eyes.

Jillian took the steel handle, pushed it down, and walked in.

Gabriella Foster was propped up on white pillows in the middle of the suite, a silver bowl of dark cherries in her lap, chewing, scrolling her phone.

The latch clicked.

Gabriella's smile fell off her face. The bowl slid sideways. Her whole body went still, eyes wide, mouth open on a cherry she'd forgotten to swallow.

Jillian walked past the foot of the bed and stopped alongside the mattress.

She looked down at the girl who had her name, her family, and her inheritance, and played the victim every hour of the day.

Then she leaned in, close enough that her lips almost touched Gabriella's ear.

"Eat your cherries while you can still swallow them," Jillian said, quiet as a knife. "Because you won't have to pretend to be dying much longer."