Chapter 8 - The Aftermath
By eight o'clock that evening, the hospital suite was quiet again.
The police officers were gone. The Collins family was gone. The media teams, who had caught wind of the sudden arrest of one of Chicago’s most prominent financial dynasties, were gathered outside the main entrance of the hospital, their television lights flashing against the wet pavement.
The news channels were already broadcasting the headline:
COLLINS FINANCIAL GROUP COLLAPSES UNDER FEDERAL RICO INDICTMENT. HEIR ETHAN COLLINS ARRESTED FOR FELONY DOMESTIC BATTERY.
Inside the quiet room, the dim yellow light cast a warm, comforting glow over the bed.
I sat up, sipping a cup of warm tea that Uncle Jake had brought me from the nurses' station. Emma was sleeping peacefully in the clear plastic bassinet beside my bed, her tiny chest rising and falling in a slow, rhythmic pattern.
Uncle Jake sat in the heavy leather visitor’s chair—the same chair Ethan had sat in four hours earlier—holding a small wooden screwdriver, carefully adjusting a tiny loose screw on Emma’s plush blue bunny.
"Did you really know his uncle?" I asked softly, my voice still slightly raspy from the strain on my throat.
Jake didn't look up from his work. He carefully tightened the screw, clicked the plush bunny's hidden battery compartment shut, and set it back on the bedside table.
"I knew a lot of men like Richard Collins back in the seventies and eighties, Maya," Jake said quietly, his rough voice filled with a distant, old sadness. "Men who thought that because they had money and political titles, the rules of basic human decency didn't apply to them."
He looked over at me, his dark eyes filled with incredible warmth and fierce protection.
"They think power is built out of paper, contracts, and offshore bank accounts," Jake continued softly. "They don't understand that real power is built out of what a person is willing to do to protect the people they love."
"How long have you had those files on his family?" I asked.
Jake offered a tiny, faint smile—the rare, quiet smile I had seen only a few times in my life.
"Since the day you brought Ethan home to introduce him to me three years ago," Jake said plainly. "I didn't trust the way he held his shoulders when he spoke to you. So I had Marcus run a quiet background check on his father’s logistics firm."
I let out a soft, breathy laugh that turned into a small tear slipping down my cheek. "You spent three years waiting?"
"I spent three years hoping I’d never have to use them," Jake corrected gently. "I wanted you to have a happy, peaceful life, Maya. But if a wolf walks into my house and puts his teeth near my girl... I don't negotiate with the wolf. I remove him."
He stood up from his chair, his old knee giving a small, familiar crack, and walked over to the side of my bed.
May you like
He leaned down, his calloused thumb gently wiping the tear from my cheek.
"It's over now, sweetheart," Jake whispered. "The house in Lincoln Park is in your name. The divorce papers were filed three hours ago under emergency domestic protection statutes. The Collins family will be spending the next twenty years in federal courtrooms. They will never touch you or Emma again."
