Chapter 5 - The Fever
The chill didn't stay metaphorical. By Friday night, it turned physical.
Daniel had dismissed his evening security detail early, preferring to sit alone in his private library with a Scotch he didn't drink. A fever had been creeping up behind his eyes since mid-afternoon, making his skin feel hot and tight, his joints aching with a dull, heavy fatigue that he hadn't experienced since he had pneumonia in college.
He ignored it. Hales didn't get sick. Sickness was a logistical inefficiency.
By 10:00 PM, however, he could barely stand. His head pounded with every beat of his heart, and a cold sweat drenched his silk shirt as he slumped back into the leather wingback chair near the unlit fireplace.
He closed his eyes, intending to rest for just five minutes before heading upstairs to his bedroom.
He woke up hours later to a freezing draft sweeping across the library floor.
The fire was still dead. The room was dark, illuminated only by the pale moonlight filtering through the high windows. His body shook with violent chills, his teeth chattering uncontrollably as a deep, bone-deep ache radiated through his chest.
He tried to stand, but his legs felt like wet cardboard. He slumped back into the chair, letting out a ragged, wheezing breath.
This is ridiculous, he thought angrily. Just call the estate doctor.
He reached out blindly toward the mahogany side table where his encrypted satellite phone rested.
His hand missed the edge of the table. The phone slid off the wood and hit the Persian rug with a soft, muffled thud.
Daniel let out a low groan of frustration, his arm dropping limply over the armrest. He was trapped in his own chair, burning with fever, unable to reach the phone, too weak to walk the fifty feet to the grand hallway.
For the first time in thirty-four years, the untouchable founder of Hale Meridian Group was completely, helplessly incapacitated.
Nathan was right, a dark voice whispered in the back of his feverish mind. If I die right here in this chair, nobody will find me until Maria comes to dust the bookshelves on Monday morning.
He closed his eyes, letting the darkness pull at the edges of his consciousness.
Then he heard them.
Not the heavy, professional footsteps of a doctor or a security guard.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
Tiny, rapid sneakers pattering across the hallway outside the library.
Daniel tried to force his eyes open, but his eyelids felt like lead.
The heavy library door creaked open with a slow, agonizing groan.
A tiny shadow fell across the threshold.
“Mister?”
It was Lily’s voice, small and clear in the cavernous room.
Daniel couldn't answer. His throat was too dry, his vocal cords locked in a painful spasm. He could only let out a weak, raspy exhale.
The pattering footsteps grew closer, stopping right beside his wingback chair.
A small hand—warm, soft, and smelling faintly of baby shampoo and strawberry toothpaste—gently touched the back of his cold, trembling hand hanging over the armrest.
“Why are you sleeping on the chair again?” Lily whispered, sounding mildly annoyed. “The chair is not a bed.”
Daniel forced his eyes to flicker open.
The room was swimming in a haze of fever and moonlight, but he could see her clearly. She was wearing her yellow pajamas with little cartoon ducks on them. In her other hand, she was dragging another blanket—a smaller, pink fleece quilt that belonged to her.
She looked up at his pale, sweat-soaked face, her dark eyes widening with sudden concern.
“Your face is wet,” she observed softly.
Before Daniel could find his voice, Lily dropped her pink blanket onto the floor, climbed up onto the heavy ottoman in front of his chair with surprising agility, and stood on her tiptoes.
Before he could protest, she reached up with both hands and pressed her small, warm palm directly against his burning forehead.
The contrast between her warm skin and his feverish sweat sent a shockwave straight through Daniel’s chest.
“You’re like a stove,” Lily whispered, her brow furrowing with absolute grown-up seriousness. “Mommy says when you’re like a stove, you need ice cream and a blanket.”
Daniel let out a broken, wheezing sound that was half-laugh, half-sob.
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He didn't want ice cream. He didn't want corporate mergers or forty billion dollars or forty more towers in Manhattan.
In that dark, freezing library, gripped by fever and broken by loneliness, Daniel Hale reached out his trembling hand, wrapped his long fingers gently around the little girl's small wrist, and pulled her against his chest, burying his face in her soft, dark curls as the first real tears in twenty-eight years finally spilled down his cheeks.
