THE LOST HEIRESS RETURNS AFTER DIVORCE
Chapter 70: The Weight Of Thirty Percent

Chapter 70: The Weight Of Thirty Percent

[This Chapter is dedicated to diavla! Thank you for your golden ticket.]

Doctor’s Office–2:14 a. m.

Caius sat in the chair opposite the doctor, its leather stiff and unyielding beneath him, like everything else in this godforsaken room. His posture was rigid—military straight—but the tension coiled through him like a drawn wire.

His fingers tapped quietly against his knee, not out of nerves—he didn’t get nervous—but because something inside him refused to stay still.

His thoughts were already racing ahead, cataloguing possibilities, bracing for outcomes, running calculations like strategy in war. What could be done. Who needed to be called. What needed to be moved.

Control. It was always about control.

But then the doctor spoke.

"We’ve found something concerning in Alex’s scans," the man said, voice even, almost clinical. The kind of tone people used when they were taught not to panic the families.

Caius could already feel the change in the air, like the seconds themselves thickened around him.

He didn’t speak, he just stared.

"A tumor," the doctor continued, steady but heavier now. "In his brain."

No blood, no noise, but something inside Caius buckled. For the first time in years, maybe even longer, he didn’t know what to do with his hands, with his breath. Everything slowed, and his fingers stopped moving. Even his knee stilled.

It was the kind of word that cleared rooms, silenced conversations, stripped all logic bare. Tumor.

A single word, but it landed like a sentence.

He exhaled, slowly. "How bad is it?"

The doctor hesitated. Barely. But Caius caught it—the flicker in his eyes, the shift in his posture. And that was all it took.

"It’s advanced," the doctor finally said. "If we’d caught it earlier, treatment might’ve been more direct. But at this stage..."

He let his words hung there, unwilling. Then he forced himself to continue. "The survival rate, even with surgery, is low."

Low.

Low wasn’t a number. It wasn’t a percentage, but it was a death sentence disguised as vagueness.

Caius leaned forward slightly, his voice like a warning. "Define low."

The doctor didn’t dance around it.

"Thirty percent."

Thirty percent. Thirty percent—what was that supposed to mean? That Alex had a better chance of dying than living?

Thirty wasn’t a number. Thirty was a gun to his son’s head.

He didn’t flinch. His hands curled slowly into fists, nails digging into the meat of his palms, but the pain didn’t reach him.

He wasn’t feeling things the way most people did—through the surface. His was deeper.

And then, like a reflex he couldn’t control, the first thought that came to him wasn’t about what had to be done. It wasn’t the specialists. It wasn’t even about Alex.

It was Heather.

How was she going to take this?

He saw her again in his mind, just minutes ago in the hallway—arms full of their son, fury in her voice, her eyes shining with defiance. She had been fire and steel.

She had cursed him without flinching, threatened him with more conviction than most men had ever dared.

But beneath all of that—beneath all her sharpness—was the kind of love that had built its own kind of temple around Alex.

He thinks she would break.

No. She wouldn’t break. She would collapse—and then she’d rebuild herself out of rage and fear and grief and fight until the world bled for giving her this news.

She’d hate him more than she already did. Because she would think he should have known.

That maybe, if he’d been around from the beginning, this could have been caught sooner. That maybe this was his fault. That everything always was.

His jaw tightened.

"There’s no way that’s an option," he said, low. The words came out like gravel. "Thirty percent isn’t good enough."

The doctor’s voice was calm, but not unkind. "Medicine doesn’t work on willpower alone."

"Then find someone who can change those odds."

"We can bring in specialists," the doctor said, not surprised, not offended. Just grounded. "I’ll make those calls. But you need to understand—even with the best in the field, the risks remain. There are no guarantees."

Caius stood. "There will be," he said.

The doctor watched him carefully, perhaps trying to measure how long that kind of conviction could last against what was coming.

But Caius didn’t stay long enough to see the doubt in the man’s eyes.

He turned, the words still lodged in his chest, threatening to choke him. There was no room for grief—yet. Heather was still outside, and she didn’t know.

And it was he who would have to tell her.

The one person who hated him most in the world. The one person whose heart was bound to the same little boy whose chances now sat at thirty percent.

Thirty.

He never hated a number so much in his entire life.

...

Heather’s hands had curled into fists without her realizing it, the fabric of her dress gathered so tightly between her fingers it might’ve torn if she had squeezed any harder.

Her arms rested on her lap, heavy and tense. Her chest rose and fell with shallow, uneven breaths. She was trying—really trying—to steady herself. One breath. Then another.

But none of it was working.

Her mind kept spinning back to the doctor. His words. His expression. The fact that he had taken Caius aside and not her.

That alone had her stomach twisting with dread. She’d tried to stay calm, tried not to imagine the worst. But the silence was screaming now.

It’s probably nothing, she told herself again, clinging to the hope like it was the last rung of a ladder.

He’s just tired.Maybe a virus.A fever. Something they’ll treat and we’ll be out of here by morning.

But the lie didn’t hold. Not anymore.

The longer she sat alone on the hard bench, the more she could feel doubt creeping in—slow, quiet, and poisonous, like smoke sliding under a closed door.

And the worst part wasn’t the silence or the waiting. The worst part was that she didn’t know how to stop it.

She didn’t know how to protect herself from whatever truth was coming.

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