Whitney abruptly ended the call, leaning heavily against the table, her breath coming in short, labored gasps as a layer of cold sweat formed on her forehead. Tiana's suggestion had failed. They could neither be strangers nor friends; peaceful coexistence was out of the question. So, they would be enemies. Whitney was no longer afraid of him.
---
“Mr. Lippert…”
Felix stood beside the man, who seemed to have turned into a statue of ice, clearly distraught. Mr. Lippert was in pain, and Felix could feel it. Gently shaking, Felix reminded him, “Ms. Valentine has hung up quite a while ago.”
Ludwik, standing tall and unyielding, his heart had already fallen to pieces. His eyes drooped slightly, a flash of moisture quickly turning to a red blaze, as he shoved his phone back into his pocket. His gaze then shifted back to Sammy.
“Sammy's current state is uncooperative with the treatment; he only trusts the people from Florence's side. Under these circumstances, you can't get close to him,” Felix said.
The man's brows furrowed deeply, his heart heavy with repression. He had wanted to tell Whitney that everything was about to get better, that he had found Sammy for her. But the boy was proving difficult, and she would likely be heartbroken and disappointed. Yet, she wouldn't even give him a chance to speak. All she wanted was to marry another, to escape her past and start anew!
Whitney.
Ludwik crushed the can in his hand, his mood utterly shattered, “Get Ryan to find a way to make Sammy talk, to recognize me, to remember me!”
With that, Ludwik turned and left.
Sammy’s gaze slowly shifted, his mother was going to marry Bryce. He had seen it in the news. His worthless father must be panicking, and rightly so, after all, he had gotten Florence pregnant. It wasn’t that Sammy didn’t want to deal with him… But now, he needed to gain Florence’s trust, to find out what Florence and Ryan had really done to his mother. Sammy couldn’t afford to mess up; he had to keep his distance from Ludwik. If his mom was truly going to marry Bryce, Sammy thought, perhaps it was time to secretly contact Danny, to find out his mother’s true intentions?
---
The next day.
Whitney, carrying a bag of hair samples, made a deliberate appearance at Hudson Hospital. Under the watchful eyes of the public, she handed over the hair samples to the forensic department next door, requesting judicial preservation. The news spread like wildfire. Almost simultaneously, it reached Hugh's ears.
He sat in the chairman's seat of the Sheldon Group—a position that once belonged to Hudson. Hugh gazed greedily around the office, slamming his fist onto the desk, “Just as I thought, Ludwik gave the hair to Whitney!”
Holly, fuming with rage, squinted, “That woman, deliberately sending the hair to the hospital's forensic department, is just blatantly telling you not to lay a finger on Hudson, right?”
She suggested, “If she's applied for judicial preservation, it means she only has your hair, which isn't enough for a paternity test. Why don't we bribe the hospital, steal the hair back?”
Hugh shook his head, “Do you think the hair she brought is really mine? Whitney isn’t that stupid. Even if it was my hair, she surely kept another sample. Stealing it back would be pointless.”
“So we just sit back and watch Dr. Ivan perform surgery on Hudson, helping him wake up?” Holly clenched her fists, her nerves on edge. It had taken her and Hugh a great effort to get their hands on the Sheldon Group, and the company’s wealth wasn’t fully theirs yet!
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