"You picked a great spot for this," Claire muttered. "There are no security cameras here."
She hadn't wanted to cause a scene, but a man who couldn't control his lower half while his own father lay dying in the ICU deserved far worse!
As she turned around, she locked eyes with Dane, who wore an entirely unreadable expression.
"Oh, hey... what a coincidence, Dane," she greeted, genuinely surprised to run into him.
Dane's lips twitched in amusement. "Yeah. Are you alright?"
He had come to the hospital to visit an elder, only to walk right into Claire
mercilessly dismantling a grown man.
That kick she delivered had been exceptionally savage.
Claire waved her hand dismissively. "I'm perfectly fine."
Seeing a potential savior, Silas wailed from the floor. "She's lying! How could this little bitch be hurt? I'm the one dying here!"
"Get a doctor, the pain is killing me!"
Silas howled in agony.
Dane barely spared the writhing man a glance, focusing entirely on Claire. "What did he do?"
"This old creep tried to put his hands on me while his father was practically flatlining. He bragged about how important he was and told me I was too pretty to be a doctor..."
Claire's mouth ran a mile a minute, lodging her complaint without a shred of hesitation.
Dane quickly grasped the entire situation.
He frowned slightly. "I see. Understood."
The Darwin family had practically run out of capable heirs, yet they still dared to blindly provoke people.
With behavior like this, they would inevitably face a brutal reckoning the moment General Darwin passed away.
Dane cast a swift look over his shoulder.
His two bodyguards instantly knew how to handle the trash on the floor.
As Silas was dragged away, Dane turned back to Claire. "Come with me."
"I'm here to visit Walden. You should come along."
"Walden? The elder I met before?" Claire wasn't entirely shocked by the news.
These old heroes were battle-hardened veterans who had retired from active service.
Even on a good day, their health was generally poor.
As they reached their twilight years, they were frequently tormented by chronic illnesses.
"Yes, Van's grandfather."
"But Dr. Quincy and the team just invited me to grab lunch at the cafeteria," Claire noted hesitantly.
"I'll eat with you first," Dane replied smoothly, making the decision the second he realized she hadn't eaten.
Dane's sudden appearance in the doctors' dining area caught the medical staff off guard.
Dr. Tandy Walton, who recognized the young heir, was quite familiar with him. "Dane, good to see you. Care to sit down and join us for a bite?"
Dane didn't bother with false modesty.
He pulled out a chair for Claire, and the two of them grabbed their plates and sat down together.
The two young people ate side by side, with Dane quietly attending to Claire's every need, making their intimate relationship blatantly obvious.
"Did you come to the hospital just to pick up our brilliant Dr. Claire?"
Tandy had previously harbored
hopes of introducing his own
nephew to Claire, but the moment he learned she was engaged to the heir of the powerful Green family, He wisely dropped the idea content
His wife had warned him that meddling with such a match wouldn't earn him any
favors—it would ignite a blood feud.
He had completely abandoned the thought after that.
"I'm here to visit Walden."
Dane answered honestly without hiding his intentions.
Tandy hadn't yet heard about the old patriarch's hospitalization and paused in
surprise. "What's wrong with Walden?"
"Did he fall ill too?"
Dane didn't actually have all the details. He had only heard from Van that the elder was in the hospital.
Van was overwhelmed with work, so he had asked Dane to check in on him.
The main issue was that no one in the Hawk household could rein the stubborn old man in. Since Walden had practically watched Dane grow up, he treated him like a second grandson.
Aside from his actual grandson, Walden was only willing to listen to Dane.
"I think he sneaked some alcohol and drank too much."
He didn't know the specifics, only catching a brief complaint from Van.
Van had originally been at home preparing for his wedding, but he had suddenly been deployed on an urgent mission.
With him gone, there was naturally no one left to supervise the old patriarch.
How could the household guards or private nurses possibly control a man like him?
Tandy couldn't hold back a booming laugh. "That sounds exactly like something Walden would do."