I Married My Ex's Billionaire Father-Chapter 278: Brooke Was Dead

Lyse didn’t remember the drive to the detention center. She didn’t remember grabbing her keys, didn’t remember locking her door, didn’t even remember taking the highway. She moved on instinct, pushed forward by a tangled knot of dread and obligation she didn’t understand and didn’t want to examine too closely or ellse she would find herself running for the hills.

The building rose ahead of her gray, sharp-edged, cold. Too still. Too quiet.

She parked and sat there for a moment gripping the steering wheel with numb fingers.

This was a mistake.

She shouldn’t have come. She should have gone to the meeting with Brandon. She should have worked on the collaboration. She should have done literally anything else.

But she was here.

And Lottie’s message been echoing through her mind the whole drive:

It’s about your mother.

Those words were the hook. The trap. The tether she couldn’t rip free from.

Lyse exhaled and stepped out of the car.

Her heels clicked across the pavement, though the sound felt impossibly loud in the silence of the place. She pushed through the entrance doors, expecting, hoping, maybe for someone to stop her. To tell her she couldn’t go in. To give her a reason to leave.

But the officer at the front desk simply lifted his head, glanced her over, and asked,

"Name?"

"Lyse... Spade," she said automatically.

"Here to see who?"

"Lottie Chadwick."

He typed something into his system. His brows furrowed.

Then furrowed again.

Lyse’s pulse spiked. "Is something wrong?"

He didn’t answer immediately he read something on the screen, then let out a low, uncomfortable sigh.

"Just... take a seat. Someone will speak with you shortly."

That was never a reassuring answer.

Lyse sat on one of the metal chairs lining the wall. They were cold even through her clothes. Other visitors murmured quietly. Worried parents, frustrated spouses, tired friends.

She didn’t feel like any of them.

She felt like she was standing on the edge of a cliff, waiting for someone to tell her whether she had any ground left beneath her.

Minutes crawled by.

Finally, a female officer appeared and called her name.

Lyse stood.

The officer didn’t smile. Didn’t greet her. Didn’t even meet her eyes properly.

"Come with me," she said, tone flat.

Lyse followed her down a corridor painted in muted institutional tones, each step louder than the last, each breath harder to take. The air grew colder the further they went.

"We had an incident this morning," the officer said abruptly.

Lyse’s heart punched violently against her ribs. "Incident? With who?"

"Multiple detainees," the woman said, still not looking at her. "We’re still conducting a formal investigation."

Lyse’s palms went clammy.

The officer stopped in front of a door with a small, reinforced glass pane.

She paused, her hand hovering over the handle, voice lowering.

"You came to see Charlotte Chadwick, correct?"

Lyse blinked. "Lottie? Yes. She requested to see me."

The woman opened the door.

Lyse stepped inside...

And froze.

The room wasn’t a visitation booth.

It was a medical holding cell.

And in the single bed at the center of the room

Lottie lay unconscious.

Pale. Motionless. Tubes running from her arm. A monitor displaying a slow, sickeningly steady heartbeat. Bruises blooming across her temple and cheekbone like dark stains.

Lyse’s knees nearly buckled.

"What... what happened to her?" she whispered.

The officer hesitated. A beat too long. "She was found unresponsive during morning rounds."

"Unresponsive?" Lyse echoed, voice cracking.

"She slipped into a coma."

The word hit like a physical strike.

"No," Lyse breathed. "No, she she messaged me this morning. She was talking. She was begging me to come." Her voice shook violently. "She wasn’t... like this."

The officer looked away.

Lyse took a shaky step closer to the bed.

Lottie had always been larger than life, loud, cruel, manipulative, sharp as broken glass. Even in her worst moments she radiated a kind of fierce, terrible vitality.

Seeing her so still felt wrong.

Horrible.

Unnatural.

"Is she... is she going to wake up?" Lyse whispered.

"We don’t know," the woman admitted. "She will be transfered to a hospital later today where she will get adequate care."

Lyse swallowed hard, her eyes burning.

She shouldn’t feel this much. She shouldn’t feel anything. Lottie had never been kind to her, never been a mother, never been gentle. She had been pain, control, and conditional affection packaged as parenting.

But seeing her like this...

Lyse’s throat tightened painfully.

She tore her gaze away, forcing herself to breathe.

"Where is Brooke?" she asked.

Silence.

A long, loaded silence.

Lyse turned sharply. "Where is Brooke? She said she would be here. She told me she was scared. Did something happen?"

The officer’s expression shifted.

Pity.

Regret.

And something like fear.

"I’m sorry," she said quietly. "Brooke Brooks was found... deceased in her cell."

Lyse stared at her.

For a moment the words didn’t land. They hovered in the air, meaningless shapes. Deceased. Found. Cell.

"What?" she whispered.

The officer drew in a slow breath. "She passed sometime last night."

"No..." Lyse shook her head. "No. That’s not.. Brooke wasn’t— she was fine."

The officer didn’t respond.

Lyse swayed, vision blurring for a heartbeat. The sterile room, the cold walls, the beeping all pressed in around her.

Dead.

Brooke was... dead?

Her voice trembled. "How?"

"We don’t have a full report yet. There was no sign of struggle. No sign of poison. It may have been a cardiac event, but we can’t say for certain. The coroner is still examining the body."

No sign of struggle.

No sign of poison.

A cardiac event.

Brooke was twenty-six.

Healthy.

Vibrant.

Spoiled and selfish and cruel, maybe but alive.

Too alive.

Lyse’s pulse roared, her thoughts zigzagging toward possibilities she didn’t want to name, not yet, not without proof. She pressed a hand to her forehead, fighting dizziness.

"Does Lottie know?" she whispered.

"No," the officer said. "She lost consciousness before we found Brooke."

Lyse stared at Lottie’s still face.

Mother and daughter.

Both broken.

Both silent.

Both holding secrets Lyse had been inches from uncovering.

Lyse’s stomach twisted painfully.

Whatever Lottie had wanted to tell her...

Whatever she had texted about her mother...

It had been swallowed whole by the events of the night.

And somehow, Lyse didn’t know how, didn’t know why she felt the sharp, certain conviction that none of this was coincidence.

But she didn’t know who to suspect.

Or whether she should say anything.

Or where her next step even was.

She only knew two things:

Lottie wasn’t talking anytime soon.

And Brooke was gone forever.

Lyse’s voice was a fragile whisper.

"Can I... stay with her? Just for a minute?"

The officer nodded and stepped outside.

Lyse moved closer to the bed, barely breathing.

She wanted to scream.

She wanted to run.

She wanted to smash something.

She wanted answers.

But all she could do was stand there, shaking, staring at the woman who’d raised her, broken her, shaped her.

A woman who perhaps for the first time had something she needed to say.

Something Lyse would now have to fight the world to uncover.

She reached out, fingers trembling above Lottie’s cold hand.

"I came," she whispered. "I’m here."

But the woman couldn’t hear her.

And Lyse had never felt more alone.