The Heiress Gambit-Chapter 80-Hospital

AUTHOR

The study was a pressure cooker of terror and rage, ready to explode.

Payton was still sobbing, her pleas becoming a broken mantra. "Daddy, please, please, just put it down..."

Denki’s focus had narrowed to a single, desperate point: getting Payton out of the line of fire. "Payton, for God’s sake, move!" he begged, his voice cracking. He could see the wild, unhinged look in Shunsuke’s eyes. This wouldn’t end well. "You’re going to get hurt!"

Barbara, her own composure shattered, took a tentative step forward, her hands outstretched as if calming a wild animal. "Shunsuke, my love, listen to reason! Put the gun down and we can talk this through! This is not the way!"

But Shunsuke was beyond reason. He was a man staring into the abyss of his own ruin, and he was determined to take someone with him. "SHUT UP!" he roared, the veins in his neck bulging. His furious gaze was locked on Denki. "ANSWER ME, YOU WORTHLESS LITTLE SHIT!"

Denki’s mind raced. He saw the trap. If he said yes, he signed his own death warrant. If he said no, Shunsuke might turn the gun on Payton in his rage. A cold clarity washed over him.

His own death would be a cleaner, quicker end than the lifelong humiliation and punishment Payton would suffer if their secret was confirmed. He was the disposable one. He had always been.

Damn it, he thought, a bitter, self-loathing curse echoing in his head. It was supposed to be just sex. No feelings. A way to blow off steam. But now... fuck! Now I can’t stand the thought of him even yelling at her.

Seeing Denki’s hesitation, Shunsuke made his move. With a swift, terrifying motion, he shifted the aim of the gun. The black barrel was now pointing directly at Payton’s chest.

Barbara screamed, a raw, primal sound of maternal terror. "SHUNSUKE! HAVE YOU GONE COMPLETELY MAD? THAT IS YOUR DAUGHTER!"

Payton froze. The sobs died in her throat. All the blood drained from her face. Her father, her protector, the man who had always indulged her, was aiming a gun at her. Her face twisted into an expression he had never seen—not just shock, but a profound, soul-crushing betrayal. She had always been his precious, perfect heir. Now, she was disposable. "What the fuck...?" she whispered, the words barely audible.

Denki’s eyes widened in pure horror. Any thought of sacrifice vanished. He couldn’t let her take the bullet. Not for him. Not for anything.

"YES!" he shouted, the word tearing from his throat. All eyes snapped to him. "Yes, I’ve been sleeping with her!" He took a deliberate step forward, putting himself between the gun and Payton once more. "If you’re going to shoot anyone, it should be me." He gave Payton a sharp, desperate look that screamed, Don’t you dare say a word.

He had to make himself the only villain. He had to make Shunsuke hate him so much he forgot about Payton. "It was me. I started it. I seduced her. She didn’t know what she was doing. It’s all my fault."

For a single, suspended second, the only sound was Barbara’s ragged breathing and Payton’s silent tears.

Shunsuke’s face contorted into a mask of pure, undiluted hatred. He looked at Denki, the boy he had raised, the tool he had used, who had now committed the ultimate betrayal. He saw the defiance in his eyes, the protective stance in front of his daughter.

"You," Shunsuke seethed, his voice dropping to a deadly, guttural whisper. "You fucking, overachieving piece of shit."

He raised the gun, his aim true and steady on Denki’s center mass.

He pulled the trigger.

The sound was an earth-shattering BANG that ripped through the opulent study, deafeningly loud, impossibly final.

For a heartbeat, there was nothing. A vacuum of silence, thick and absolute, as the world stopped turning. The echo of the gunshot clung to the walls, a ghost of the violence that had just been born into the room.

For a single, heart-stopping second, Denki didn’t understand what had happened. He had braced for the impact, for the searing pain, for his own end. But it never came.

Instead, he saw Payton jolt backward. A small, surprised gasp escaped her lips. Then, a dark, blooming red flower appeared on the shoulder of her white silk blouse. Her eyes, wide and confused, met his for a fleeting moment before they fluttered shut. Her legs gave way, and she crumpled to the polished floor.

The frozen silence shattered into a million pieces with Barbara’s scream. It was a sound of pure, animal horror. "PAYTON!" She scrambled across the floor, her designer clothes scraping against the wood, not caring about anything but her fallen daughter.

Shunsuke stood frozen, the gun still smoking in his hand. The rage that had possessed him vanished, leaving behind a cold, hollow horror. He watched as if from a great distance as his daughter lay bleeding on the floor. His hands began to tremble, then shake violently. The heavy pistol slipped from his numb, jelly-like fingers and clattered to the floor.

"No... no, no, no!" he stammered, staggering back as if the truth was a physical force pushing him away. He shook his head, his eyes wild with denial. He couldn’t be the monster. He couldn’t be the one who did this. "This isn’t my fault!" he whispered, then his voice rose to a desperate shout. "It’s Denki’s fault! He moved! He made me do it!"

But the lie felt weak even to him. His mind, scrambling for an escape, latched onto a different target. "No! It’s Daki’s fault! Yes, yes! If it weren’t for him, I would never have picked up a gun in the first place! He did this!" He was trying to convince himself, to rewrite the story in his head where he was the victim, not the villain.

Denki didn’t waste a second on Shunsuke’s madness. The sight of Payton’s blood, the terrifying stillness of her body, sent a jolt of pure adrenaline through him. All his scheming, his resentment, his carefully built walls—they crumbled to dust. He dropped to his knees beside Barbara.

"Let me," he said, his voice surprisingly firm. He gently but quickly scooped Payton into his arms. She was terrifyingly limp. Her head lolled against his chest, her blood already soaking into his shirt. He didn’t feel the weight; he only felt a desperate, burning need to save her.

He carried her out of the study, past Shunsuke who had now sunk to the floor, his head in his hands, muttering "Fuck!" over and over again like a broken prayer.

Denki didn’t stop. He moved through the grand hallways of the estate like a man possessed, heading straight for the garage and his car. Barbara followed, her tears flowing freely, her elegant facade completely gone, replaced by the raw fear of a mother.

He laid Payton carefully across the backseat. Barbara climbed in beside her, cradling Payton’s head in her lap. "Her pulse is weak, but she’s breathing. Oh, baby, please stay with me," Barbara begged, stroking her daughter’s hair. "Please, Denki, hurry!"

Denki slammed the driver’s door and started the car. He peeled out of the driveway, cutting through traffic with a reckless, terrifying focus. He ran red lights, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.

The world outside was a blur. Every second felt like an hour. The only thing that mattered was the fragile, shallow breathing coming from the backseat.

He screeched to a halt under the bright emergency room awning, yelling for help before the car had even fully stopped.

Medical staff came rushing out with a gurney. In a flurry of controlled chaos, they lifted Payton from the car and whisked her away through the swinging double doors, leaving Denki and Barbara standing in the cold, sterile light, covered in her blood, waiting to see if the life they had always taken for granted would be saved.

– – –

Six hours. The clock on the sterile white wall had ticked through six agonizing hours. Denki had paced until his legs ached, then stood rigidly by the window, staring at nothing.

Barbara sat perfectly still on the plastic chair, her hands clasped so tightly her knuckles were white. The waiting was a special kind of torture, each minute stretching into an eternity of fear and regret.

Finally, the surgeon emerged, still in his green scrubs but with a calm expression that immediately eased the crushing weight in the room. "She’s alright," he said, and the words were like a pardon. "The surgery went well. We removed the bullet. She lost blood, but the damage was clean. She’s sleeping now under sedation. You’ll be able to see her soon."

A collective, shuddering sigh of relief filled the space between them. The immediate, life-or-death terror was over.

As the doctor walked away, the energy that had been holding Denki up instantly vanished. His shoulders slumped. He stumbled to a chair a few seats down from Barbara and collapsed into it.

He buried his face in his hands, his fingers gripping his hair, pulling at the roots as if he could physically rip the memory of the last few hours from his mind. The image of Payton falling, the sound of the gunshot, the feel of her blood soaking through his shirt—it played on a relentless loop.

Barbara watched him for a long moment, the silence between them heavy with unspoken truths. She finally broke it, her voice quiet and tired, stripped of all its usual social grace.

"This... this was not the first time Shunsuke attempted to kill someone."

Denki’s head snapped up. He stared at her, his eyes red-rimmed and shocked. "What do you mean?"

She couldn’t meet his gaze. She looked at her own perfectly manicured hands, now stained with the ghost of her daughter’s blood. "The Okubo Group. The Yakuza. He contacted them. He paid them to assassinate Reomen Daki. And to take Paige captive."

Denki felt the air leave his lungs. He knew his uncle was ruthless, but this... this was a different level of evil. "He went that far?" he whispered, more to himself than to her. He let out a long, weary sigh. The family he had dedicated his life to was rotten to its very core.

Barbara continued to stare at a fixed spot on the wall, her eyes distant. "I’m tired, Denki."

He looked at her, trying to understand the shift in her tone. This wasn’t the cold, calculating matriarch he knew. This was a woman broken by the consequences of her own choices.

"I’m tired of the war. I’m tired of the drama, the scheming, the... the destruction of everything." Her voice trembled. "Paige... she was obviously never going to bend to Shunsuke’s will. She made that perfectly clear. So why? Why try to take a life? Why try to force her? What is the point of all this... this violence?"

Denki listened silently. He knew where this was headed. This was the moment the last loyal soldier in Shunsuke’s army was deserting.

She finally turned to look at him, her gaze direct and surprisingly soft. "I already suspected... about you and Payton. I didn’t know what to call it. An affair? A relationship?" She shook her head, dismissing the label. "But you are free to pursue her, if that is what you both want. We were trying to set you up with Paige, so it’s not as if wanting her sister is some great taboo." She gave a weak, almost apologetic shrug. "The rules in this family were always... flexible."

Denki simply nodded, taking in her unexpected blessing. It was a small, strange piece of good in a mountain of awful.

Barbara’s face then crumpled with a fresh wave of grief, but this time it was for herself. "I just... I wish I could make amends with my daughter. My other daughter." A single tear traced a path through her makeup. "And I curse myself for not training Payton properly. I made her vain and petty. I never gave her the strength Paige has. I never taught her how to survive a world like this." She finally stopped talking, the confession hanging in the sterile air, a mother’s regret laid bare.