Page 35 of Old Money, Deadly Secrets

The silence that followed was broken by the soft click of the waiting room door opening. A man in scrubs stepped inside, his expression professional but serious. He scanned the room, then approached the group with measured steps.

“I’m Dr. Hall,” he began, his voice calm but firm. “Dr. Berkshire made it through surgery. We were able to control the bleeding and clean the infection as best we could.”

Margaret’s chest tightened, holding her breath.

“However,” Dr. Hall continued, choosing his words carefully, “because of the rusted and jagged nature of the bear trap that bit so deep into the bone and the extent of the damage, there was significant tissue loss. We had to perform an amputation. We couldn’t save his foot.”

Dog had warned them in the meadow, a grim prediction masked behind his usual calm. Now, the words hit the room like silent thunder as that fear became reality. Margaret’s hand clenched tighter around Jake’s, the weight of the news settling heavy in her chest.

“He’s currently sedated and on high doses of antibiotics to fight infection,” Dr. Hall added. “It will be critical to monitor him closely over the next few days.”

Margaret nodded slowly, tears threatening but held at bay. Warden and the others exchanged grim looks, but there was a shared resolve in the room.

Dr. Hall gave a slight nod. “We’ll do everything we can to support his recovery. Once we get him settled into his room, a nurse will come to escort you. Due to protocol, only two visitors are allowed at a time.”

The room fell heavy for a moment after Dr. Hall’s news. Then Jake was the first to speak. He tapped his own prosthetic leg lightly, a small, wry smile tugging at his lips.“Medical advances these days have these things working nearly as good as the real deal. Dog’s strong. He’ll adapt. He’s not out of the fight.”

Margaret glanced up, drawn by the quiet confidence in Jake’s tone. It was the first glimmer of hope she’d felt since the news.

Warden nodded slowly. “We’ll get him what he needs. He’s surrounded by people who won’t let him fall.”

The door closed softly behind Dr. Hall, leaving an almost suffocating silence in his wake. Each of them sat frozen in that heavy quiet, wrestling with the gravity of the news in their own way. The sterile hum of hospital machinery filled the room, a stark reminder that life went on outside this bubble of raw uncertainty.

Margaret stared down at her still-trembling hands and let her thoughts drift. Charles was gone. The man who had controlled so much of her past and dictated the terms of her life for far too long was gone. For the first time in years, a surge of something unfamiliar swept through her: freedom.

Freedom to live her life on her own terms. Freedom to rebuild, not just survive.

Her mind snapped to Dog, lying somewhere beyond these walls, fighting his own battle. The unfinished Blue Ridge Rehabilitation and Recovery Center in Monterey, the dream he had poured all his hope into, had to be completed. For him, for the others who would come after.

23 - DOG

The first thing that hit him wasn’t the pain; it was the smell. Antiseptic, floor wax, and the stale, recycled air of a high-tier surgical ward. It was a smell he knew intimately as a medic, but one he loathed as a patient.

Barkley “Dog” Berkshire the Fourth opened his eyes, and the world was a blur of fluorescent white. His head felt like it had been stuffed with wet wool: anesthesia, the heavy-duty kind. He tried to shift, to sit up, and that’s when the reality of the situation crashed into him like a physical blow.

He tried to flex his right foot to steady himself. The signal left his brain, sparking a phantom twitch in muscles he’d trained for decades. Yet there was no resistance, no pressure, only a sickening, hollow silence at the end of his leg.

Dog let out a low, guttural growl and threw the thin hospital sheet back with his good hand.

The sight was worse than the sensation. A heavy, white cocoon of bandages ended abruptly where his ankle should have been. The “quiet fixer” was broken. The medic who patched everyone else up had been dismantled by a piece of rusted iron in a Maine meadow.

Stupid. Reckless. Amateur.

The words looped in his brain, hissed in the voice of every instructor he’d ever had at BUD/S. He was a SEAL. He was a combat medic with a PhD. He had navigated minefields in the Syrian desert and dodged snipers in the dark of night. And yet, he’d been taken down by a derelict bear trap because he’d been looking at the way the sunlight caught the copper in a woman’s hair.

He squeezed his eyes shut, his hands clenching into white-knuckled fists against the bedrails. He hadn’t been a protector; he’d been a fool. He had been so captivated by Margaret’s resilience, so distracted by the Emery she was unearthing beneath his calloused exterior, that he’d forgotten the first rule of the Brotherhood: Eyes on the X.

He had let his guard down for a picnic. He had traded his situational awareness for the sound of her voice. Now, instead of being the shield she needed to hide behind while Charles Winslow’s world burned, he was a liability. He was a one-legged man with a million-dollar bounty on his head, stuck in a bed while his team had to pull double shifts to keep them both alive.

The heavy door to the room creaked open.

“Emery?”

The voice was soft, hesitant, and filled with a tenderness that made his skin crawl with shame. He didn’t want tenderness. He wanted a court-martial.

He didn’t turn his head. He kept his gaze fixed on the blank wall. “What are you doing here, Margaret?”

His voice sounded foreign to his own ears: harsh, cold, and dripping with the clipped, aristocratic disdain he usually reserved for his brother’s business rivals.