The Billionaire I Married by Mistake

5. HOME

|Katherine|

“Where is he?” I asked the moment my feet hit the pavement, the taxi door clicking shut behind me. My voice came out sharp, laced with panic.

Noel was already at my side, reaching for the luggage I had been dragging behind me. He took it without a word, his movements brisk, as though the weight of the situation demanded speed.

“In the VIP room,” he said, his tone clipped and low as we started toward the building’s main entrance.

The hospital was alive with urgency. White coats swept past us in a blur—doctors with furrowed brows, nurses pushing carts or guiding patients down the corridor. I caught sight of someone slumped in a wheelchair, their eyes vacant. Another patient limped along, clutching an IV pole as if it were the last thing tethering them to the earth.

The sterile scent of antiseptic filled my lungs, grounding me in a reality I wasn’t ready to face. The clinical coldness of it all made my heart sink lower into my chest. I felt it there, the fear, coiled tightly and growing heavier with each step we took.

My thoughts raced ahead of me—Grandpa. Was he conscious? Was he in pain? Was I already too…late?

We moved in silence, the gravity between us thick enough to choke on. When we reached the elevator, Noel pressed the button. The doors opened with a mechanical chime, revealing a half-full car. We stepped inside, squeezing into the back.

The elevator lurched upward, but it was the silence that pressed hardest against my chest.

I finally found my voice, though it came out strained and trembling. “H-How is he?”

Noel exhaled deeply, the kind of breath someone takes before delivering news they wish they didn’t have to give. I turned to him, and when our eyes met, I knew I wasn’t ready for what came next.

“He had a heart attack,” he said quietly, almost as if the words were fragile. “A few hours after he spoke with you. The doctors said it was due to severe stress and exhaustion. We got him here just in time. If we’d been even a minute later…”

He trailed off.

He didn’t need to finish. I already knew what he couldn’t bring himself to say.

My heart slammed violently against my ribcage, each thud echoing with a sharp ache that spread through my chest. It wasn’t just anxiety—it was the kind of fear that made your breath shallow and your thoughts race. I silently begged the elevator to move faster, to skip every floor and just open up to the one where Grandpa had been admitted. I couldn’t take the waiting. Not another second.

“Though he’s already in stable condition now, Miss Kat, there’s really no need for you to worry too much,” Noel said, his voice gentle beside me. Or should I say he tried his best to sound like that.

But his words barely touched me. Were they meant to calm me down? Offer reassurance? I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that I needed more than words. I needed to see him. I had to lay eyes on my grandfather and prove to myself that he was okay—truly okay.

The elevator doors finally slid open with a soft ding, and I didn’t hesitate. I followed right behind Noel. We turned corner after corner, the hum of the hospital around us a distant blur, until at last—we stopped.

Room 904.

I saw him through the vertical glass of the door and I slowly pushed it open. And when I get to see him in a clear view, my entire world seemed to lurch sideways.

There he was, lying motionless on the bed, as if frozen in time. A tangle of IV tubes fed into his arms, and a monitor beeped rhythmically at his side—a cruel reminder that machines were keeping him steady. Stable, Noel had said. But what I saw was a man who looked nothing like the invincible figure I had always known.

“Grandpa…” I whispered, my voice cracking as I stepped closer. He didn’t move. His eyes remained closed, his chest rising and falling in slow, mechanical breaths.

Each step I took toward his bed brought the details of his face into clearer view—and with it, a sting behind my eyes. The tears came before I could stop them.

He looked so…fragile.

Thinner than I remembered. His skin had lost its color, his features more sunken. And his hands—the same ones that used to lift me high into the air when I was little—now lay limp and still at his sides.

It shattered something inside me.

I had never seen him like this before. Weak. Vulnerable. It was as if life had drained from the man who had once stood like a pillar in mine.

And in that moment, a flood of fear rushed over me, dragging a painful memory to the surface.

It felt too familiar.

Like the day I lost my parents.

Sudden. Cruel. Without warning.

And now... it felt like I could lose him, too.

In just the blink of an eye.

I lost my parents in a car crash when I was still just a kid—far too young to understand the full weight of what death really meant. The news hit me like a detonation the moment I stepped through the front door after school. I still remember the way the maids looked at me, their eyes brimming with sorrow, their words slow and hesitant. I didn’t believe them. How could I? My world didn’t make sense without my parents in it. Their absence was too sudden, too unreal.

But then I saw it on the news.

Their names flashed across the screen, followed by the wreckage of what used to be our car. And in that moment, my world cracked open. The truth didn’t just sink in—it collided with me like a wave crashing against brittle glass.

What shattered me completely—what truly cemented the horror in my young heart—was seeing them inside their coffins. Cold. Still. Gone. No amount of denial could protect me from that image. It carved itself into my memory, permanent and cruel.

I was just a child, but grief didn’t spare me because of my age. The pain was sharp, consuming. I couldn’t fathom a life without them. I had loved them with every bit of my spoiled, stubborn little heart. I was their only child—used to being doted on, always the center of their world—but they never made me feel anything less than truly, unconditionally loved. They never held back their affection. Never withheld their time.

I loved them so fiercely. And then they were gone.

To this day, I don’t even know how I survived that kind of heartbreak. I don’t remember much from that time, honestly. Everything was a blur. I do know that I stopped going to school. I shut down. I lost an entire year to the darkness that followed. It was my grandfather who finally reached through the fog and pulled me back. He made the decision I couldn’t: to leave Iloilo behind.

He enrolled me in a school in Manila, far away from everything that reminded me of what I’d lost. He said staying would only deepen the wound—that I needed space, a new environment where grief couldn’t cling to every hallway and street corner.

And so I left. I started over. I buried myself in a different life, in a different city. I never looked back.

Not until now.

This is my first time returning to Iloilo after all those years. I never had a reason to come back—Grandpa always came to visit me in Manila.

But.. how ironic life could be.

After years of being away, the first place I went wasn’t the house I grew up in, or the bedroom that still carried faint echoes of my younger years. No, I went straight to the hospital.

All because of my grandfather—Antonio Lopez—the man who became my guardian, looking nothing like the titan of business and proud person I had always known.

I stayed with him through the night. Never left his side. I ate inside his hospital room. Took hurried showers in the adjoining bathroom. Slept curled up on the couch across from his bed, with one eye always open, just in case he stirred.

Time blurred. I forgot about my friend and the wedding that I was supposed to attend. I didn’t dare checking on my phone for any other news. I was…anxious. If it hadn’t been for Noel, I wouldn’t have even known what day it was. Or how many hours had passed since I first sat down in that chair and refused to leave.

I just wanted to be there. To be the first face he saw when he opened his eyes again.

And honestly, I thought I had more time. I thought those quiet, painfully slow days of sitting and waiting would stretch out a little longer. That the worst had already passed.

But I was wrong.

It started with Noel’s expression—that tightness around his jaw, the hesitation in his steps as he approached. I should’ve known then that something was off. But I was too exhausted, too hopeful, to brace myself for what came next.

“What?” I snapped, my voice sharper than I intended. The sterile hospital air seemed to thicken around us.

We stepped outside. As much as I hated leaving Grandpa’s room, I knew I couldn’t risk raising my voice in there. Not while he was still unconscious.

He looked at me with a weight in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before—cold, quiet, and already prepared for the storm that was about to erupt from me.

“Your grandfather asked me not to tell you, Miss Kat,” Noel said, his tone calm but strained. “He wanted to be the one to explain when you’re finally home. But... the right time never came. And now, I can’t keep this from you any longer. The press is already circling like vultures. The board is growing impatient. I’ve run out of ways to cover up Mr. Lopez’s condition.”

I blinked, chest tightening.

But then he said the words that knocked the breath right out of me.

“And what I can no longer keep quiet about... is that someone has filed formal charges against your grandfather.”

For a second, the world just… stopped.

My heartbeat stalled. My lungs froze.

“W-What?” I choked out, disbelief flooding through me. “What the hell do you mean someone’s suing him?”

Noel’s gaze dropped. He exhaled slowly, like he had rehearsed this a hundred times in his head.

“A building,” he said quietly. “One of ours. A five-storey structure that was still under construction. It collapsed.”

My stomach lurched. “Collapsed?”

He nodded grimly. “It happened the same day your grandfather was rushed here... for his heart. I believe it was also the sole reason why he suddenly had a heart attack.”

Everything inside me sank.

And then came the guilt—sharp, nauseating, and unforgiving. Suddenly, I remembered all those times Grandpa had scolded me for my careless spending, him almost begging me to come home.

Damn it…

So, he wasn’t just scolding me for…nothing?