His eyes opened instantly.
“What are you doing?” he snapped.
You did not jump.
“Checking whether you are acting or dying.”
His face went still.
That was not the answer he expected.
You stood and walked to the small service phone by the wall.
“Mrs. Herrera,” you said, when she answered, “please send medical assistance to the library and bring water. Mr. Cárdenas is having chest discomfort or a panic episode. Possibly both.”
Rodrigo sat up too fast. “Hang up.”
“No.”
His eyes flashed. “I said hang up.”
“And I said no.”
The silence after that was electric.
No one in that house spoke to him like that. You understood it immediately. But you had cleaned blood from your grandmother’s pillow after a coughing fit. You had held her upright through nights when pride almost killed her because she refused to call a doctor.
You were not letting a billionaire die on a sofa because his ego disliked witnesses.
Mrs. Herrera rushed in first.
Then a private doctor.
Rodrigo tried to dismiss them all, but his body betrayed him. His pulse was racing. His blood pressure was high. His chest pain was stress-induced, not a heart attack, but serious enough for the doctor to order rest, food, hydration, and an adjustment to his medication.
