THE SECRETLY RICH HEIR

Lawton looked panicked as he searched for the person who had called him that.

“Young Master, it is really you!” A pale skinned, bald man in a very stately suit approached

Lawton, spreading his arms as if to engulf Lawton in a hug.

Lawton dodged him. “Sorry, sir, you've got the wrong man.”

It was Mr Smithson, who ran the whole affairs of Lawton's real family back home. He wasn't mistaken of course, but he was from a life and a time that Lawton wanted nothing to do with.

“I would recognize you anywhere. Young Master! Don't deny me.” Mr Smithson looked pleadingly at Lawton.

Lawton sighed miserably. If he kept denying it, Mr Smithson would keep insisting and eventually reveal his secret. He went closer to Mr Smithson.

The man's face pulled into a wide grin. “I knew it was you!”

Lawton sighed impatiently. “Don't call me Young Master in public, Mr Smithson. I am no longer that.”

The man's face went serious immediately. Mr Smithson always knew when it was time to get all serious and stony faced. “That is what you. The Young Master of the Eden Corporation. You cannot deny it. It is Masters and Madam's blood that courses through your veins.”

“Alright, enough,” Lawton grimaced, using a tone that was closer to how he had once before been used to speaking in his life.

“What are you doing here, Mr Smithson?”

Smithson looked guilty for a minute before his face straightened out. “Trailing you, Young Master.”

The drinks Lawton had gotten from the vending machine were still in his hands and they were dripping water from the melting ice on them all over the floor.

Mr Smithson gasped and motioned behind him. A young man approached Lawton, bowed and then took the drinks from him, holding them in his hands.

Smithson fished out a pristine white handkerchief from his pockets and took one of Lawton's hands, wiping it gently and reverently of the water, and then he took his other hand as well.

“Why are you following me Smithson? And with bodyguards too.” Lawton could see the two men standing behind Smithson, dressed in black suits, looking exceptionally dangerous.

He knew that there were probably more in a car outside the hospital from how they always followed him before.

“Because we have been sent to find you, young master, and bring you home.”

“Smithson, follow me.”

Lawton led Smithson down the hospital hallways with the white walls towards the lobby. There, he picked a seat in the back and sat down while Smithson sat beside him.

“Father had disowned me, Smithson. I am never going back there,” Lawton still remembered that day vividly. His father was a hard man, and had even stricter rules and principles. When he had ordered Lawton to drop his major and move back home, Lawton had been insistent on going his own way and his father had overreacted.

“Master Eli, Your father regretted sending you away every day since you've been gone, but you must understand that it was because he thought it necessary for you to grow on your own. He

has since wanted you to return home, but his pride wouldn't let him say it himself.”

Lawton regarded Smithson, he had a sort of look on his face that seemed like desperation on his face, mixed with his natural calm. “So what changed then? Why does father want me back now?”

They were conversing in low tones. Lawton's identity as the son of the unparalleled Eden Corporation had always been kept a secret so as to protect him and ensure his safety when he had been growing up.

No one knew him. No member of the public had ever seen his face as his true self, and when he would have started appearing at public events and work engagements with his father, they had the explosive argument that led his father to disown him.

Smithson considered Lawton's question, a deep frown now marring his face. “Your father is dying, Young Master.”

The shock rippled through Lawton. His father had never been the dying type. He was enigmatic, a storm wherever he was that others had to weather, alive and well. And he was dying?

Smithson nodded again, sadness heavy in his face.

“Come to Eden's headquarters tomorrow. We have a lot to discuss and this place is not so

private, my young Sir.”

Smithson stood and before he left dropped a hand on Lawton's sort of lanky shoulders.

“You must come home now, young master.”

~

When Lawton returned to his mother's ward, it was to find his wife worriedly waiting outside the room his mother had been moved to.

Lawton went to her and handed her one of the drinks. They were now cool and Amanda didn't seem interested in it.

“Your mother was just attended to by the doctors. They will be coming back out soon.”

Lawton nodded, bracing himself. He should have known his mother would be too frail to be receiving any shocking news or witness a troubling event. He had to be more careful around her now.

Lawton sighed and opened up his drink, taking a grateful sip. He was thirsty and needed something to cool down. His stomach rolled as it rejected everything this period.

A doctor dressed up in a white coat over a snow white dress shirt and pressed black trousers came out of his mother's room. He approached Lawton.

He waited for a moment and then asked, “Are you the patient's children?”

Amanda gestured to her husband. “Yes, he's her son, I'm her daughter in law.”

The man turned to Amanda and smiled, a pearly white stupid smile right in front of her husband, and then turned unapproving and unkind eyes to Lawton. He sized Lawton up with rapid up and down calculative glances and he must have come up lacking.

He shook his head and started talking. “Your mother fell into a state of deep shock. I am sure something must have happened to keep her that way.” he looked questioningly at Lawton, and a little with condemnation too, as if he could have done better.

Lawton grimaced. He really could have done better. “Yes, she witnessed a shocking development she wasn't supposed to.”

The doctor nodded like an all knowing presiding God. “That is something you should have

protected her against. She is a fragile woman with a weak heart, and any shock would likely do her more bad than good.”

The doctor eyed the drink in Lawton's hand. “Are you drinking comfortably before even knowing how critical your mother's condition is?” He criticized.

Lawton almost dropped the can of soda, but didn't. That would constitute littering the hospital and he didn't think that would please the doctor. “No, doctor. I was just so thirsty that I took a sip.”

“You are not like other sons who come here with their sick mothers, Lawton,” the doctor sneered. “I hope you're prepared for the hospital bills. Treatment cannot continue unless we receive payment for the treatment already done and pay for her bed here too, or we move her to the public ward. Your wife insisted we give her one of the small rooms for now.”

Lawton nodded. Even though his heart was busy shrinking. They didn't have any money at the moment for the hospital bills.

“If you don't pay her bills, you will be thrown out,” the doctor said, looking down his nose as he said it.