079 - Red string: Mom, you can't keep exploiting me like that

Alex's Bentley glided with the silent smoothness not of a machine boasting of the prowess of man's technology, but of a fish in the water. It followed the path and swam to the front of the large hospital, before its calm momentum finished bleeding out, and it stopped, right before the Mercedes that just got there too.

In one smooth motion, Alex engaged the handbrake of the car, opened the door, and stepped down. As Mark stepped out from the Mercedes, leaving its driver seat, Alex threw his keys to him and opened the door for Grace.

He extended his hand with a smile to help her come down:

"Beautiful and elegant, as always, mom."

Grace accepted the help, and stepped down while chiding with amusement:

"You should keep your charm for girls your age. I'm old already."

But Alex reply with a head shake small but unequivocal:

"None of them can ever be as graceful as you, mom. For me, you will never be old."

"Oh, you!"

As Grace hid her mouth with her other hand and let out a soft, barely audible chuckle, Leyna arrived beside her son and her:

"Madam, I don't think the chairman is wrong."

Alex rolled his eyes at the uncalled for reminder, while Grace took it in stride. Maybe only she and the other woman present were pleased with Alex becoming interim chairman. She turned to her old black-haired assistant with a restrained but pleased smile in her calm green eyes:

"Leyna, don't let Alex corrupt you and turn you into a flatterer. Let's go."

Alex didn't need to hear that twice. He made his dissatisfaction obvious by ignoring Leyna and leading Grace inside the hospital. Leyna smiled. She didn't show any sign of becoming upset, instead, her smile carried a strong feeling of amusement as she waved at the only one left behind.

"See you soon, Mark."

"I will be waiting for you guys."

Leyna nodded at the answer, and went after the mother and son duo. She managed to catch up to them before they arrived at their destination, and silently followed behind them, making it two pairs of designer high heels and a pair of leather shoes that stepped inside the office of the doctor after a knock, and an answer that came from within.

The occupant of the place was just like a few days ago, her appearance a proof of care and meticulousness. Not only were her clothes without a single crease, there was no strand of hair out of place, not with the strict bun dominating her greying scalp.

Her eyes, steadied by the vicissitudes of time, by decades of life, by decades dealing with life and death, met lake-green calm eyes, gentle but rippleless, when she raised them to the door.

"Chairman Lenner, you have come. Please, take a seat."

Grace made her way to the chair the doctor pointed at, and waved her hand with a calm smile:

"I'm not the chairman anymore, Miranda, at least for now. I'm taking a long rest to take care of my health. Now you can call me by my name with no more restraint. After all, we go way back, don't we?"

Doctor Miranda Robin let out a friendly but restrained smile:

"Then I am happy to see that you are not feeling too stressed about the results of your tests, Grace. Looking at you, it would be easy to think that you already know about them."

Grace's eyes glinted with a faint, meaningful smile as she glanced at Alex who had taken the second seat before the doctor's desk

"Maybe I indeed know about them."

The old doctor found herself dumbfounded:

"Excuse me?"

"My son's face says it all, so I never worried."

Grace explained with amusement as Alex rolled his eyes and turned to look away. A few steps behind them, Leyna hid her mouth with her hand and let out a soundless chuckle, obviously understanding what her old superior was getting at. Only doctor Robin remained confused in the room, as she looked between the trio of her patient and her relatives.

Fortunately, the former took pity on her and shed light on the fog she had created herself. She calmly leaned back and explained:

"After you, if there is someone who got the results of my tests before everyone else, that would be my son. Apparently, the security of the system of the hospital still has some flaws. So if he is not worried, neither am I."

It took her a moment to process the information, and she was done, Dr Robin was stupefied. She looked from the mother to the son, then to the mother again, while checking Leyna's expression along the way for the truth in the words she just heard:

"You mean!?"

Grace nodded, calm, but a little too pleased with herself, proud even, although she pretended to be modest:

"Unfortunately so. Don't worry, I will have him come up with a solution to make the hospital's data more secure."

Alex could only stop playing the ostrich with the new hat dropping on him all of a sudden:

"Mom! I can't! You already got me doing a job I don't want to do. I don't have the time to fiddle with that bloated system."

But Grace didn't pay attention to his reluctance. She instead picked up the relevant information in his words and reassured Dr Robin:

"See, he already has some clues on what to work on."

Alex rolled his eyes in defeat, then decided to compromise, and make the best out of the situation:

"Mom, I can do it, but only if you free me from the responsibilities you have pushed onto me."

Grace looked at her son with a small, inscrutable smile:

"But I heard you were enjoying yourself quite a bit today."

Alex paused, then dramatically opened in eyes in a display of how flabbergasted he was:

"Who fed you such a lie, mom!? Leyna!?"

He glared to the back at the softly smiling beauty whose face gave away nothing.

"Then I need to have a word with her. You ladies can take your time with your talk."

With that, he stood up and made a fast exit while pulling the mischief-maker along, locking the office into silence that was broken only after a few seconds by the old doctor pointing her pen in the direction of the door:

"Is he the new chairman now?"

Grace retorted:

"Had he been here, I suppose he would have insisted on the word 'interim' that precedes his new title."

Miranda smiled:

"You look more relaxed than you have been in a long time."

Grace smiled, while Miranda looked at the closed door again, her eyes seeing instead a scene of the past as she remarked:

"To think that it has been twenty-five years already."

Grace paused, then got the meaning of those words.

"Indeed, twenty-five years already since you saved him and brought him into this world. He has grown into a fine young man, even if he remains a little too mischievous."

"He is young, and he is another proof that I have not spent my life and my career in vain. That's good."

A silent smile, that was Grace's answer.