"I did what I had to," I shoot back. "Don't romanticize it."
He turns abruptly, reaching into his jacket, and flings a thick folder at me.
Paper scatter across the floor.
I flinch out of instinct. The reports scatter around my feet with my name printed everywhere. Dates, numbers.
I bend and snatch one up, my hands shaking.
"You went digging through my life," I say. My voice cracking now, and I don't care. "Through my health status. Through things I haven't even told my brothers."
"You looked sick," he says. "You still do."
He continues. "You think I didn't notice?" he continues. "The dizziness. The way you stop walking like the ground moved under you. The weight loss you hide under clothes. The way you barely eat then stay up all night vomiting your guts out"
I look away.
"Then you waking up one day and deciding to go to the hospital," he says. "That was enough for me to go digging."
I laugh again, but this time it hurts. "You stalked me."
"I protected my investment."
