CHAPTER 257: SHARP ENOUGH TO FEEL THE WEIGHT OF LOSS

"Isabella’s injuries were extensive," she said slowly. "But she’s stable now. We stopped the internal bleeding."

A pause.

I leaned forward, barely breathing.

"But..." Kassel’s breath caught. "She lost the baby."

It was as if someone had struck me across the face. The room went muffled and distant, like a voice heard underwater.

My ears began to ring. A low, vibrating hum that swallowed the doctor’s voice, the shuffle of shoes, the distant beeping of a monitor. Everything muted, like the world had been sealed behind glass. The antiseptic stench thickened in my throat, suffocating.

"Baby?" My voice came out raw. Too quiet.

It didn’t make sense. She must have known right? Why didn’t she tell me? Had she not known? A cold dread seeped into my bones, colder than the blood still seeping from my arm. My vision blurred, not from tears, but from the sudden, unbearable weight of what I’d just heard.

"She... she was pregnant?" I whispered, the question barely audible.

Dr. Kassel nodded, her expression one of deep sympathy mixed with professional weariness. "Yes, Mr. Walton. She was two months pregnant when I checked her labs. She was brave throughout. She kept asking about your mother in the ambulance. And she... she was trying to protect the baby, from what I can gather. I believe that’s what likely saved her from more severe internal damage."

Our baby. A life that had barely begun, extinguished before its time. The anger that had been a roaring inferno moments before now twisted into a cold, consuming grief. The leak, the ambush, the accident – they weren’t just attacks on me, on my company, on Isabella’s reputation. They were attacks on our future, on the very existence of my family.

My knees almost buckled. I caught myself against the wall — cold tile biting into my palm through the bandage — grounding me, keeping me from collapsing under the weight pressing against my chest.

"How?" I demanded, though the answer didn’t matter. "How the fuck did that happen if she was trying to protect the baby?"

"The trauma. The shock. Combined with the physical stress—she was already under severe strain from the attack, and then the impact, the pressure on her body... it was too much."

Too much.

Too much because someone had dared touch what was mine. Again.

I turned away from her before I did something I’d regret. My vision swam briefly, pain spiking through my shoulder where the stitches pulled. Cameron said something behind me, Gray muttered about something else, but I barely heard them. All I saw was red.

"Where is she?"

"She’s in the ICU. Visitor restrictions are still in place, but you..." Dr. Kassel paused, looking at my bloodied clothes and the IV still taped to my hand. "You need medical attention yourself, Adrien."

I braced a hand against the cold wall, grounding myself. "Move her to a private wing," I said. My voice didn’t sound like mine—it was too low, too cold. "I want security doubled. No one comes near her without my clearance."

"Yes, sir."

Kassel hesitated again, her face softening. "Adrien... I’m sorry."

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. My mother was barely alive. My child was gone. And Isabella—my Isabella—was somewhere behind those sterile walls, fighting for the life that should never have been in danger to begin with.

I felt something twist deep in my chest, something ugly and merciless.

Whoever did this... whoever caused this—

they weren’t going to die quickly.

*****

"Find out who leaked that article," I ground out, voice low and raw. "I want names. Where they live. Where their families are. Every single cent they’ve ever earned. Trace their IPs, their payment rails, their PR firms — everything."

Gray nodded instantly, pulling out his phone. "Already on it, Boss."

"No," I corrected, straightening, despite the agonizing pull in my chest. "I want more than that. The ambush, the timing, the targeting of us and my women... No typical rival could pull this off. This wasn’t just a simple hit. It was planned. It was executed by professionals, and it was timed simultaneously with a public decapitation attempt."

I looked at Cameron, whose eyes were narrowed with deadly focus.

"The board is waiting to tear me apart," I stated, a dark, terrible calm settling over me. "The media is calling my wife a whore. My mother is dying, and my wife has lost our child. They think I’m weak and distracted."

A cold, humorless smile stretched across my face.

"They are about to find out they were terribly, terrifyingly wrong."

I grabbed the door handle and slammed the door open, the sound echoing down the deserted hallway.

"Hold the board meeting, Cam," I ordered, not looking back. "Tell them I’ll be there. Tell them I will answer for every accusation. But first, I’m going to clean up their mess."

I stepped into the silence of the private room. my footsteps muted by the linoleum floor. The machines hummed, charting the unsteady rhythm of life.

I found her.

She was small against the smart bed, pale in the harsh light. Wires spiderwebbed across her chest and arms, monitoring a heart that beat too slow. A thick gauze covered her lower abdomen, a brutal landscape of stitched wounds hidden beneath. Her lashes lay like dark caps on a face that belonged in sunlight, not here.

She didn’t look strong. She looked frail, broken, yet achingly beautiful even in this state.

I approached the bed, my hand shaking violently as I reached out to touch her face. Her skin was cool beneath my fingertips. She was so still.

The rage that had propelled me here evaporated, replaced by a hollow, terrifying grief. I don’t know what to... feel. My mind, usually a fortress of calculated moves and cold logic, was a wasteland. There was nothing there. No strategy, no anger, just a vast, echoing emptiness. The loss was a phantom limb; an ache for something I never knew I possessed.

My knees finally gave way. Not with a crash, but a slow, controlled descent until they met the sterile linoleum. I rested my forehead against the cool metal of the bed rail, the scent of antiseptic and Isabella’s faint, familiar perfume filling my senses. It was a scent of home, of life, now tangled with the smell of near-death.

I wasn’t a man who cried. Tears were a currency of weakness I couldn’t afford to spend. But a single, hot tear escaped, tracing a path through the grime and dried blood on my cheek. It felt alien. A betrayal. I didn’t wipe it away. I let it fall onto my bandaged hand, a dark spot spreading on the white gauze.

A memory, sharp and unwelcome, pierced the fog. Just a few weeks ago, she’d been pale and quiet, sweaty, almost fainted when we were at the office. I’d attributed it to stress, I’d offered her to take her to the clinic, made aria go to her since she declined to go to the hospital.

She knew.

The thought was a physical blow. She must have known. And she hadn’t told me. Why? Was she afraid? Afraid for the child? Or was she waiting for the right moment to tell me? Or perhaps... she didn’t know if she wants to keep the child.

The hollowness in my chest began to fill, not with rage, but with a dense, heavy guilt. It was a poison, seeping into the spaces where my heart used to be.

I lifted my head, my gaze falling on the gentle rise and fall of her chest, a fragile rhythm dictated by the humming machine beside her. This wasn’t her fault. This wasn’t my fault. This was the work of an enemy who saw family not as a sanctuary, but as a pressure point. A vulnerability to be exploited.

They had found my one true weakness. Not my company, not my wealth, but her.

Slowly, I rose to my feet. The pain in my body was a dull, distant throb, nothing compared to the agony coiling in my gut. I reached out and gently brushed a strand of dark hair from her pale forehead. Her skin was still cool, but my touch seemed less hesitant now, more certain.

The grief wasn’t gone. It had simply changed shape. It had solidified, crystallizing from a debilitating fog into something hard and sharp. A weapon.

"I’m sorry, cara mia," I whispered, my voice thick. "I’m so sorry."

I leaned down and pressed my lips to her temple, a silent vow passing between us. They thought they had broken me by taking my future. They didn’t understand. They had just given me a reason to burn their past, present, and future to the ground. There would be no quick deaths. There would be no mercy. There would only be methodical, soul-crushing ruin.

I would give them a world of grief. An empire of it.