CHAPTER 417: HOSPITAL PT 2

My father, the indomitable force, was being eaten alive from the inside out.

And he had hidden it. From everyone. From me.

"How long?" The question was a razor blade in my throat.

"I can’t be certain without his records. But judging by the progression... six months. Perhaps longer."

Six months.

He had known for half a year that he was dying. He had carried this secret like a final, ruthless piece of strategy.

"Where is he now?"

"We’re moving him to the ICU. You can see him shortly, once he’s settled."

I nodded, the motion feeling like it belonged to someone else.

The surgeon left, and I stood alone in the gleaming hallway, the words echoing, a hellish mantra. Brain cancer. Stage four. Terminal.

Sometimes I wish... if I could start differently, I would have cherished you more.

His words from a few hours ago, words I had shrugged off, now slammed into me with the force of a physical impact, breaking me open from the inside. He had known. He had known he was dying. That’s why he came.

Why his voice had cracked with an emotion I couldn’t place. Why there had been that uncharacteristic sheen in his eyes... guilt, sorrow, a devastating, final resignation.

He had been trying to say something.

And I had turned my back on him.

I turned sharply, my body vibrating with a need for motion, for answers, for something to hit before I completely shattered.

Lincoln, my father’s eternally composed assistant, stood down the hall, speaking in low tones with a hospital administrator. The man, who never aged, never faltered, looked decades older. He saw me, and his shoulders sagged as if under a new weight.

"Lincoln," I said, my voice low and deadly.

He turned, his face a careful blank. "Mr. Roman—"

"Why the fuck am I just now finding out my father is dying of cancer?"

He flinched as if struck. "Sir, I—"

"Six months!" I closed the distance between us, every step a threat. "He’s been rotting from the inside for half a year, and you didn’t think I had a right to know?"

"Your father gave explicit, unwavering instructions," Lincoln pleaded, his composure fracturing. "He didn’t want you to know. He said... he said if you knew, you’d look at him with pity. And he would rather die than see that in your eyes."

The old bastard. Even at the end, even in this, he had to control the narrative. He had to deny me even the chance to... to what? To forgive him? To understand? The sheer, selfish, monumental pride of it shattered something deep in my chest with a soundless, final crack.

"Where are they taking him to?" I asked, my voice a low, wounded thing.

"ICU. Third floor. Private wing."

I walked away, leaving him there, because if I stayed, I would have torn the entire building down with my bare hands.

The ICU private wing was a sanctuary of silence, a sterile, reverent space where death was held at bay by a fortune’s worth of machinery.

And then I saw them. The vultures, gathered at the door.

Andrew stood outside my father’s room, Sabrina beside him, her tears a flawless, performance-art of grief. And Sarah. She lingered a step behind them, looking bored and out of place, her hands wringing together as if she wanted to erase her own skin.

"What the fuck are you all doing here?" The words came out flat, devoid of all heat, which made them all the more dangerous.

Andrew turned, that smug, reptilian smile twisting his features. "Aw, come on, Kael. Ewan is my father, too," he said, his tone slick and false. "And my mother’s beloved husband. We have every right to be here."

He gestured toward Sarah with a theatrical flourish. "And Sarah here is practically family already. Our future sister-in-law."

Sarah’s eyes darted to me, filled with a silent, desperate message that said she didn’t want to be here either.

"I don’t give a single fuck about your delusions," I said, my voice dropping to a whisper that carried like a gunshot in the hushed hallway. "Get. Out. Now."

Andrew’s smirk faltered, but his feet remained planted.

"Isn’t it a little late for you to suddenly play the devoted son?" he sneered, his composure cracking to reveal the venom beneath. "Where was all this concern when you spent years despising him? When you built your entire life as a monument to how little you cared about this family?"

I knew it was bait. And God, I wanted to swallow it whole. I wanted the release of violence.

Two steps. That was all it took. I was in his space, close enough to see the pores on his nose, close enough for him to see the bottomless, black fury that lived in my soul.

"Leave," I repeated, each syllable a promise of pain. "Or I will rearrange your face until your own mother needs a dental record to identify you."

Real fear, sharp and primal, flashed in his eyes.

Sabrina grabbed his arm, her nails digging in. "Andrew, we’re leaving," she said, her voice sharp with a warning that wasn’t for me. "Now."

"But—"

"Now!"

She physically pulled him away, a scolded dog. Sarah followed without a backward glance, a ghost in their wake.

I watched until they disappeared around the corner, my entire body thrumming with adrenaline and grief. Then, and only then, did I turn and step into the room.

The silence inside was a living entity. It was broken only by the steady, rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor and the soft, mechanical hiss of the ventilator... a machine breathing for the man who had once breathed fire.

My father lay in the bed, a small, broken figure swallowed by a tangle of wires and tubes. The formidable presence, the towering figure of my childhood terror and resentment, was gone. In its place was a fragile, broken old man. The lights of the machines reflected in his still, waxy skin.

I sat down in the chair beside him, my elbows on my knees, and dropped my face into my hands. I didn’t pray. I didn’t speak. I just... existed in the crushing weight of it all.

The accident. The cancer. His secret. His goodbye.

If I could start differently, I would have cherished you more.

The memory of his voice, stripped bare of all its power, broke me. A single, hot tear escaped, tracing a path down my cheek before I brutally wiped it away. Then another. I sat there, in the silent, sterile room, and let the tears fall for the father I had, for the father I wished I’d had, and for the devastating, final truth that it was far, far too late for either.

The air became too thick to breathe, too heavy with regret and the scent of death. I had to move or suffocate.

I stood, my legs unsteady, and walked out into the hallway, a man fleeing his own heart.

I stopped.

Because there, at the far end of the corridor, walking toward me as if summoned from my deepest need, was Aria.

She froze. So did I.

The world, with all its chaos and pain, simply fell away. The humming lights, the distant pages, the oppressive silence... it all faded into a dull, distant hum.

There was only her.

She looked thinner, paler, as if the light inside her had been dimmed. She looked like she had been fighting her own wars and losing. But it was her. God, after everything, it was her.

We just stared, across a distance that felt like an ocean and a single breath all at once. The hallway stretched between us, a chasm filled with every unspoken word, every hurt, every desperate, silent wish.

The world narrowed to this single, suspended moment. Just us. Standing in the aftermath of everything, in a hospital hallway that smelled of endings, with our entire broken world lying in pieces around our feet.

And I, who always had a plan, who always had words, didn’t know what to say. I just stood there, utterly shattered, and looked at her.