Chapter 7

Frey’s POV | Mount Hamilton Private Hospital

About half an hour later, we arrived at the hospital. It always smelled like endings, a mix of bleach, antiseptic, faint traces of something sterile and sad that clung to your clothes long after you left. I never liked them, but I had no choice.

I stood just outside the glass wall of the ICU, arms crossed, watching the slow rise and fall of my father’s chest beneath the pale blue sheet. Machines beeped rhythmically, as if mocking me with how easily a life like his could be reduced to blinking lights and quiet alarms.

“He’s stable now.” That’s what the nurse said. But that couldn’t possibly erase the image of him convulsing in my arms and gasping like the room was drowning him.

His face looked… smaller somehow. The harsh edge he always carried was still there, but dulled beneath the oxygen mask and the pale bruising at the corner of his mouth. I’d seen him furious. I’d seen him ruthless. But this was the first time I’d seen my father, Tyler