Chapter 5

Too Late

"Get him away from this room." My father is on his feet before the nurse finishes speaking, his voice dropping into something low and dangerous that I've only heard him use once before, the day a rival tried to poach half our board.

"Sir, I need you to step outside so we can—"

"I heard you the first time." My father doesn't move. His eyes stay locked on the door, on the shape of Noah frozen in the hallway like he isn't sure whether he's allowed to come any closer.

The machine beside me beeps again, sharper this time, and the nurse's hands move fast, adjusting something at my IV line while another nurse rushes in behind her with a second cart.

"Amara, I need you to breathe slowly for me." The nurse's voice has gone clipped and focused. "Your blood pressure is spiking. Is there anything upsetting you right now, anything we can remove from the room?"

My father's jaw tightens. He doesn't wait for me to answer. He crosses to the door in two strides and steps into the hallway, and though he pulls it mostly shut behind him, it doesn't latch all the way, and I can hear every word through the gap.

"You don't get to be here." My father's voice is quiet, which somehow makes it worse than if he'd shouted.

"I have every right." Noah's voice, tired, clipped, familiar in a way that makes my chest ache even now. "She's still my wife."

"She hasn't been your wife since you handed her a pen in front of three hundred people and told her to sign her own humiliation." My father's tone doesn't rise, but I can hear the fury coiled underneath it, banked and controlled like a fire he's choosing not to let loose yet. "Where were you last night, Noah? Where were you this morning when the hospital called?"

Silence stretches long enough that I hold my breath waiting for an answer.

"I was in a board meeting." Noah's voice is flat. "I came the moment it ended."

"Your wife lost your child." My father's voice finally cracks, just slightly, on the last word. "She lost that baby alone, in an ambulance, with nothing but her lawyer holding her hand because her husband couldn't be bothered to step out of a room for ten minutes. And now you want to stand here and tell me you had every right to walk through that door?"

I press my free hand over my mouth, tears slipping silently down my face, my heart hammering hard enough that the monitor beside me lets out another warning beep.

"Mrs. Frost, please, I need you calm." The nurse's hand is gentle on my shoulder, but her eyes flick toward the door, clearly aware of what's happening on the other side of it.

"It's Montgomery." The words come out thick through my tears, but firm. "My name is Montgomery."

The nurse pauses, then nods, adjusting something on her tablet without another word.

Outside, Noah's voice has dropped lower, and I have to strain to catch it. "I need to see her."

"No." My father doesn't hesitate. "You've seen her enough for one lifetime. You saw her every single day for four years and treated her like she was invisible. You don't get to walk in here now, after everything, and pretend this is concern."

"It's not pretend." For the first time, something cracks in Noah's voice, something raw and unfamiliar that stops me cold even through my own tears. "I didn't know it would, I didn't think, I never thought she'd actually—"

"Actually what?" My father cuts him off, sharp. "Actually stop waiting for you? Actually stop hoping you'd notice her? You didn't think she'd stop being the woman who forgave you for everything, is that it?"

Noah doesn't answer.

"Let me tell you what's about to happen," my father continues, and there's a shift in his tone now, something colder and more deliberate, the voice I imagine he uses in boardrooms right before he ends someone's career. "My daughter is going to heal. She's going to go home, to my home, and she is going to rebuild every single piece of herself that you and that woman you paraded through her home managed to break. And you are going to stay away from her while she does it."

"And Lila?" Noah's voice sharpens instantly, the first real emotion I've heard from him in longer than I can remember. "You think you can keep my daughter from me too?"

The word lands strange in my chest, tangled between grief and something sharper, something almost like vindication. Because he never once called her his daughter to her face. Not when she cried for him every night. Not when she blew out candles waiting for a father who never came home.

"Lila is your daughter," my father says, "when it's convenient for you to claim her. The moment it isn't, you forget she exists. Amara will decide, when she is ready, what role you're allowed to play in that little girl's life. Right now, the only thing you need to focus on is walking away from this hospital and letting your wife, your ex wife, grieve in peace."

There's a long pause. I hear footsteps, uneven, like Noah is fighting the urge to push past him.

"Tell her," Noah finally says, his voice quieter than I've ever heard it, "tell her I'm sorry."

"Tell her yourself," my father says. "If you ever manage to grow enough of a spine to mean it."

Footsteps retreat down the hallway, slow at first, then faster, until the sound fades entirely. My father stands there a long moment before finally pushing the door open again, his expression smoothing back into something gentler the instant his eyes find mine.

"He's gone." He crosses back to my side, taking my hand again like he never left it. "You don't have to see him. Not today, not until you're ready."

I nod, unable to speak past the lump in my throat, and the nurse quietly confirms my vitals are settling, the machine's beeping slowing back into its steady, unremarkable rhythm.

"Get some rest," my father murmurs, pressing a kiss to my forehead the way he used to when I was small enough to believe he could fix anything. "Tomorrow we start putting you back together."

I close my eyes, exhaustion finally dragging me under, and just as sleep pulls me toward the dark, my phone buzzes once on the bedside table.

A message, from a number I haven't seen in weeks.

Julian:Found something on Isabella. You need to see this the moment you wake up. It changes everything.