Masukđ€ Alexandra đ€ Jen arrived two hours and fifty-eight minutes after I called her, which I noted only because Jen was always early, never on time, and the fact that she walked through that door at the absolute edge of the window Iâd given her told me sheâd hit traffic, or hadnât slept at all, or both. She had a tablet in one hand and a coffee in the other, and she stopped just inside the doorway to look at the kids first, the way every decent person did before they looked at me, before they got to business. âTheyâre breathing on their own,â I said before she could ask. âThank God.â She exhaled, set the coffee down, and pulled a chair close. âOkay. Where do you want to start?â âEverything,â I said. âFrom five years ago to right now. I want names, dates, contracts, anyone brought in, anyone removed, every shift in personnel around this family that I wasnât paying attention to because I was busy pretending Iâd retired from all of it.â Jen didnât blink at the tone. She just opened the
đ€ Alexandra đ€I walked back into Room 14 and pulled the chair back into the small gap between both beds, the same chair Jacob had been sitting in earlier, still slightly warm from where heâd been, and I sat down and took one small hand in each of mine the way I had hours ago, like nothing had moved at all, even though everything had.Lovethâs fingers curled slightly around mine in her sleep.Deanâs chest rose and fell with the steady mechanical rhythm of the ventilator, that quiet hiss and click that I had stopped hearing as a sound and started hearing as a countdown, though I couldnât have told you toward what.I watched them both for a long time and let my mind, against my own permission, drift toward the version of tonight where things had gone differently. Where the call had come too late. Where there had been nothing left for anyone to do.I let myself feel the full weight of that for exactly one breath.Then I closed the door on it, the way I closed the door on everything I co
đ€ Jacob đ€That banter or maybe I should just call it what it actually was, a simple yet sweet conversation was something I genuinely had not been expecting tonight.Not after the slap.Not after Chairman Fisher told me to leave the room like I was a delivery boy who had overstayed his welcome.Not after everything else that had happened in the last several hours, which, when I actually stopped to count it all up, was an amount of chaos that most people donât experience in a full year, let alone one night.But there we were. Me with my terrible vending machine coffee. Her sitting across from me with that look on her face that said she was choosing, deliberately, to let the moment be light instead of heavy. And somehow it worked. Somehow for one entire minute the weight of everything else the children on ventilators, Stellaâs missing legs, the mystery caller, Amara typing at three thirty in the morning somehow all of that stepped back just far enough to let two people who used to know
đ€ Alexandra đ€I found Jacob exactly where I expected to find him. Not by Stellaâs room, not by the elevator pretending he was about to leave the hospital like a reasonable person who had just been dismissed by a wheelchair-bound mafia chairman, but in the small visitorâs lounge near the childrenâs ward, sitting in one of those terrible plastic chairs with a vending machine coffee in his hand that he was very clearly not drinking.He looked up when I walked in.âSo,â he said, âyour dad threatened me with his eyes for a full three minutes before he even started talking.ââThatâs restraint, actually,â I said, sitting down across from him. âNormally people get the eyes for thirty seconds before he moves on to actual words.ââI feel so honored.ââYou should.âHe looked down at the coffee in his hand like it had personally wronged him.âThis is the worst coffee I have ever had in my life,â he said. âAnd I once drank something a flight attendant handed me during turbulence that Iâm fairly
đ€ Alexandra đ€âAre you going to tell me whatâs going on?â I asked the moment the door shut behind Jacob.Papa didnât answer immediately.He sat there for a moment with his hands still folded in his lap, his eyes fixed on some point past my shoulder, and I recognized that look one he got right before he told you something that he himself was still angry about, the kind of anger that hadnât cooled down enough yet to be delivered calmly.Then he started talking.âThe girl said something about someone approaching her with a good offer,â he said, and his voice carried that specific edge that I had only heard a handful of times in my entire life, the one reserved for things that genuinely offended him on a personal level rather than just inconvenienced him. âAll she had to do was shake up our family. Thatâs how she put it. Shake up. As if she was describing a cocktail recipe and not five years of orchestrated destruction.âI felt my jaw tighten.âShe said she never intended to kill anyon
đ€ Jacob đ€If I am being honest, I really did not care whether Stella lived or died.I know how that sounds.I know exactly how that sounds coming from her own brother standing in a hospital corridor while she lay there with both legs gone and a fifty percent chance of never opening her eyes again, but five years does something to a personâs capacity for grief over someone who spent those same five years trying to destroy everyone I loved.What I cared about was the phone call.What I cared about was the fact that the voice on that call had threatened my children with a precision that suggested deep knowledge of this family, and the way it had referenced Stella made it sound less like Stella was the architect of all of this and more like Stella was a tool someone else had picked up and used.Which meant Stella might have answers.Answers I needed to keep my children safe.Answers that might lead me to the child I might have somewhere else entirely, a thought I had been carrying alone
đ€Alexandrađ€ âLove is crazy Lex, Victor was a total dickhead when we met and he was even worse than your Jacob, yet that dude didnât think twice before dying for me,â Jayden said quietly while looking at the fire. I stared at him immediately. âFirst of all, donât compare my husband to your emoti
đ€Jacobđ€ âShe went to her family estate first and vanished from there,â Stella continued casually like we werenât discussing the reason my mental stability was hanging by a thread right now. âAnd honestly thatâs the part I donât understand.â I stared at her carefully. Because somehow every sente
đ€ Alexandra đ€âPresident, Mr Grey is heading to the port now.â Timmyâs voice barely registered in my head as I continued staring at the surveillance screen in front of me.Cold water crashed violently against the docks while dozens of black vehicles moved around the warehouse area carefully. Men
đ€ Jacob đ€I was able to sneak into bed later at night and pulled her into my arm, tomorrow I will continue digging into this thing about Stella and all but right now I need my wife for a good night sleep.Honestly?That sentence alone proved how deeply gone I already was for Alexandra Fisher Hale


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