Mag-log inDanny's POV "Jeez, you aren't alone you have me, okay," Chadwick said.I felt my eyes go wide and I actually stopped breathing for a second. Did Chadwick just say jeez? I stared at him in total awe, like he had suddenly grown a second head. He wasn't even wearing a suit like usual. He was just standing there in a white singlet and grey pants. It was weird. His shoulders looked even broader without the blazer, and his arms were covered in these faint scars and veins. He was beginning to look different, and now he sounded different too."Uhmm, you know you are like forty something years old right," I said, my voice still a bit shaky. "Isn't jeez a gen z word?"Chadwick didn't snap at me. He just smiled, this awkward, lopsided thing that didn't look like it belonged on a man who owned half of Paris. He took the pen he was holding and tucked it behind his ear."Well I would be a gen z for you Danny," he said.My brain stalled. What’s that line? Is Chadwick actually trying to be sweet? I
Danny's POV "Apparently, Noah has a step brother and they are battling with inheritance," Chad said.I looked at the tulips. Pink. Pretty. Useless. "It doesn't matter," I whispered. "Noah is still dead."The words felt like lead in my mouth. It didn't matter if it was a step brother or a secret society or that damn Leo. Noah wasn't coming back to tell me how much he wanted me. The politics of it felt like a slap in the face. A life for some inheritance? It was sick.Getting discharged was a blur of paperwork and the smell of the hospital elevator one last time. I thought we were going back to the hotel, back to the mess of suitcases and half packed lives. But as the black SUV pulled away from the clinic, we didn't head toward the center of the city.We drove until the buildings got shorter and the gates got higher.We pulled up to this penthouse that looked more like a fortress. It was draped in what looked like a wall of guards men in black everywhere, ears covered by those curly wi
Danny's POV The phone screen was smudged, making Erica’s face look like a blurry mosaic. I held it with one hand, my arm shaking from just the weight of the thing. God, I was so weak."I just miss you so much," Erica was saying, her voice tinny through the speaker. "You have to get better, Danny. And listen to me, remember none of this is your fault okay."I just nodded. I didn't have the energy to argue. I was a good actor, or maybe I was just too tired to be anything else, so I pretended to actually obey her. Inside, it was a different story. Every time I closed my eyes, I heard the crunch of the metal. I felt the water."Have you heard from my mum?" I asked, my voice cracking. I picked at a loose thread on the hospital blanket. "Like uhmm maybe anything? Have you stopped by our house?"Erica’s eyes shifted. She wasn't looking at the camera. "No, actually I haven't." She sighed, leaning back. "I have been in touch with your step Dad and he told me, your mum... kinda found out about
Chadwick's POV It’s been a week. Seven days of this plastic chair, the smell of bleach, and the sound of Danny’s breathing. Or rather, the lack of it. He doesn’t talk. He doesn’t even look at me. He just stares at the wall like there’s some kind of secret code written in the peeling paint.I sat on the edge of the bed, holding the tray. The porridge was lukewarm and smelled like cardboard. I hated it. I hated everything about this room."Danny, you haven't even said a word in two days now," I said. My voice sounded like it had been dragged through gravel. I hadn't slept either, not really. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Noah’s mother howling on the floor.Danny didn't blink. He just sat there. Then, without looking at me, his hand reached out. It was thin. Too thin. He took the spoon from me and started shoving the food into his mouth. He wasn't enjoying it. He was eating like a machine. Like he was just fueling a body he didn’t want to own anymore.I felt a knot tighten in my ch
Danny's POV "Is Noah dead?" Chad just stood there, and for a second, I thought he had stopped breathing. He didn't blink. His jaw was tight, so tight I could see the muscle in his cheek jumping. He looked at the wall, at the floor, anywhere but at me. Then he moved. He didn't give me an answer. Words wouldn't have worked anyway. He just leaned in, slow and heavy, and wrapped his arms around me. He pulled me into his chest. It was a suffocating, desperate grip. He held me so hard it hurt my ribs, the ones that were already aching. It felt like he was trying to hold me together because he knew if he let go, I would just dissolve into a pile of nothing on these hospital sheets. "Noah didn't make it." That was it. The words landed flat. I didn't cry. Not yet. I just went stiff. I felt like a statue carved out of ice. I stared at the beige, peeling wallpaper on the hospital room wall and my brain just started spinning. It was like a loop, a film strip flickering over and over in
Danny's POV Darkness surrounded me. It was static. Like a TV screen without a signal, just fuzzy gray noise buzzing in the back of my head. Then, the beep started. Beep. Beep. Beep. It was rhythmic, steady, annoying as hell. I tried to open my eyes, but they felt like they were glued shut with sand. I couldn't move my arms, couldn't even twitch a finger. I was floating somewhere between here and wherever I had been, and honestly, the floating was easier. Then I heard him. A voice. Low, ragged, shaking. It sounded like he had been screaming for hours. "Dear father in heaven, I know I have done a lot of bad things, ended family and lives but if you save my boy. I will leave everything, I will even turn myself in to the police, I will hand them all the evidence to convict me for life imprisonment." Chad? What the hell? My brain tried to process the words, but they didn't make sense. Chadwick? Praying? Handing himself in? The man was a hurricane in a suit, I have never seen him pra
Danny's POV I felt like a walking open wound.I was back in that bathroom, the water scalding, turning my skin a raw, angry pink. I scrubbed and scrubbed until the soap stung, but it didn't matter. I could still feel the phantom weight of Miguel’s hands, the way he had pinned me against that door
Danny's POV The walk back to the dorms felt like a trip to the gallows. I kept pulling the sleeves of my pink hoodie over my knuckles, trying to hide the fact that I was shaking. Every shadow under the trees looked like a person reaching for me, every flicker of a streetlamp felt like a camera len
Danny's POV The lecture hall felt like a pressurized chamber. The hum of the air conditioning was the only thing filling the silence as Professor Chadwick stood at the front of the room. He wasn't teaching. He had a slide projected on the screen behind him, something about parasites and the way th
Danny's POV The lecture hall felt like a pressurized chamber. The hum of the air conditioning was the only thing filling the silence as Professor Chadwick stood at the front of the room. He wasn't teaching. He had a slide projected on the screen behind him, something about parasites and the way th







