تسجيل الدخولChapter 81 The medical wing carried the usual hush of antiseptic and low beeps. My father’s door stood slightly open. I pushed it wider and stepped inside. He was awake, propped against the pillows with an old paperback open on his lap. The moment his eyes found me, the tension in his shoulders eased a fraction. “Aria.” The sound of my name in his voice cracked something open behind my ribs. I crossed the room quickly and folded myself into his arms, careful of the bandages and the IV line snaking across his skin. He smelled like hospital soap and the faint ghost of motor oil that no amount of scrubbing ever fully removed. That smell had always meant home. “You look like you haven’t slept,” he murmured against my hair. “You look better than you did last night.” I pulled back just enough to search his face. Some color had returned. His eyes were clearer. “Pain?” “Bearable.” He squeezed my hand, rough palm warm and familiar. “They told me you were here the whole time. That y
Chapter 80I woke to a silence thicker than sleep. Not peaceful, but heavy-like the hush that settles after something irreversible has been set loose in the world. A door kicked open that would never close properly again.I lay there without moving, letting the weight of it press down on my chest. Last night had happened. My father breathing down the corridor. The clock striking midnight while I whispered that it was my birthday. Matthias sitting on the edge of the bed, voice rough and low, saying “happy birthday, princess” like the words actually meant something in all this chaos. Then the way he’d pulled me apart and put me back together, piece by aching piece. The kind of sex that doesn’t just bruise the body.All of it was real.I turned my head. His side of the bed was empty, the sheets cold where he’d been. He’d been gone a while. I pushed myself up slowly, wincing at the deep soreness between my legs and the tender ache across my ass. A secret smile tugged at my lips despite ev
Chapter 79 “I want you to suck it,” he whispered, voice low and rough, as he shoved his boxers down his thighs. I nodded, heat flooding my cheeks. A slow, satisfied smile curved his mouth. “You are a very obedient girl,” he murmured, stepping closer until his hips were level with my face. The scent of him, skin and salt and pure male, hit me hard. He didn’t ease in. He took. One hand fisted in my hair as he pushed forward, sliding thick and heavy across my tongue. I wrapped my lips around him, pressing just enough, letting my tongue swirl over the head the way I knew would make him lose control. A deep growl rumbled out of his chest, vibrating through me. I looked up at him through my lashes and something raw and electric passed between us. For once, I wasn’t thinking about tomorrow or yesterday or the thousand reasons this was insane. There was only the weight of him on my tongue, the way my jaw ached, the way his fingers tightened in my hair like he was anchoring himself to ear
Chapter 78The clock on his nightstand read 11:59.I was staring at the ceiling and I don't know when I started counting the seconds but I was, and at midnight I said it before I'd decided to."It's my birthday."The words were quiet. They filled the room anyway.Matthias had been in the chair across from the bed with his drink and whatever he was working through in his own head. I heard him set the glass down. Heard him stand.He crossed to the bed slowly and stopped at the edge of it, looking down at me with an expression I couldn't fully read in the low light but felt clearly."Nineteen," he said."Yes."He was quiet for a moment."You didn't mention it," he said."I didn't think it mattered tonight." I looked at the ceiling. "My father is in the medical wing. Nothing about tonight is the right context for a birthday.""And yet you said it.""And yet I said it." I paused. "I don't know why.""I do," he said quietly.I turned my head to look at him.He sat on the edge of the bed. No
Chapter 77The medical wing had the particular smell of places that existed for emergencies. Antiseptic and something underneath it that was harder to name. The smell of a space that had been built for the worst moments and had seen enough of them to carry it in the walls.I stood outside my father's room and watched the door and didn't let myself think about my first life. About watching from a back seat and not being able to reach anyone and the cold that came when there was nothing left to fight against.He was alive. The doctor had said it clearly. Stable.I kept having to remind myself of that because the image of the blood on his shirt kept replacing it.Matthias came to stand beside me.He'd been on calls for the last forty minutes. I'd heard the quality of them through the corridor even at low volume. Not the measured CEO voice. Something colder and more direct, the voice of someone who had decided that careful management of the situation had reached its limit, and what came n
Chapter 76The word *now* sat on my screen for three seconds before I moved.One word. No context. No photograph. Just the certainty of someone who had been waiting for the right moment and had decided this was it.I was already moving when Dante appeared in the corridor."My father," I said. "Something's happening."He didn't ask how I knew. He was already on his radio.We ran.The maintenance wing was wrong the moment we came through the door.Too many people are moving in the same direction. Voices overlapping, someone calling for medical, someone else saying *stay back* with the urgency of a person who had seen something they were trying to prevent others from seeing.Dante pushed through, and I followed in his wake. Then, the crowd parted enough, and I saw him.My father was on the floor near his workbench with two maintenance workers crouched beside him and blood soaking through his shirt from somewhere in his midsection. Too much blood. The kind of quantity that made rational







