Chapter 19
ROAN
“Have you heard back from Fabian about the meeting today? We need to—”
The rest of my words are cut off by a scream so loud and raw it freezes me mid-sentence.
Dhimiter and I lock eyes for half a heartbeat, and I see my own fear reflected back at me in his eyes. Then we’re both shooting out of our chairs, whatever we’d been discussing completely forgotten.
“That came from Shefi’s office,” Dhimiter says, already halfway down the hall before I can even process the words.
My stomach twists violently, but I’m right behind him, dread sinking into my bones with every pounding step. That scream—I’ve heard people scream before, heard them beg and cry and break, but this was different. This was the sound of someone’s world ending.
We round the corner at a dead sprint and burst into my father’s office, barely slowing down—and then I see her.
Katie’s on the floor, hands pressed desperately against my father’s chest, her voice cracking and breaking over the same repeated words. “Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.”
She looks up at me with eyes so full of tears I can barely make out the blue, and suddenly I can’t breathe properly because I’ve never seen that expression on her face before—not from her, not from anyone. Pure panic. Pure helplessness.
“He’s not waking up,” she says, and her voice is so small, so broken, it struggles to reach my ears.
My heart drops through the floor. Through the earth. Into some endless void.
I move forward, but it feels like I’m walking through thick mud, every step slow and heavy and wrong, because some part of me already knows what I’m about to see. But I have to see it anyway. Have to be absolutely sure before I let myself believe it.
“What did you do?” Dhimiter growls somewhere behind me, but the words feel distant, like they’re not meant for me, not even meant for her—just angry sounds he needs to make because he’s afraid of what this moment means.
Katie’s voice splinters as she answers. “I—I didn’t do anything. He was sleeping in his chair and I tried to wake him and he just—he just slumped to the floor. I didn’t—I swear I didn’t—”
I drop to my knees beside my father’s still form and reach for his wrist. Please.
I don’t even know who I’m begging. If there’s truly a god or something listening in—Please.
His skin is cold under my touch. Not cool. Cold. The kind of cold that tells me he’s been gone longer than a few minutes. There’s no pulse, nothing. I press harder, willing my fingers to find even the faintest flicker of life. When that fails, I switch to his neck. Still nothing.
My whole body goes rigid, and a thick, suffocating lump lodges itself in my throat. “Call for Jonas,” I manage to rasp out, not taking my eyes off my father’s pale face, and I hear someone rush out of the room.
But I already know. Deep in my gut, in that place where truth lives before your mind catches up, I know what his cold skin means.
I know that no pulse means no heartbeat, no blood pumping through his veins, no life left in his body that used to hold such warmth and strength. He’s gone. My father is gone.
My throat burns like someone poured acid down it and my chest feels like it’s actively caving in on itself. All I can think is that I wasn’t here. I wasn’t by his side when it happened. I didn’t get to say goodbye.
I saw him sitting here earlier. Probably thinking about what book to read next or planning to take one of his slow, meditative afternoon walks around the garden that he loved so much. And now he’s on the floor and I can’t fucking feel his pulse and he’s not breathing and he’s not waking up and—
This isn’t how it was supposed to happen.
Not like this. Not yet.
He was the strongest man I knew. The one who built everything from nothing.
The one who protected everyone, who carried the weight of our entire organization on his shoulders for decades.
He survived his heart attack a few months ago, didn’t he?
Fought through it with that stubborn determination of his.
And now he’s just… gone. Lifeless.
I put my hand on his chest where his heart should be beating and bow my head, my jaw clenched so tight that pain shoots through my temples.
Because if I open my mouth right now, I don’t know if I’ll scream or cry or both, and I can’t afford to do either.
So I just remain on my knees beside him, breathing through the crushing pain like it's the only thing keeping me from falling apart. It probably is.
Fuck. Elira.
She just gave birth to little Luca a few months ago and is supposed to be taking it easy. How am I going to tell her he’s gone? She’s not going to take it well.
Then again, who would? Who’s ever prepared for that moment when someone who shaped your entire existence just… stops existing?
What am I going to do? How am I supposed to find the words for something like this—especially for someone who just brought new life into the world, only to be hit with death so soon after? How do I comfort her when I can’t even hold myself together?
My mind is spinning out of control, racing frantically through every possible reaction she could have, everything I’m going to have to say and do and—
A hand touches my arm and my spiraling thoughts taper off.
I glance down at the feminine hand, then follow it up to the person touching me.
Katie’s kneeling right next to me now, her face soaked in tears, her mouth twisted in pain, her shoulders shaking with the force of her sobs.
Her cheeks are flushed red, and there are small veins showing at her temples from how hard and long she must have been crying.
She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to.
I just stare at her, feeling numb all over, my brain barely registering that she’s not crying for show.
She’s not pretending or manipulating the situation.
She’s fucking destroyed by this. Nobody can fake that level of raw emotion, that depth of grief.
She really cared about him. Despite everything—despite being sent here to spy on us, despite whatever her mission is—she came to love him. Or something close enough to it.
And maybe that shouldn’t surprise me.
Because everyone who spends any real time with my father ends up liking him, even if they don’t mean to.
The charming old bastard always finds a way in somehow.
Always manages to make people laugh or listen or feel seen and valued.
He wasn’t always like that, though—there was a time when he was harder, more ruthless, more willing to do whatever it took to survive in this world.
But the death of his beloved wife changed him.
Softened him, made him gentler. Maybe a little too much.
God. Is he really gone?
I feel like I’m floating outside of myself, watching this scene from a distance. My skin’s cold and clammy. My chest so tight that breathing takes conscious effort. My arms are heavy like they don’t belong to me.
I want to throw something. Break something. Scream until my throat is raw and bleeding. Anything to release this pressure building inside me.
But I don’t. I can’t. I have to keep my emotions locked down tight. I’m in charge of this entire operation now, and if I fall apart, so will my father’s legacy—he wouldn’t want that. He’d want me strong.
I force myself to stand when I hear footsteps in the hallway. Jonas walks in, the doctor’s face already grave before he even touches my father’s body. He doesn’t need to examine anything—he can see what I see.
I don’t wait for his professional confirmation of what I already know.
Instead, I bend down and slide my arms underneath my father’s still form, then lift him as gently as I can.
He’s lighter than I thought he’d be—too light, like something essential has already left him—and his head rests against my shoulder the way it used to when he’d fall asleep on the couch after a long day, before I finally convinced him to step back and let me take over more of the day-to-day operations.
It almost feels like he’s just sleeping now. If not for the coldness of his skin and the terrible stillness of his chest, I could almost believe he’ll wake up any second and ask me what the hell I’m doing.
I carry him out of the office, ignoring the shocked looks from my men gathering in the hallway, ignoring the heavy silence as they step back to create a path for me, ignoring the way my throat feels slit open from the inside.
Ate deserves privacy in this moment.
He deserves to be in his own room, in his bed, not left on the cold office floor like some forgotten old man who has no one to care for him.
I hope with everything in me that he died peacefully in his sleep, that there was no pain, no fear, no awareness of what was happening.
That he just slipped away between one breath and the next.
The hallway fills even more as I move forward, my men taking off their caps out of respect as I pass. I head towards the staircase, each step measured and careful because I’m carrying something precious.
And with every step upward, the weight in my arms feels even more impossible to bear. Not his physical weight—that’s nothing. It’s the weight of finality. Of never again.
He’s gone.
And I don’t know how I’m supposed to live in a world without him.