January 12, 2022—Seattle, Washington—Six Months Later #2
But God, his chest hurt. Not in the way of broken bones or bruised ribs, but in the deep, hollow place where grief had begun to nest, quietly, insistently.
His soul ached.
Beside him, his father stood in silence, solid and still.
Logan could feel the weight of his gaze, not judgmental, not even inquisitive.
Just there. Watching. A man who had seen too much and said too little.
There was something like understanding in Robert Vaughn’s eyes, something that might have been compassion.
But Logan didn’t want compassion. He didn’t want sympathy or comfort or even hope.
He wanted Adrian to live. That was all.
He sucked in a sharp breath, trying to anchor himself in his body again. His hand went to his coat pocket, curling around the smooth edge of his phone. Cold metal. Something real. Something he could do.
He had to make the call.
Alon. Adrian’s half-brother. A long shot, and Logan knew it. But still—a shot. If he wasn’t a match, there was a possibility, a sliver of hope, that Adrian’s father might be. The odds were thinner than thread, but thinner than thread was still something.
And then there was the international donor registry. Maybe, somewhere across an ocean, someone carried the same genetic imprint. A stranger with matching marrow, a stranger who could unknowingly save a man they’d never met.
But maybe wasn’t good enough. Not anymore. Not when the clock was ticking so loud it drowned out everything else.
Then—
“Logan.”
The sound of his name, spoken low and steady, cut through the storm in his chest.
“Son, look at me.”
Logan swallowed hard, dragging his gaze upward, trying to hold himself together. His father was looking at him the way he always did when things fell apart—with calm, with command, with a steel spine that had weathered too many storms.
“Make the call,” Robert said simply. There was no space for panic in his voice, no room for doubt. “Come on.”
Logan hesitated, thumb hovering over the screen of his phone. The silence stretched between them.
His father stepped closer. “I’ll talk to the authorities,” he said. “I’ll contact the organizations in Israel. If we need legal channels, embassies, whatever it takes. We’ll go through the proper people. We’ll move fast.”
There was no emotion in his tone, but that was what made it feel real. This was what his father did. He didn’t fall apart. He didn’t lose control. He made things happen.
Logan nodded once, but his fingers trembled where they rested against the cool glass of his phone.
Everything felt distant, surreal. His feet were still in the hallway, but the rest of him?
Gone. Drifting in a haze of helplessness.
In that other place—where Adrian’s hands were cold, where his eyes fluttered shut and didn’t open, where Logan couldn’t reach him fast enough.
Adrian’s getting worse.
Not better.
That thought sent chills through his veins, freezing his blood as it ran through his body like ice.
His world was cracking, piece by piece, and he couldn’t hold it together with just his bare hands.
“Logan.”
His name again, sharper this time, cutting clean through the fog.
It jolted him. Pulled him back into his body.
His spine straightened, his hand steadied, even as the rest of him threatened to fall apart.
There was something about his father’s voice—solid, commanding, undeniable.
It was the tone he used in boardrooms and behind closed doors, the one that had turned empires around and silenced rooms full of men with just a few clipped words.
But this wasn’t business. This wasn’t a deal to close or a market to sway. This was Adrian.
Logan couldn’t afford to collapse beneath the weight of it, no matter how badly he wanted to. Not now.
There had always been something in Robert Vaughn that demanded control.
It was in the way he stood, the way he spoke, the way he moved through the world like gravity bent to him.
People listened when he talked. People followed when he led.
And growing up, Logan had hated that. He had felt like a product on an assembly line, molded and measured against an image he never asked to be.
His father wasn’t warm. He wasn’t gentle. He didn’t offer praise or patience. He offered expectations. Pressure. Dismissal, when Logan didn’t meet the mark.
So Logan stopped trying.
He pulled away in college, stopped calling, stopped returning home. They became little more than two names in the same family tree, linked by blood, separated by everything else.
In the past year, something had shifted.
At first, it was subtle. His father covering all of Adrian’s medical expenses without a second thought. Then, giving Logan time off work, only requiring him for crucial meetings and deals.
Then, it became more.
His father visiting the hospital, sitting beside Adrian’s bed. Small talk, at first. Then genuine interest. Kindness, in his own quiet, awkward way. Inviting them both over when Adrian was home for brief moments between treatments.
Not just tolerating Adrian’s presence, but accepting it.
Acknowledging that Adrian was Logan’s heart.
That Adrian was his whole damn life.
And now he stood beside Logan, not as the cold, unreachable patriarch he had once feared, but as a man who had finally seen his son for who he was.
And who Adrian was to him.
Not a phase. Not a mistake. Not a deviation from the path.
But his heart.
His everything.
Robert Vaughn didn’t say any of that aloud.
He didn’t need to. It was in the way he stood with him now, in the silence he held, in the steadiness he offered without ceremony.
It was in his unflinching presence. It was in the way he carried this nightmare with Logan like it belonged to him, too.
It was in the way he left that board meeting and ran after his son, for the first time, putting him first.
And Logan wanted—so badly—to lean into it. To let someone else be strong for him for just a moment.
Because if Adrian died—
If he was gone—
Then Logan would cease to exist.
He would fade into nothingness.
His father seemed to understand that.
And for the first time in his entire life, Robert Vaughn spoke to Logan not as an executive. Not as a son he wished had made different choices.
But as a father.
Robert Vaughn was one of the strongest individuals to ever walk this Earth.
For a brief moment, Logan yearned to be the child who trusted his father to take care of things.
Because if Robert Vaughn promised him he could retrieve that sample from the registry in Adrian’s country, then it could happen; Robert Vaughn had the power to make it so, and Logan desperately needed that power, as he felt completely empty inside.
He longed to be that little boy again, wishing his father would shoulder that burden for just a moment.
He wanted him to take on the weight he had been carrying.
“Take out your phone,” his father said, firm but gentle. “Call his brother. Now.”
Logan’s breath hitched.
“Stay calm,” his father continued. “Take a breath. Panic achieves nothing. If you want to help Adrian, be strong. Take care of what needs to be done.” And then, softer—softer than Logan had ever heard from him. “Then let yourself break. But not now.”
Logan’s throat tightened around something sharp. His fingers curled around the cool weight of his phone like it might ground him, like it could carry the unbearable.
He nodded once—more to himself than to his father—and swallowed hard against the ache rising in his chest. His thumb trembled as he unlocked the screen. The faint click of each motion sounded louder than it should have, like the whole world had gone silent around him.
His father was right.
He couldn’t fall apart. Not yet. Not while Adrian was still here, still breathing, still fighting beneath pale sheets and blinking monitors.
So he searched for the name and hurriedly clicked on the call button.
The line rang once. Then twice.
“Logan?”
Alon’s voice came through thick with sleep, scratchy and unfocused. Disoriented.
Logan closed his eyes for a moment, trying to find his voice in the tangle of grief and fear choking his throat.
His hand tightened around the phone, his knuckles aching.
It felt like his entire chest was splitting open, like if he said the wrong thing, it would all come crashing out—every tear, every scream, every second of the last year.
“Hey, Alon.” His voice was low, taut with restraint. “Sorry about the hour. I know it’s late over there.”
He forced himself to breathe. In. Out. Steady.
There was a pause, the sound of movement on the other end. The faint rustle of sheets. The creak of a mattress. Then the subtle click of a door closing.
“It’s fine,” Alon murmured. “Give me a second.”
After a few moments Alon’s voice returned, softer now. More awake. “Yeah, I hear you. I’m at the base, so I just didn’t want to wake the others.”
Logan nodded reflexively, though he knew Alon couldn’t see it. His throat burned. His pulse was a thunder in his ears. His father stood silently nearby, a quiet sentinel. The world felt suspended.
“Yeah,” Logan said. “Of course.”
For a moment, Logan couldn’t speak. The words sat like stones on his tongue, too heavy, too sharp. Because saying them aloud would make them real, and once they were real, there was no going back.
“Logan?” Alon’s voice was clearer now, alert and tinged with concern. “Is everything okay? How’s Adrian?”
His chest clenched. His fingers curled tightly into his palm, nails biting skin. It was like trying to breathe through concrete.
“Not so good,” the words barely escaped. “He needs a bone marrow transplant,” Logan said finally, his voice cracking on the edges. “As soon as possible.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was thick. It pressed in, the way silence does in hospital rooms, in places where lives dangle by threads.