44. CHAPTER 41
Orion
Dr Gérard's prognosis still laid heavy in my heart. The three to six month timeline was fast approaching as arrangements were being made for when the inevitable happened.
That evening the nurses had transitioned my father into the reclining chair—a clinical, padded contraption that looked too heavy for the garden’s gravel paths.
But the weather was rare for autumn; the air was crisp, smelling of damp soil and the late-blooming roses my mother had planted near the stone walls of the estate.
We moved him to the north side of the terrace where the sweeping expanse of the Vallée de la Seine opened up. It had always been his favorite view. Ever since I could remember from my childhood, I’d always find my father here, just sitting and taking in the serenity of the valley.
My eyes stayed on Léa standing on his right, her hand resting on the padded arm of the chair. She wasn't looking at me. She was watching the way the wind caught the silver of my father’s hair.
“The light is perfect today, Monsieur Kade,” she said softly. “Exactly the shade of gold you liked in that 18th-century sketch we looked at yesterday.”
My father’s eyes tracked to her. There was a slow, deliberate blink. It was his only yes.
I stood at the foot of the recliner, feeling like a clumsy giant in the presence of something so fragile. I reached out, my hands stayed over the wool blanket covering his legs. For a second, I saw his gaze shift to me.
There was no judgment there anymore. No corporate demands. Only a weary, profound sadness that mirrored my own.
He slowly looked from me to Léa. His left hand—the one that still worked—twitched on the blanket. Léa saw it first. She moved her hand, and my father’s fingers folded weakly around hers. Then, he looked at me and nudged his hand further, toward the center of the blanket.
He wanted me to take her hand.
He was a man who had built empire and made kings, yet in his final lucid hour, he was trying to bridge the gap I had created between myself and my wife.
I hesitated, my heart threatening to beat its way out of my chest. I looked at Léa. Her expression was guarded, her lips pressed thin, but she didn't pull away from my father.
He knew, or maybe he could sense the distance between us. But somehow, my father had always possessed an infuriating ability to see what others missed. It almost brought tears to my eyes, but I fought them back.
I stepped forward, the gravel crunching under my shoes. It sounded like the loudest thing in the world. I placed my hand on the blanket, inches from hers. I didn’t grab her, or attempt to force a connection. I allowed my pinky finger graze the side of her hand.
A spark of that familiar, terrifying electricity shot up my arm. I took a breath in.
My father watched us, his breathing hitching in a sigh of relief. He closed his eyes then, the effort of the lucid window finally draining him. He couldn’t say a word but we understood his intention.
My eyes caught Léa’s and our gaze held. In that moment I was hoping she could read the look in my eyes. That she could see how much I’d suffered and how far I was willing to go for her. To the ends of the earth if she’d asked, and even farther because I was foolish enough. Just for her.
She looked away and our hands separated at the voice of Baron King walking in with Dr Gérard.
We all exchanged pleasantries. Léa excused herself to return to our wing. I did the same minutes later when my mother arrived.
King was here to finalize the last portion of my father’s will he started weeks ago.
I wanted to give as much privacy as I could for those moments, even though my mother had decided to sit in on every session.
The dinner that followed our time in the garden was a masterclass in atmospheric pressure.
We ate in a silence so thick we could have been underwater, the only sounds in the room were that of the rhythmic clink of silver against porcelain. I watched my wife across the table, her earrings glinting under the chandelier. The distance between us felt vast.
I observed the way she avoided my gaze, and seemed to be holding her breath through each bite.
It was torture watching her, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
The temptation to walk over, ease her grip on the stem of the wine glass she held too tightly—as if it were a shield, or some form of support—was almost unbearable.
Still, I forced myself to sit here…and watch.
When she finally rose and retired for the evening, I watched from behind as she walked away until the door to her room shut with a finality that rang in my marrow.
A ridiculous reaction to a bedroom door being slammed. Still, it landed somewhere painful.
“Mr. King asked for me to give this to you before he left the estate,” Mrs. Lewis said, stepping into the hallway, her voice stopping me at the entrance of my office. She handed me a heavy, cream-colored envelope.
My name was scrawled across the front in my father’s handwriting elegantly, and heartbreakingly familiar.
My heart sank. My father hadn’t held a pen in months. I flipped it over and saw the red wax of the Kade seal. No one had touched that signet ring since he fell into a coma.
It was Kade tradition, for the signet ring to be passed down to the next patriarch after the death of the former. The thought alone—the thought of being the next patriach—formed a lump in my throat.
“Thank you, Mrs. Lewis,” I said, my voice barely a rasp.
“Would you like some tea?” she asked, her eyes full of a soft, maternal pity I couldn’t bear to look at.
“Thank you, Mrs. Lewis. No tea for me tonight.”
I closed the office door and leaned against it. An old, cold fear engulfed me. I’d spent months embracing this fear, but tonight, fueled by that moment on the terrace, it felt as if it was finally going to swallow me whole.
I broke the seal with shaky hands, the wax crumbling into bits, and pulled out the pages.
The first words stole the breath from my lungs.
My dear Orion,
If you are holding this letter, my time has come to an end sooner than either of us would have chosen. I know you will have done everything within your considerable power to prevent it. You have never been a man for half-measures, and I would expect nothing less.
Fathers often imagine they have more seasons left than they do. I have been guilty of that arrogance. There are things I should have said to you long before now, and so I say them here, plainly and without reservation.
You were never a disappointment to me. Not once.
Even in the moments I raised my voice, pushed you harder, and withdrew my affection.
You were the son who made sense of sacrifices I never bothered to explain.
The boy who could read a room at ten, the young man born with steel in his spine and a tenderness he learned too early to hide.
I have watched you carry the weight of our name as though it were both shield and burden. You have done so with a gravity I did not always deserve to witness. For that, I am grateful, and very proud.
But there are burdens in this family that do not belong to you alone.
And I hope now that I’m no longer here, you can find a middle ground with your mother.
Yes, we argued more than we agreed. You know this.
You have felt the weight of her expectations like a blade at your back, forging you into a man both formidable and implacable.
But listen to me Orion, she is hard because the world was harder on her.
You are hard because you believed you had to be.
In this, you are more alike than you realise, and understanding that may grant you both the grace you have long denied one another.
She steadied the parts of me no one else ever saw. I suspect your future wife, the Fernández girl, will do the same for you, if you allow it.
Which brings me to the alliance, and what comes after.
I may not be able to guide every step you take, but I can give you one truth I learned too late. Power builds an empire; it does not keep a home standing.
Call it love, loyalty, respect. Use whatever word you can live with, but know that fear and control will only carry you so far within four walls. The rest requires something greater—deep-rooted trust. You cannot buy, negotiate, or demand it. It must be given freely, and it must be tended with care.
The best marriages are not born of fireworks or grand declarations. They are shaped deliberately, patiently, between two people willing to see the best in each other even on the worst days. If it does not come easily at first, do not be afraid of that. The work is worth it.
Do not walk through life alone, son. Do not make yourself a king in a glass tower, too far to be seen.
Defend your wife. Guard her dignity as fiercely as you would guard this empire. Allow her to soften the places in you that have grown too cold. When the world demands that you become steel, remember you were born flesh and beating heart first.
I have spent a lifetime pretending otherwise. I do not recommend it.
As your grandfather, Magnus Kade, would say: When you cannot speak, let your actions speak for you. When you cannot bend, learn to yield.
To that, I will add only this, from bitter experience: When you love, do not bargain with it as if it were a contract. I raised you to negotiate everything. In this one thing, I was wrong. Love is the only currency that loses value the moment you try to control it.
I leave this world knowing the legacy is safe in your hands, not just because you are ruthless, as a Kade is expected to be, but because you care more deeply than you dare admit. All Kade men do. Our legacy has simply taught us to hide it well.
I am proud of you, Orion. I always was. I always will be.
Allow yourself to be truly known by at least one person before your story ends. If she is that someone, do not lose her.
Your father,
Henrik Kade.