2026-06-24 20:57:59Nathan's POV:
"Mr. Cole, the results confirm Progressive Myelin Decay Syndrome." He turned the monitor toward me.
"It is a rare degenerative condition. Early intervention is what makes the difference in most cases. But your daughter’s case..." He stopped. Just half a second. "The optimal treatment window has almost completely passed."
I stared at the doctor, my voice trembled.
"What does that mean exactly?"
"It means your daughter has less than a month to live. Maybe even less if her condition continues to deteriorate." He sighed.
Less than a month?
I felt like I couldn’t breathe. The room seemed to tilt.
"Mr. Cole." He was watching me. "Do you have any questions?"
A thousand questions crashed through my mind.
How long had she been suffering?
Could anything still be done?
Was there any chance the diagnosis was wrong?
But when I opened my mouth, not a single word came out.
I swallowed hard.
"I... need a moment."
He nodded. Slid a printed sheet across the desk. "Take all the time you need. But please do not wait too long."
I folded the paper in half without reading it and put it in my jacket pocket.
My fingers felt numb.
Without reading another line, I folded it and slipped it into my jacket pocket.
Then I sat there for a long time, staring at nothing.
The signs had been there.
Lily wincing when she climbed the stairs. The meals she barely touched.The exhaustion she always tried to hide behind a smile.
And I had brought it up to Vivienne again and again. But she never listened.
"You're overthinking it."
"You always make everything sound worse than it is."
The memories hit like knives.
I should have pushed harder. Maybe if I had acted sooner...
My hands clenched so tightly my knuckles turned white. I took a deep breath, stepped a few feet away and called Vivienne.
Two rings. Then the noise hit before her voice did. Music, overlapping conversations, the high sharp clink of glasses being raised.
"Nathan." Her voice was flat. Like my name was an item on a to-do list she had not gotten to yet. "What?"
"I need you to come tonight. It is important."
"I am in the middle of something."
"Vivienne." I turned further from Lily, dropped my voice lower. "I just left the hospital. It is about Lily. I need you to hear this in person."
"Stop lying. I'm not going back.” Her voice turned cold. "Roman is back. He's helped me secure several major contracts. We're celebrating. I don't have time for another one of your scenes."
Roman Shaw.
Of course.
Her first love.
The man who had disappeared several years ago, but had just returned now with her son.
"Our daughter is sick, Vivienne." My back molars pressed together. "This is not about us."
"Grow up, Nathan. I will be home when I am home."
She hung up.
I stood there with the phone against my palm. The laughter from wherever she was still came through faintly even after the call ended. Or maybe I was imagining it.
Lily was still on the bench outside. She looked up.
"Daddy. If I eat all my vegetables and go to sleep on time every night, will I get better?"
I did not answer right away. I pressed my mouth against the top of her head and kept it there.
"Sure. You’re totally fine. Trust me, okay?"
She smiled. Then she looked down at her bracelet. Started turning it around her wrist slowly.
"Daddy. My birthday is next week."
"I know."
"Do you think..." She picked at the edge of the paper. "Do you think Mommy could come home for it? She does not have to stay for the whole thing. Just the cake part. I am going to be really good from now on. I will not leave my shoes by the door anymore and I will finish my dinner even when it is the broccoli kind."
"I think if I am good enough," she said quietly, "Mommy will want to come home more.”
I looked at the elevator doors. My hands tightened.
No gifts. No party. No list of things she wanted. Just her mother standing in the same room long enough to watch her blow out the candles.
That's all she asked for. Nothing else.
“Sure, she will.” I smiled, gently touching her face.
I dropped her at home with Mrs. Pena from next door, who watched her on evenings I could not be there.
Then I drove to the restaurant where Vivienne had spent the evening celebrating her success.
The private hall was at the back, past the bar and the main dining room. I could hear it before I reached the corridor.
"Honestly the timing of everything since Roman came back has been remarkable." A woman's voice, someone I did not know. "Three major contracts in six months. Whatever he is doing it is working."
More laughter.
Then Roman's voice drifted through the door, calm and confident.
"I just make sure I'm there whenever Vivienne calls."
Someone laughed. "You make it sound like she can't do without you."
Roman paused for a beat before answering.
"Maybe she can't."
The room erupted with knowing laughter.
"Let's just say Vivienne and I have become very accustomed to each other's company."
A woman near the back laughed. "If only her husband was half as useful as Roman."
"Oh, come on," another guest said. "The man's a househusband. Vivienne should be grateful he hasn't become another dependent she has to support."
The room erupted with laughter.
"Honestly, I don't know how she puts up with it."
"Roman helps her close deals. What does her husband do? Fold laundry?"
I stood motionless outside the door, listening as a room full of strangers mocked my life, my marriage, and everything I had sacrificed for my family.
Then another voice spoke up.
"Speaking of kids, Roman, how's your son doing? I heard he wasn't feeling well last week."
Immediately, Vivienne answered before Roman could.
"He's doing much better. I made sure he saw the specialist I recommended."
Her voice softened in a way I hadn't heard in a long time.
"He still needs to be careful with his diet. I told him to call me if he feels uncomfortable again."
Several people exchanged amused looks.
"You're practically his mother at this point."
Vivienne laughed lightly but didn't deny it.
Roman's voice followed, warm and appreciative.
"Honestly, I don't know what we'd do without you."
The room laughed again.
My fists clenched.
That’s enough.
I put my hand against the door and shoved it open.
The door hit the wall behind it.
Every head in the room turned at once. The laughter stopped immediately.
Vivienne's glass was still raised. Roman was leaning toward her. They were close enough that their shoulders were almost touching.
He straightened slowly when he saw me. No surprise on his face. Just a slight adjustment of a man who had prepared for this particular inconvenience.
Vivienne set her glass down.
"Nathan." Controlled, but her jaw had tightened. "What do you think you are doing here?"
I was still looking at Roman. Tailored jacket. Easy posture. He looked at me with something close to comical sympathy, and that was somehow worse than contempt.
"Whatever is going on at home, this is not the place," Vivienne said coldly.
"Our daughter is dying.” I said, my voice trembled.
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Chapter 210: Home
Third Person's POV:This is what all of it was for, Nathan had thought, walking beside the canal while his father laughed on the phone, and now a few weeks later the city woke up on an ordinary Saturday that nobody had marked on any calendar.~.~There was no anniversary. There was no ceremony. It was just a Saturday, the kind Lily would have liked, overcast but not raining, the soft gray sky that made indoor things feel extra good.Nathan sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee he had not finished. An estate document lay open in front of him. Across the table, Gerald sat on the chair like a cat with strong opinions about the document's structure."You do not even read," Nathan told him.Gerald blinked slowly. He seemed to disagree.~.~Claire arrived first.She walked into the doorframe. Nathan's hand was already there, steadying her arm before she had even finished saying ow.She looked down at his hand. Then she looked up at him."One day," she said."One day what," he said.
Chapter 209: One More Thing
Nathan's POV:Very much so, Daniel had said to Claire on the pavement, though I knew nothing of that, standing on the bridge over the canal on an ordinary morning, my hands resting on the cold railing, looking at the water.~.~I had been coming to this bridge since the beginning. The first time was after a run I could not explain. Claire had once stood here beside me and told me that canals look still but are always moving, and that anything you put in the water ends up somewhere different from where you left it.I looked down now. The water was dark and slow and quiet. Moving, even though you could not see it from above.~.~I thought about the year.I did not try to turn it into a summary. I just let it come the way it wanted to come, in pieces. The grief. The hotel room. The ledge. The stones. The warehouse. A hospital family room at midnight. A letter in a seven year old's careful handwriting.It was large. I let it be large. Pretending it was smaller would not have honored any o
Chapter 208: What They Are
Third Person's POV:It was enough, Vivienne had thought at the bakery counter, though Daniel knew nothing of that, sitting across from Claire at a small café table on a Tuesday morning with two cups of coffee between them.~.~This had become a habit over the past three months. It was not planned at first. It was just a pattern that formed the way patterns do between people who keep ending up in the same situations, and then decide to keep meeting outside them too."How is your father," Claire asked."Better," Daniel said. "And different. Eighteen months changed him in ways you can see and ways you cannot."~.~"He is teaching himself to sleep without one eye open," Daniel said. "It is a process. Some nights it works. Some nights I hear him walking around at three in the morning, checking the windows."Claire's face softened. "And you.""I make tea every morning," he said. "I put it outside the spare room door. I do not knock. I just leave it.""Does he drink it," she said."Every cup
Chapter 207: What She Builds
Third Person's POV:And this time, the smile stayed, Nathan had thought at his kitchen table, though Vivienne knew nothing of it, sitting at her own desk three months into the work, a stack of documents beside her laptop and the morning already half gone.~.~She had worked on the restructured arrangement for three months now. She worked the way she had always worked, completely, without wasted motion, every page read and checked twice. But it was different now. The purpose was clear in every document she produced, like a light had been switched on behind the paper.~.~She was building something her earlier self could not have built.It was not about skill. Her skill had always been there. The difference was that she was no longer building for the surface of things, the numbers that looked good in a report, the structure that impressed people in a meeting. She was building for what lay underneath. The people. The promises. The long years ahead.~.~Every morning, before work, she wen
Chapter 206: The Estate's First Decision
Nathan's POV:We are okay, I had said to the room, and a few mornings later I made my first formal decision as head of the Caelan estate, sitting at my own kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the cat on the chair across from me.~.~No office. No boardroom. No long table with people in suits waiting for me to say something important. Just the east light coming through the window, the drawings above me, and a laptop I had barely learned to use for estate work.I realized it was the right place for it. Lily had lived in this house. If the estate was going to learn how to serve people properly, it should start here.~.~The decision was about the people.The chef who nodded me through kitchens. The man at the bakery on Clement Street. The music teacher. The nurse who kept a letter for months. Dozens of others, maybe hundreds, whose lives had been quietly better for a connection nobody had ever told them about.I did not want to change what they received. I only wanted to change one th
Chapter 205: The House Together
Third Person's POV:And that he is staying, Nathan had told Adrian, and a week later he asked Vivienne and Claire to come to the house on a Saturday morning, telling neither of them exactly why, only that there was something he wanted to do and he wanted them both there for it.~.~They arrived within minutes of each other.They had never once been in the same room without a crisis pressing in from somewhere, an immediate purpose demanding all their attention. This was the first time the three of them were simply together because someone had asked them to be, no urgency attached to it at all.~.~The cat greeted both of them at the door with the particular equanimity he had developed for visitors he had decided were acceptable, weaving once around their ankles before losing interest entirely.Vivienne looked at him for a long moment."His name is Gerald," Claire said."That is not a cat's name," Vivienne said."He chose it," Claire said.Vivienne looked at Nathan. He shrugged. "He cam
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