KAEL

The room was very quiet.

I sat down in the chair near the wall. Not close. A careful amount of space between me and the bed, which I was fully aware of and didn’t adjust. My father watched me settle and didn’t say anything about it.

I looked at the floor. Then the window. Then my hands.

I had come here with no plan and was only now fully understanding what a stupid idea that had been, because now I was sitting in a chair in my dying father’s hospital room at some point past midnight and I had absolutely nothing prepared to say.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, he spoke first.

"Are you here to tell me to stay away from her?" he asked.

I looked at him properly then.

He looked worse lying down than he had in the wheelchair in the garden. Thinner. The blanket was pulled up and the IV ran along his arm and the light in the room was low and warm and made everything look gentler than it was. His eyes were still sharp, though. That hadn’t changed.

"No," I said. "That’s not why I’m here."

He was quiet for a moment. Something moved across his face. "So the apology did something." 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

I felt my jaw tighten automatically. "Don’t."

"I’m not—"

"I’m not here because of the apology," I said. And then, because I’d come this far and Aria’s voice was still circling somewhere in the back of my head, I kept going. "But what Aria said was right. One apology doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t take back a single thing you’ve done."

He didn’t argue with that. His expression dimmed slightly, like a light being turned down, and he just sat with it.

"But," I said, and the word came out slower, heavier, "you’re also not wrong that it’s where you start."

He was quiet for a long moment.

Then he chuckled. Softly. A worn-out sound. "I’m glad you agree."

"Don’t get comfortable," I said immediately.

Something in his face did a thing that might, on someone else, have looked almost like a smile.

The air between us changed. It was still uncomfortable. It was still full of about twenty years of things neither of us knew how to say. But it was slightly less like standing on the edge of something and slightly more like sitting down near it.

I looked at him.

"So what exactly are you sorry for?" I asked.

He exhaled. Long and slow. Looked at his hands on the blanket.

Then he started talking.

"I am sorry for being a terrible father to you Kael." He said plainly and without dressing it up.

"I kept telling myself there was a reason for the way I was," he said quietly. "Not an excuse. Just... an explanation. I learned how to be a father from mine. And he taught me that legacy mattered more than feelings. That softness gets you killed. So you cut it out before anyone else can."

He let out a humorless breath. "I know that’s not good enough. I know it doesn’t fix anything."

But he said it anyway.

Then his expression changed, something heavier settling into it.

"And I’m sorry about your mother."

The room felt smaller when he said her name.

"She died too fast," he said. "Too young. And instead of grieving her properly, I protected my pride. I moved on before anyone could see how badly it broke me."

His jaw tightened.

"Marrying Sabrina had nothing to do with love. It was ego. I knew that even then. And I did it anyway."

He looked at me then, directly, like he’d finally run out of places to hide.

"And the worst part is..." he said softly, "I think I spent years punishing you for the fact that she loved you more than she ever loved me."

My breath caught with the last sentence.

"I did care about her," he continued quietly. "Your mother. I just thought showing it made a man weak. My father told me that. I believed him for too long."

I didn’t say anything.

"I still visit her grave," he said. "Every year. On her birthday."

The silence that came after that was different from the ones before it. I sat in it and I didn’t try to fill it and I didn’t look at him.

He moved on.

"I was wrong about Aria," he admitted. "About her. About what she is to you."

He rubbed a hand slowly over his jaw, like the words themselves were difficult to hold onto.

"I tried to push her out. I thought if I made enough space between the two of you, eventually one of you would stop trying to cross it."

His voice hardened slightly, but only toward himself.

"I convinced myself I was protecting this family. Protecting the Roman name. But I was so focused on what I thought this family needed that I never stopped to ask what you needed."

He swallowed once.

"And I was wrong."

Silence stretched between us for a second before he spoke again.

"I’m sorry about Andrew too."

That one landed differently.

"What he did to you... what he almost did to Aria..." His expression tightened. "That’s on me. Not just him. Me."

He didn’t try to soften it.

"I raised him in an environment that rewarded cruelty and entitlement and power without consequence. I made him into someone who believed he could take whatever he wanted and survive it."

A pause.

"And he almost did."

Then, finally, his voice dropped quieter.

"And I’m sorry about the timing."

This time he didn’t look away when he said it.

"It took Andrew and Sabrina trying to put me in the ground for me to finally understand something that should’ve been obvious from the beginning."

Something in his face cracked then. Small. Brief. Real.

"You are my son," he said. "My real one. My only one."

The words hung heavy between us.

"And I’m sorry it took me that long to see it."

I sat there and I let all of it settle.

It hurt. There wasn’t a more complicated way to say it than that. It just hurt, the way things hurt when they’re true and late and can’t be undone. Looking at him now, this thin, worn-out old man with a blanket across his lap and cancer eating through his brain, so completely unlike the cold and untouchable version of him that had lived in my head for most of my life, I felt something I hadn’t expected.

Not forgiveness. Not yet. Maybe not for a long time.

But something.

I stood up.

He watched me.

"These are the first of a lot of apologies you owe," I said. "I want to be clear about that."

He nodded once.

"But if you mean any of them," I said, "then you’re going to do the surgery."

He went still.

"Did my assistant—"

"I asked," I said. "When you were still unconscious. I asked about your condition and your treatment options and they told me you’d declined the surgery." I looked at him steadily. "So you’re going to undecline it."

"Kael." His voice was careful. "My health isn’t something you need to—"

"Stop." I said it flatly. "Don’t do that. Don’t tell me what I need to worry about."

He closed his mouth.

I stood there and I looked at my father, this man I had spent most of my life resenting and a quiet, shameful part of my life wanting something from, and I said it plainly.

"If you want any real chance at forgiveness, you stay alive long enough to meet your grandchild."

The room was completely still.

Something happened to his face. It happened slowly, the way things do when they’re real. Something behind his eyes that had been closed for a very long time opened, just a little, just enough.

I picked up my jacket from the back of the chair.

"Take care of yourself," I said.

Then I walked out.

The corridor was empty and quiet and I stopped just outside his door and stood there.

The feeling in my chest was something I didn’t have a clean word for. Painful and light at the same time, like a knot being pulled loose slowly after being tied tight for years. Something that had been locked was still locked, but the key was in the door now, and I could feel it there.

I stood in that hallway for a moment and I let myself feel it.

All of it.

Then I turned and walked back toward Aria.