Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 128356 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128356 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
“What the fuck!” Jude grabs the doctor by the collar. “What do you mean by condolences? Go in there and bring him the fuck back!”
“You’re lying.” Marcus is breathing harshly, like an injured animal, fighting against the men who are trying to drag him away. “This is a fucking lie!”
His roars reverberate in the space as two more men approach, and they finally escort him out.
Kane tries to pull Jude away from the doctor to no avail. Jude’s rage palpitates like a red cloud, engulfing everyone and everything inside it.
As he’s about to punch the doctor, Kane wraps both arms around his shoulders from behind. “Ground yourself.”
Jude remains still for a moment, and the doctor manages to escape.
“I want to see my son.” Lawrence follows the doctor, his expression unchanged, as if he didn’t just hear the news of his son’s death.
Death.
Death?
A fresh wave of pain squeezes my chest, and I tap it a few times, but it only gets worse.
More painful.
“Fuck no!” Jude screams, shoving Kane aside and pulling out his phone. “I refuse to believe this.”
A faint ripple of tremors passes through his fingers as he puts the phone to his ear and speaks, his voice raw with emotion. “Regis… Father. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll be whatever the fuck you want me to be, and I’ll forgive you for everything if you make Julian bring Preston back. You must have something for this in your experimentation centers. We’re a medical empire, so we can do this much… I’m begging you. Do something…anything… Just bring back him back.”
Jude’s face pales as he listens to the voice on the other end and then lets his hand fall to his side, the phone cluttering to the ground, the screen smashing into a spider’s web.
“Jude…?” Kane asks, his words strained and pained, as if his throat is suffocated.
Jude looks at him with a dark face, his fists trembling. “He said no medical empire can bring back the dead. If it could, he would’ve gotten his first wife back or brought me back my mother.”
As Kane clasps Jude’s shoulder and Dahlia hugs me as I sob, I know—I just know—that this will break me beyond repair.
Grief is a strange notion.
I grieved a lot when my mother died, but I think I grieved my tarnished future more than her death. I grieved my loneliness that loomed once my only family was cremated.
That’s what she wanted. Cremation. For her soul to be scattered on the ocean.
Pretty sure the charity that took care of the whole process just discarded her in a nearby lake.
I didn’t understand grief when my mother died. I was sad, lost, and in pain, but it was all abstract.
This time, grief hit me like an intense earthquake—tangible and inescapable.
I’m barely standing, swaying in the black dress and flats I threw on without thinking. My eyes—hidden behind sunglasses—are puffy and bloodshot from crying every day since Preston died four days ago.
We’re at his funeral now.
A ceremony that’s somehow become a spectacle of wealth and grief, wrapped in black silk and gold-trimmed sorrow.
The Armstrong estate looms in the background, its towering columns casting long shadows over the sea of mourners dressed in tailored suits and designer mourning attire.
The sky is an endless stretch of gray, suffocating in its vastness. Drizzle lands softly, silently, some of it sliding on my nose.
A polished black mahogany casket rests at the front, adorned with stark white lilies. The flowers look wrong, too delicate for someone like Preston, who oozed power and playfulness.
The metallic glint of the engraved Armstrong crest catches the light, a reminder that even in death, he belongs to something larger, something that probably demanded too much from him.
I stand in the back, my fingers curled into fists inside my coat pockets, trying to hold myself together when everything inside me is falling apart.
“You should get something to eat,” Kane’s soft voice speaks to Dahlia, who hasn’t left my side, curling her arm around me as if I’ll break if she stops touching me.
And maybe I would. She’s the only reason I haven’t surrendered myself to the shadows in the past couple of days.
Kane’s dressed in a black tuxedo, with a lily in his breast pocket. He looks tired and distraught, and I know he needs Dahlia more than I do. That’s why I pretend to be asleep, so she can spend more time with him.
He’s the one who lost his best friend, whom he knew practically his entire life. I just came into Preston’s life recently and managed to end it.
“It’s okay, I’m not hungry.” Dahlia strokes his cheek. “Have you eaten, though?”
“I have no appetite.” He pulls her toward him in a hug and whispers something in her ear, and she wraps her arms around him, her eyes shining with tears.
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs again and again. “I’m so sorry you have to go through this.”