POV Emilia
Dad’s propped up against hospital pillows, looking smaller than he ever has in boardrooms, but his eyes still have that calculating gleam that means he’s about to drop a corporate bomb on my life.
“I need to tell you something,” he says, voice low and strained like the words are physically painful. “About the merger. About your job at Marlowe Enterprises.”
Here we go. I settle deeper into the uncomfortable visitor chair, already bracing for whatever fresh manipulation he’s about to confess.
“It was my idea too. All of it.” He closes his eyes briefly, like admitting the truth costs him something vital. “The placement, the proximity. I thought… I thought you’d be compliant.”
Compliant. The word hits like a slap. All those months of thinking I was building my own career, proving my own worth, when really I was just another chess piece in his corporate game.
“You thought I’d be compliant?” The fury in my voice could power this entire wing. “What the fuck, Dad?”
“But you surprised me,” he continues, ignoring my language like he always does when I’m too angry to be polite. “You fought back. You walked away from the gala, from everything we’d planned. And that’s why I need to ask you for one favor.”
“A favor.” I laugh, short and bitter. “After manipulating my entire professional existence, you want a favor.”
“Not for the company. For me.”
The distinction shouldn’t matter, but somehow it does. This isn’t Daniel Hart, CEO and corporate puppetmaster. This is just… Dad. Sick Dad, specifically, which makes everything infinitely more complicated.
“What favor?” I ask, though I already suspect I’m going to hate the answer.
“Give the relationship one real chance.” His eyes meet mine, and for the first time in years, I see something that might actually be vulnerability. “No boardrooms. No deals. No fathers orchestrating everything from the shadows. Just… time. See if it could have worked without us ruining it first.”
The request lands like a punch to the gut. After everything—the arranged marriage, the public humiliation, the complete destruction of my autonomy—he wants me to voluntarily walk back into the mess he created.
“You’re out of your fucking mind,” I tell him, but even as I say it, something in his expression stops me cold.
He’s not just asking. He’s… pleading.
Before I can formulate a proper response involving more creative profanity, his hand grips the bed rail so hard his knuckles go white. His breath hitches sharply, face twisting in pain that’s definitely not emotional.
“Dad?” I’m out of my chair before I consciously decide to move. “What’s wrong?”
The monitors start beeping faster, numbers flashing in ways that seem important and terrifying. I hit the call button, panic clawing up my throat as nurses rush in with professional urgency.
“Sir, we need you to breathe slowly,” one says, checking his vitals while I stand there feeling completely useless. “You’re having an anxiety episode. The stress isn’t helping your recovery.”
One nurse lifts the head of the bed while another slips a cannula beneath his nose and coaches him through counts—“In for four… hold… out for six.” I match the rhythm because it’s the only thing that steadies my hands.
The alarms fade from siren to metronome; red numbers step down one by one. His gaze hooks on mine, the tendons in his neck easing, fingers unclenching from the sheet.
Someone taps the monitor to silence the warning tone. The wall clock drags. Wilson hovers in the doorway, then withdraws, leaving just us and the machinery and the sound of measured breathing.
Twenty minutes later, when his breathing’s back to normal, I’m still gripping the visitor chair like it’s the only thing keeping me upright.
Every second of watching those numbers spike reminded me of every fight we’ve ever had, every cold dismissal, every moment I’ve wished him gone. The crushing realization hits: I don’t mean it. I’ve never meant it.
However furious I am about the manipulation, however betrayed I feel about Isabella Asher and Marlowe Enterprises and arranged fucking marriages, I don’t actually want him dead. I want him alive and arguing with me, alive and trying to control my life, alive and being the complicated asshole father who raised me.
When the nurses finally leave us alone, he looks smaller against the white hospital sheets, but his voice still has that commanding edge when he speaks.
“Just… give it one chance.” The words come out raspy but insistent. “Not for the board, not for the merger. For me.”
I stare at him, processing the impossible complexity of loving someone who’s spent years treating you like a strategic asset. The betrayal’s still sharp, cutting through every rational thought. But here in this sterile room with machines keeping him alive, rationality feels like a luxury I can’t afford.
“Fine,” I hear myself say. “But we do this on my terms.”
His smile is weak but triumphant. “Your terms.”
Later, I’m standing in the quiet hospital corridor, phone in hand, staring at Adrian’s contact info like it might spontaneously combust. Every rational part of my brain screams that this is insane. That you don’t give second chances to arranged marriages orchestrated by corporate dynasties.
But Dad’s request echoes in my head: *See if it could have worked without us ruining it first.*
Maybe I owe it to myself to find out what Adrian Marlowe is like when he’s not being managed by his father and I’m not being managed by mine. Maybe we both deserve to discover who we are when we’re not playing roles in other people’s games.
I type the message before I can overthink it: Dinner. One hour. No fathers. No business.