Then his eyes rolled back and his hand went limp in mine.
The next hours came in fragments.Paramedics pushing through the door.Marjorie sobbing somewhere behind me.The ambulance ride where I held Papa’s cold hand and watched the machines beep and tried not to scream.The fluorescent glare of the emergency room.Forms to sign.Questions I couldn’t answer.And then waiting.Endless waiting.
The hospital waiting room was beige.Beige walls.Beige chairs.Beige linoleum that squeaked under rubber soles.I’d been staring at it for hours, memorizing every crack in the paint, every scuff on the floor.
Somewhere in this building, my father was fighting for his life.Somewhere behind those swinging doors, doctors were doing things I couldn’t imagine, trying to undo whatever had broken inside him.
And I was sitting here.Useless.Like I always was.
“Ms.Hughes?”
I looked up.A doctor in blue scrubs stood before me, his face carefully neutral.The kind of face they must teach in medical school.The one that doesn’t give anything away.
“Your father suffered a massive stroke.We’ve stabilized him, but…” He paused.That pause was falling.“He’s in a coma.We don’t know when, or if, he’ll wake up.”
The words hit me like physical blows.Coma.Don’t know.If.
“Can I see him?”
He nodded and led me down a hallway that smelled like antiseptic and sorrow.My father lay in a narrow bed, tubes snaking from his arms, machines beeping steadily in the silence.
He looked small.Fragile.Nothing like the man who’d run the hotel with an iron fist, who’d kept me at arm’s length my whole life, who’d never trusted me with anything that mattered.
I took his hand.Still cold.
“I found the papers, Papa.”My voice cracked.“Why didn’t you tell me?Why didn’t you let me help?”
No answer.Just the steady beep of machines.The hiss of the ventilator.The silence where his voice should have been.
I stayed until the nurses made me leave.Until the sun came up.Until I had no choice but to return to the hotel and face whatever came next.
Twenty years old.No business training.No idea what I was doing.A twenty-million-dollar debt hanging over our heads like an axe.
And somewhere out there, the people behind Apex Lending were waiting.
The predators had all the time in the world.
3
RAPHAEL
Her scent wouldn’t leave me.
Twenty-four hours since I’d stood in Richard Hughes’s office and watched his daughter walk through the door.Twenty-four hours since she’d placed her hand in mine and the wolf had surged against my ribs like a beast trying to claw its way out of a cage.
Mine.
The word had exploded through my skull with such force I’d nearly staggered.I’d felt my eyes threatening to shift, felt the wolf’s howl building in my throat.It had taken every ounce of control I’d built over fifteen years to keep my face neutral.To shake her hand like a civilized man instead of dragging her against my chest and burying my nose in her throat.
Apples and cream.That was what she smelled like.Sweet and soft and utterly untouched.Innocence wrapped in a body that made my cock ache.
I’d spent the past twenty-four hours trying to drown that scent in work.Contracts.Negotiations.The Blackmore acquisition that should have felt like triumph.None of it mattered.The wolf paced beneath my skin, relentless, demanding I return to that hotel and find her again.
I gripped the steering wheel harder as I pulled through the gates of Max’s estate.The leather creaked under my fingers.In the rearview mirror, I caught the flash of gold in my own eyes.
Not now.Not here.
I forced them to shift back.Forced my fingers to relax.
