Logan’s arm gently encircled Adrian’s hips, drawing them closer as they moved through the house’s silent corridors. The touch was a whisper ofcomfort, easing the tension that lingered in Adrian’s grip. He responded with a quiet, grateful smile, a small gesture of thanks. They entered the grand room, where Samantha’s warm invitation beckoned them to sit. She offered Adrian a soft, reassuring grin and pointed to the plush couch, “Make yourself at home, dear.”
“Oh, do you want to start, Logan?” Robert’s voice was razor-sharp, slicing clean through the room. “Shall we begin with your sudden departure? Or the fact that you’re filing for a divorce out of nowhere? Or maybe we should talk about the customers and business partners calling me because you’ve been canceling your meetings?” His words came rapidly, with questions firing off one after the other like gunfire.
“Or maybe,” he continued, stepping closer, “we should talk about why Ada Mae has been calling me to take over your responsibilities because, apparently, you were in Israel? What the hell were you doing flying half a world away without a word?”
The room held a charge, the air trembling in the pause before a storm broke.
And then, Robert turned his gaze to Adrian.
His expression didn’t change; there was no warmth, no hostility. Just indifference, like Adrian was a minor detail in the grand equation of his frustration.
“Hello, Adrian,” he said, almost as an afterthought. “How lovely to have you here.”
His voice was utterly flat, a passing remark, a polite acknowledgment before turning his full attention back to Logan, his eyes steely, demanding answers.
The room held its breath.
And Logan stood there, heart pounding, jaw clenched, realizing that this was it; the moment he had to face everything he had spent years running from. Shoulders squared yet trembling beneath his coat of composure, like a man stepping barefoot into a fire he’d built with his own hands. The air tasted like memory, and his father’s silence was a mountain between them.
“I need money, Dad,” Logan said, cutting straight to the point. His voice was steady, but beneath it, there was an urgency, a quiet desperation he couldn’t mask. “A lot of it. And I need it now.”
Robert didn’t react right away. Instead, he simply studied his son with an unreadable expression. “Of course you do.” His tone was dry but not cruel. “How much?” he asked as he sat down.
Logan followed his father’s lead and took the chair opposite, palms pressed to his knees, aware of Adrian taking the seat beside him.
“Five hundred grand, for starters.”
Time seemed to stop. Even the light filtering through the curtains looked frozen, suspended mid-breath.
Adrian’s head turned sharply toward Logan, his expression a stunned echo of everyone else in the room. Samantha’s lips parted, her hand drifting instinctively to her chest. And Robert—stoic, immovable Robert—lifted a single brow like a man peering over the edge of something he didn’t want to see the bottom of.
“I’ll probably need more down the line,” Logan added.
Robert leaned back in his chair, a slow exhale escaping him like he was trying to release something that wouldn’t be let go. His fingers dragged thoughtfully along the line of his jaw. “You don’t just drop a number like that on me, Logan, and expect me to sign a check. What’s going on? Are you in trouble? Gambling? Debt? What the hell did you do?”
There was a flicker of genuine concern beneath his usual strict businessman exterior.
“It’s not like that,” Logan was hurried to say. “It’s a long story.”
Robert scoffed. “Then you better start talking.”
“Adrian has leukemia,” he said, forcing the words out before his nerves could stop him. “He needs treatment.”
There was a long pause where no one seemed to know what to do with the truth now sitting between them like a third presence.
Robert finally gave a slow nod, subtle, almost imperceptible, but it was there. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, and though the tone was neutral, something in Adrian’s eyes shifted; he blinked, clearly not expecting even that small acknowledgment.
“But what does that have to do with my money?” Robert finally asked.
Logan clenched his jaw, his hands curled into fists on his knees. His voice, when it came, was thick with the effort to remain composed. “I don’t have enough for the treatment.”
Robert’s lips pressed into a thin line. His father didn’t react with fire. Instead, there was a chill to him, calm in a way that made the room feel colder, the silence between each word deliberate and controlled. “Interesting,” Robert said, the word falling from his mouth like a dropped coin. “And why exactly don’t you have the money, Logan? You should have the money. I gave you and your wife a house. I know your salary. I know your shares in the company. So where is it?”
Logan bit the inside of his cheek until the copper taste of restraint filled his mouth. He knew this was coming. The interrogation wrapped in numbers, the audit of his life delivered with boardroom precision.
“I paid some of the first investments for Sandy’s clothing line. I bought her vacations. She used my credit card for… basically everything. I also bought an apartment, by the way, so you can sell the house you gave us. And…” Logan took a deep breath. “I spent some money… finding Adrian.”
Samantha’s brows knit together in concern.
