CHAPTER 415: REGRET PT 2

A bitter, broken sound that was almost a laugh escaped me. "Well,"I said, not rising from my chair. "I guess even devils can’t cheat time. Cruelty has a shelf life, after all?"

He didn’t rise to the bait. Just looked at me and in his eyes was something I had no name for. Something soft. Something almost... broken. It was more unsettling than any of his rages.

"Why are you here?" I bit out, the words sharp and cold.

"I came to see my son." He said it simply,as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He lowered himself into the chair across from me without an invitation, as if the right had never been revoked.

"Your son," I repeated, the words flat and hollow. "Right."

"I heard you finally crawled out of your self-pity," Ewan said, but the old venom was gone, replaced by a weariness that felt more like truth. "I’m glad."

"What I do is no longer your concern."

He sighed... a long, heavy exhalation that seemed to cost him dearly. "I know you’re still angry,"he said. "You have every right to be. But you must understand... the empire our family built must continue. It is a legacy. It’s bigger than your anger. Bigger than my failures."

My hands curled into fists so tight my nails bit half-moons into my palms. "If this is about the inheritance,you can take it and burn it. Let Andrew have the throne, the money, the whole cursed legacy. I want none of it."

Ewan’s lips twitched... not into the sneer I expected, but into something faint, almost... sad. "What makes you think I would be so foolish as to entrust it to him?"

I frowned, thrown. "Then why are you here?"

He met my gaze, and for a single, staggering moment, the mask of Ewan Roman, the tycoon, the titan, the bastard, fell away. What was left was just an old man. And in his eyes, I saw something that looked like pride. And beneath that, something that looked like a bottomless, aching remorse.

"If you have nothing to say, then leave." I stood, turning my back, a familiar shield against his presence.

"Kael."

My name. Not barked as an order. Not spat as a curse. Just... spoken. It stopped me dead.

"I’ve been coming here," he said, his voice so quiet I barely heard it. "Almost every day for the last month. Just... to see you."

I turned, slowly, the motion feeling like it took a lifetime. "It’s too late to play the father now,"I said, my voice low and thick. " Decades too late."

"I know."

The admission was so soft, so stripped of all its armor, it was more devastating than any shout. He stared down at his own hands, as if seeing the blood on them for the very first time. And I saw it then, carved into the lines of his face... not performative regret, but the real, raw, gnawing kind. The kind that eats a man from the inside out when he finally realizes the bridge is burned and he’s on the wrong side.

"Sometimes I wish..." His voice fractured, a fissure in the stone of him. "If I could start over... I would have cherished you more."

Something in my chest twisted, sharp and final, a bone breaking deep inside. A hot, sudden pressure built behind my eyes.

This wasn’t him. This wasn’t the man who forged me in coldness and command, who taught me that love was a transaction and weakness was a sin. This wasn’t Ewan Roman, the architect of all my defenses.

This was a stranger. An old, tired, dying man, staring at the wreckage of the one thing he could never rebuild.

And I couldn’t bear to look at him.

Without a word, I turned and walked away, shutting my bedroom door between us, the soft, final click the only mercy I was capable of offering.

---

Time lost all meaning. It pooled around me, stagnant and thick.

The silence in the apartment was a physical presence, pressing in on my eardrums, a high-pitched whine in the void. I could still see him, the slump of his shoulders, the shocking softness in his eyes. I could still hear the wreckage in his voice. It echoed, a taunting refrain, until I thought I would go mad.

So I did the only thing I knew how to do when the world inside my head became a torture chamber. I ran to pain.

The gym downstairs was deserted, a cathedral of sweat and solitary punishment. The hum of the fluorescent lights was a welcome drone. I wrapped my hands, the stark white tape a ritual, each pull tight and precise, a promise of sensation to drown out the feeling.

I squared up to the heavy bag.

The first punch landed with a solid, satisfying thwack that traveled up my arm. Then another. And another.

Soon, it was a rhythm, a brutal, punishing metronome. Hit. Breathe. Hit. Breathe. My knuckles burned, my shoulders screamed, my lungs burned like fire. It was good. It was clean. It was a language I understood.

Every impact was a word in a prayer of defiance. A way to feel something other than the hollow, gnawing guilt. A way to stay on my feet when the ground kept trying to dissolve beneath me.

Then the door flew open and slammed against the wall.

Niko stood there, his face a ghastly shade of pale, his chest heaving. The air in the room shifted, grew cold.

I stopped, the heavy bag swinging between us, its momentum a mockery of the world that had just stopped turning. "What?" I barked, my voice raw from exertion.

"Sir—your father."

Something in his tone... a tremor I had never heard before... sent a jolt of pure, undiluted dread straight to my core. The world seemed to slow, the details becoming hyper-focused. "What about him?"

Niko’s throat worked, his eyes wide, the professional calm utterly shattered. "There’s been an accident.Ewan Roman—his jet—"

The words didn’t make sense. They were just sounds, empty and meaningless, bouncing off the sudden, deafening roar in my ears.

"What happened?" My voice was distant, a stranger’s, hoarse and thin.

"He’s at the hospital," Niko said, the words tumbling out in a rush. "It’s serious. They’re saying you should come. Now."

For a heartbeat, I was paralyzed. The room tilted on its axis. I looked down at my hands, at the white tape already staining with blood from split knuckles, and they were trembling violently.

Then, movement. A frantic, clumsy unraveling of the tape. Grabbing my jacket from the floor. My keys. My body was moving on an instinct older than thought, driven by a fear so profound it was a physical taste in my mouth... metallic, like blood.

His voice, that broken whisper, echoed in the vault of my mind, chasing me... Sometimes I wish... if I could start differently, I would have cherished you more.

The words landed now not as a regret, but as a prophecy. And the pain was worse than any blow I had ever taken.

By the time I slid into the passenger seat of the car, my heart was a wild, frantic animal trying to beat its way out of my chest. "Drive,"I commanded, my voice cracking open on the single syllable.