The silence was unbearable.
My dad is gone
How I'm I gonna survive without him? He was my strength. My everything.
Maybe I should just end it all.
The heart monitor that had once been my father's metronome steady, rhythmic, a fragile reassurance of life had gone still. The nurses had come and gone, speaking in hushed tones, their movements respectful, efficient, practiced. They had silenced the machines, dimmed the lights, and covered him with a sheet.
And yet, I hadn't moved.
I sat in the same chair, my hand still wrapped around his cooling fingers, staring at the outline of his face under the thin white blanket. My body felt weightless and heavy all at once, as though gravity had forgotten me.
The silence screamed louder than the monitor ever had.
The air was colder now. The antiseptic smell burned in my nose, mixed with the faint trace of my tears andGod help me the subtle, expensive scent of Dalton Gray's cologne. The fact that it lingered in this sacred, broken space felt like an offense.
He didn't belong here. He shouldn't be part of this memory.
But his voice haunted the room even in its absence.
Trust him, Aria. I do.
He'll take care of you.
I love you so much.
Those had been my father's last words.
They played in a broken loop in my mind until they blurred together with older memories my mother's laughter, my twin sister Olivia's screams in the wreckage, my father's arms holding me while I begged for them to wake up.
And now this.
I pressed my forehead against the back of his hand, the tears coming in quiet, shaking waves. "You promised you wouldn't leave me," I whispered. "You promised."
The door opened softly behind me, and I didn't need to look to know who it was.
Dalton didn't ask permission to enter. Of course he didn't. He just… did. He was like gravity indifferent, constant, unyielding. I heard him speak quietly to a nurse, his voice low, composed, infuriatingly steady. The sound of control, of someone who never lost it.
I hated him for it.
Petty I know.
When he stepped closer, I spoke without looking up. "I told you to leave."
"And I told you I wouldn't," he replied, his tone flat, calm. "Someone will be coming to take the body Aria. They need to take him now."
My breath caught.
It was as if the words had reached into my chest and crushed something vital. My mind went blank, replaced by a rising, desperate panic.
"No," I said, shaking my head. "No, you can't. You don't get to decide this!"
He didn't move. "I'm not deciding. I'm facilitating what must happen."
Who the fuck does he think he is?
His calmness only enraged me more. "Don't use your corporate vocabulary on this! He's not a transaction!" I stood abruptly, shoving the chair back. "You can't just.."
"You can say goodbye again," he interrupted quietly. "Here. But in five minutes, it will happen. I'll be outside."
I froze. His voice wasn't cruel, but it was final. I wanted to hate him, scream at him, throw every ounce of grief I had at him until something cracked. But he just stood there, unmovable.
So I turned away, collapsing over my father's covered form, clinging to what warmth was left in him. I whispered every apology I hadn't said soon enough. Every I love you I thought I had more time for.
Five minutes later, they came.
And just like that he was gone.
I signed papers handed to me by hospital staffs on autopilot. Everything I did after he was taken was on autopilot.
The world outside the hospital felt like an insult. The sun was too bright, the air too warm. People were laughing, drinking coffee, checking their phones, like the universe hadn't just ended.
I didn't even realise I was walking home until I saw him.
Dalton's driver, Marcus, was waiting by the car. I didn't argue when Dalton opened the door. My body moved on autopilot walk, breathe, sit.
The silence in the car was unbearable.
The city blurred past in streaks of color I couldn't focus on. My reflection in the window didn't look like me hollow eyes, pale skin, a stranger wearing my grief like a borrowed coat.
I pressed my forehead against the cool glass. "I told him I'd take care of myself," I murmured. The words came out small, cracked. "And I can't even get home on my own."
Dalton didn't respond. He didn't offer condolences or platitudes. Just silence the kind that was somehow both maddening and merciful.
When Marcus pulled up outside my house, I got out slowly. I didn't invite Dalton to come in, but of course he followed. His presence was an unspoken fact now, like the shadow that came with daylight.
I didn't go inside right away. Instead, I turned toward the neighboring house and knocked on the familiar wooden door. Mrs. Evans answered, her expression softening the moment she saw my face.
"Oh, sweetheart…"
That was all it took. The dam broke. I fell into her arms, sobbing into the shoulder of her floral nightgown.
She held me like a mother would, like someone who'd seen too many goodbyes. "He was a good man," she whispered. "The best. I'm so sorry, darling. So, so sorry."
We stood there for a long moment, wrapped in shared loss. When I finally pulled back, her eyes were shiny with tears.
"I'll be next door, all right?" she said firmly. "Anytime. Day or night."
"Thank you," I managed, voice small.
Then I turned and went home to the house that no longer felt like one.
Inside, everything was wrong.
The slippers by the door. His mug on the sink, still stained with coffee. The faint trace of his cologne clinging to the couch cushion where he always sat.
I sank onto that same couch, staring at nothing. The weight of silence pressed down until I could barely breathe. The walls felt closer, the air thinner.
That's when the dizziness hit.
It started as a lightheaded flutter, then a cold sweat, then the familiar trembling in my hands. I blinked, trying to focus, but the room tilted. My blood sugar was crashing fast.
I fumbled for my glucose meter, knocking over a pile of unpaid bills in the process. The display blinked at me, mocking. Too low.
"Damn it…" My voice shook as I tore through drawers for a juice box, a candy bar, anything. My head pounded. My hands wouldn't stop shaking.
That's when Dalton's voice cut through the haze.
"Sit down."
I looked up. He was standing in the doorway, having followed me inside. His eyes took in everything the clutter, the bills, the half-empty insulin vials, the disarray that used to be my life.
"I said, sit down," he repeated, his tone unyielding.
"Why are you still here?" I snapped, my voice trembling. "I'm home. You can go. I don't want you here."
He didn't answer immediately. He just walked over, picked up the fallen bills, stacked them neatly on the table, and looked at me with that maddening calm.
Dalton Gray, billionaire, CEO, and completely out of place, stood in the middle of my modest living room. His towering frame seemed to swallow the space. His gaze moved slowly across the room the peeling wallpaper, the worn-out couch, the stack of medical bills on the table.
Shame burned through me so sharply it almost replaced the grief. I'd never seen him look more out of place his tailored suit against my faded curtains, his polished shoes on our scuffed floor.
For a fleeting, humiliating moment, I became aware of how different our worlds were. And I hated that it mattered.
"Get out," I said, louder this time. "Just get out of my house!"
"No," he said simply.
I stared at him, stunned. "What?"
"You made a promise to your father to let me help you," he said evenly. "And I made a promise to ensure you survive. You are currently failing on both counts."
He gestured around the room the chaos, the unpaid bills, the empty glucose packets. "This is not taking care of yourself. This is a downward spiral. And I will not allow it."
My vision blurred part tears, part blood sugar. "You can't stop me!"
He met my eyes, voice quiet but absolute. "I can, and I will. Starting now. You will eat. You will check your blood sugar. You will rest. I am not asking for your permission, Aria. I am stating the new parameters of your existence."
I wanted to scream at him. To tell him to go to hell, to tell him I didn't need his charity, his control, his logic. But I couldn't find the strength.
My body trembled, exhaustion pulling at every limb. The fight drained out of me in a slow, defeated breath.
He didn't move until I did until I reached weakly for a glucose tab and took it. Only then did he nod once, satisfied.
I sank into the nearest chair, my whole body shaking.
He leaned against the counter, arms crossed, watching me with quiet, unreadable eyes. Not pity never pity. Just that same relentless determination that made him impossible to fight.
For the first time, I realized something that terrified me more than my grief, more than the loneliness, more than the future:
He wasn't being kind. He was being relentless.
And I was too tired to fight him.
So I sat there, hollow and trembling, while he silently filled a glass of water and set it in front of me like an order, not a gesture.
When our eyes met, something in my chest cracked not hate, not gratitude, just the awful, dizzying truth.
He was the only thing standing between me and total collapse.