Chapter 41 Jagged Guilt
Jack's POV
I was still standing exactly where she’d left me—right by the edge of her desk, like my body hadn’t gotten the message that she was gone.
My shoulders felt locked in place and my eyes kept drifting back to the spot where she’d stood seconds earlier, like if I stared hard enough, she might reappear.
I didn’t even realize my hand had moved to grab a glass until the thrash of it exploded through the room.
"Fuck!!!" The curse tore out of my mouth ugly and raw and then it seemed to bounce off the walls before it finally died. I was out of breath with a heaving chest, my hand stung and maybe I was cut but I couldn't look at it.
Guilt flooded in almost immediately, I stared down at the broken glass as my fingers trembled slightly.
The silence in the office was suffocating, it closed in around me and I don’t know how long I stood there—minutes, or maybe more but time felt warped, stretched thin and useless. The faint ding of the elevator doors closing somewhere down the hall reached me eventually, dull and distant, realizing fully that Elena was no longer in front of me.
The words she’d thrown at me replayed in my head, over and over again.
“Before it ruins me.”
I dragged a hand down my face and let out a slow breath that didn’t help at all. A part of me wanted to follow her, to catch up before she reached the parking garage, and to explain things I didn’t even fully understand myself yet. But then, another part of me knew that if I tried to, I’d probably only make it worse.
Because she wasn’t wrong, I guess that was the problem.
I've never been good at walking away, especially not from Elena even when she retreated into that controlled fire-tempered version of herself the world respected and feared, something in me still stayed tethered to her.
My phone vibrated on the edge of her desk.
The sharp and intrusive sound snapped through the silence. I flinched, then froze, staring at the screen as it lit up.
For a brief moment, I didn’t move. Then finally, I reached for it, my thumb hovered over the notification bar like I already knew whatever was waiting there would change everything.
I swiped down and read it.
CONFIDENTIAL REPORT:
Subject – Julian Roman (Alias: Julian Graves).
Status: UNCONSCIOUS.
Currently hospitalized at St. Brigid’s under emergency intake.
My father?
The air vanished from my lungs.
I stared at the screen, my brain refusing to catch up with my eyes. The words sat there, neat and clinical like the edges of the letters blurred, and I blinked hard, but they didn’t change.
Julian Roman.
My father—the man who had disappeared the summer I turned eight. One morning, he’d been there standing by the door, sleeves half-buttoned, smelling faintly of aftershave and coffee. He’d kissed my forehead like he was in a hurry and promised he’d be back that night. But he never came back.
And now after all these years of silence and unanswered questions, he'd been found alive. Hospitalized and unconscious?
My jaw tightened as something old and bitter surged up from deep in my chest, so fast it almost hurt and anger tangled with disbelief alongside something dangerously close to hope. But underneath that small hope was suspicion.
Conrad.
Was this his way of reminding me who held the strings? Showing me he could pull my past out of the dark whenever it suited him?
After everything I’d done—every careful negotiation, every concession—I’d made just to get a hint about where my father had been hiding once I realized Conrad had known all along.
My grip on the phone tightened until my knuckles ached slightly. So I turned and left Elena’s office and headed for the elevator with fast, clipped steps that barely felt like my own.
By the time I reached the ground floor, my car keys was already in my hand.
The night air hit me hard with the promise of rain. It felt like a slap, but I welcomed it. I got into the car and started the engine in one smooth motion, the low rumble filling the space and masking the way my pulse had gone wild.
I backed out of the garage too fast and merged onto the highway without caring who honked or who cursed me out after an almost impact.
The city streaked past me in silver and red, even the traffic signals, brake lights, headlights—none of it registered properly.
All that clouded my head was th fact that my father was alive after all these years and now lying unconscious in a hospital bed fragile and impossible to ignore.
I clenched the steering wheel tighter, my hands whitening as I tried to feel something concrete; rage, relief or even grief—anything solid enough to hold onto. But all I had was this hollow pressure in my chest, like the first low rumble of a storm that hasn’t decided whether it’s going to break or destroy everything in its path.
Did I miss him?
The question came out of nowhere and lodged itself painfully in my ribs or was this just the echo of a wound that had never healed properly?
Then the desperation crept in as I bit my lip, my vision blurred for a second, and I blinked hard, refusing to wipe at my eyes. I kept driving with clenched jaw staring straight ahead like the road could give me answers.
I remembered my mother standing by the door some nights, pretending she wasn’t listening for footsteps that never came, pretending that hope and anger didn't live side by side in her silence. I also remembered the questions I’d asked as a kid, the ones adults dodged yet no one ever answered. I grew up too fast swearing I’d never be like my father.
And now he was real again—a ghost with a name and a hospital room. I hated that I still remembered his voice. The way it softened when he called me “kiddo,” like the word meant something sacred.
My foot pressed harder on the accelerator.
I didn’t remember most of the drive to the hospital. I just remembered gripping the steering wheel too hard, th red and green traffic lights, and my pounding heartbeat.
By the time I pulled into the parking lot, I barely registered where I was.
I instantly killed the engine and shoved the door open, not even checking if it shut properly behind me. My feet moved before my head caught up, carrying me across the concrete and through the sliding doors in a blur of sharp footsteps and shallow breaths.
The hospital swallowed me whole. If anything, it made my nerves feel more exposed, like there was nowhere to hide inside my own skin.
Then I went straight to the front desk.
“My—” My voice caught, yet I forced it past the block in my throat. “I’m looking for Julian Roman.”
The receptionist looked up at me, already calm in that way people get when they see panic all day long.
“One moment,” she said gently, her fingers moving across the keyboard.
She glanced back at the screen, then at me. “Room 408. ICU. End of the east corridor.”
She slid a paper across the counter. “You can’t stay long. Visiting hours are limited.”
“Thank you,” I muttered, already turning away. I didn’t wait to hear anything else.
The corridors stretched out in front of me like a maze designed to test how badly someone wanted the truth. I passed rows of stiff plastic chairs, vending machines humming quietly, families huddled together in silence that felt heavier than crying ever could.
Nurses moved with purpose, their shoes whispering against the floor. The air smelled like antiseptic and metal and something else I couldn’t name—something that always reminded me of waiting.
I reached the east corridor faster than I expected.
Room 408.
I stopped.
My hand never reached the door handle, but through the narrow pane of glass in the door, I could see him.
My father.
God—he looked… smaller.
Older and greyer... yes, like time had finally caught up and taken something back. But the man lying in that bed barely resembled the one burned into my memory. Tubes ran from his arms, oxygen rested beneath his nose and his skin looked thinner somehow, stretched too tight over bones that had once carried authority without effort.
The monitors beeped steadily like a mechanical lullaby.
He didn’t move, and I just stood there, inches from the door, as I stood completely frozen.
I wasn’t sure what was holding me in place—anger, guilt, fear, or the sheer weight of too many memories crashing into each other all at once.
I had never seen him like this, because even at his lowest, Julian Roman had always filled space. And now he just laid there immobile.
My hand brushed the doorknob but I didn’t turn it because something twisted painfully in my chest, sharp enough to make me suck in a breath. I had a lot to say and ask but none knew how to surface.
I leaned closer to the glass, my eyes locked on the slow rise and fall of his chest. How can this be?
A strange guilt pressed into my ribs, jagged and unwelcome.
I wasn't sure if he could hear anything—or if his mind hovered somewhere between consciousness and darkness. But I found myself lowering my voice anyway, like the room might hear me even if he couldn’t.
“…You really know how to disappear,” I whispered. "Father..."
My throat tightened immediately.
A nurse passed by and slowed when she saw me standing there.
“You can go in,” she said softly. “He’s stable. Just… don’t overstimulate him.”
I nodded, but I didn’t move.
“Take your time,” she added, after a pause before she walked away.
I just stayed right where I was, suspended between the man I had become and the son I never quite figured out how to be, staring through a pane of glass at a ghost who had finally decided to be real again.
"Father, what happened to you?"