"If he dies, then I’ll be a widow," Elise said, her voice dropping to a temperature cold enough to freeze the ambient air in the room. "At least that would simplify things."

Without waiting for a response, she cut the connection. The sharp, definitive click of the call ending left a heavy, suffocating silence in its wake.

Beside her, Mrs. Lander had overheard just enough of the frigid exchange to stiffen visibly. The older woman stood frozen, barely daring to draw a breath, terrified of fracturing the fragile stillness.

Elise lowered her gaze back to the sleeping child curled defensively against her side. For several agonizing seconds, she remained perfectly motionless, a mask of unreadable calm. Then, pressing her lips into a thin, tight line, she broke the silence.

"Tell Oliver to investigate the kindergarten."

Mrs. Lander looked up immediately, her eyes wide.

"If Robin isn’t being targeted by bullies there, then have him dig into the former nanny from Orchard Residence." A dangerous shard of sharpness entered Elise’s eyes as she looked down at the boy. "Children don’t develop terror of this magnitude without a tangible catalyst."

"Understood," Mrs. Lander nodded repeatedly, a wave of relief washing over her now that there was a direction to take. "I’ll relay it to him right away."

***

Meanwhile, in the muted luxury of the VIP ward at Sacred Heart Private Hospital, Aaron stared at his darkened phone screen and shook his head, a helpless, wry smile pulling at the corner of his lips. Pocketing the device, he stepped quietly across the polished floor toward the bed.

Dylan lay motionless beneath the stark white linens. His face was devoid of color—too pale, almost translucent under the harsh fluorescent lights. The commanding, formidable presence that routinely intimidated boardrooms and crushed competitors had been entirely hollowed out, reduced to a fragile, terrifying stillness.

Looking down at his friend, Aaron let out a heavy sigh.

"You really brought this on yourself."

The words had barely dissolved into the quiet room when the atmosphere shifted. Dylan’s dark eyelashes trembled faintly. Then, a single finger twitched against the sheet.

Aaron froze, his breath catching in his throat. His eyes widened. "Dylan?"

A slight, pained frown knitted the space between the unconscious man’s brows. A grueling few seconds ticked by before his heavy eyelids slowly, painfully lifted.

"So, you finally decided to rejoin the living." Relief flooded Aaron’s face, breaking his tense posture. "If you’d opened your eyes just a few minutes earlier, you could’ve caught your wife’s phone call."

For Dylan, waking up felt like dragging himself out of a deep, suffocating abyss. His head throbbed with a heavy, localized ache, and the fragmented remnants of a hundred chaotic nightmares still drifted through his clouded mind.

Before his thoughts could fully crystallize, Aaron’s words registered at last.

His brow furrowed deeper. "Elise... called?"

The voice that left his throat was a ruined, gravelly rasp.

Aaron grinned, though there was no real humor in it. "Oh, don’t flatter yourself."

He deliberately stretched out the syllables, enjoying the torment just a fraction. "She called me." He paused, letting the disappointment sink in before throwing a bone. "But she was asking about you."

Dylan attempted a light cough, but the slight contraction of his muscles immediately tore at the deep incision in his abdomen. A white-hot spike of agony shot through his torso, forcing his features into a tight, grimacing knot.

Without a word, Aaron poured a glass of warm water and stepped forward, bracing Dylan’s shoulder. "Drink. You sound like absolute hell."

After taking a few shallow sips, the raw burning in Dylan’s throat finally subsided. He leaned his head back against the propped-up pillows, his dark eyes fixed on his friend. "What did you tell her?"

"The truth." Aaron pulled up a chair and sat down, his demeanor turning pragmatic. "That you and Quinn are both occupying hospital beds."

He shrugged carelessly. "And that Robin has been crying himself to sleep for days." A genuine trace of sympathy softened his expression. "Oliver and Mrs. Lander were completely drowning, so they took the boy to Elise."

A sudden, sharp flicker of surprise pierced through the exhaustion in Dylan’s eyes. "She agreed to take him in?"

Aaron let out a sudden, cynical laugh. "Oh, come off it." He leveled a finger directly at the man in the bed. "There’s no audience here, Dylan. Stop playing the part."

His tone sharpened, cutting through the sterile room air. "I’ve known you for a lifetime. You calculated this entire scenario from the very beginning."

Dylan remained fiercely, unreadably silent.

"You knew that beneath all that stubborn pride and cold armor, Elise is inherently soft-hearted," Aaron continued mercilessly, refusing to let him off the hook. "Otherwise, why would you have deliberately prepared Robin beforehand? Why plant those seeds?"

The accusation struck its target with surgical precision. Because it was the absolute truth.

The heavy, unyielding silence that followed was all the confirmation Aaron required. He leaned back in his chair, exhaling a long breath.

For some reason, the memory of Elise standing outside the funeral home that night flashed vividly in his mind—the absolute finality in her posture, the bone-deep exhaustion, the crushing weight of her disappointment.

A complicated, heavy feeling settled in his chest.

"Dylan." His expression grew profoundly serious. "I understand the macro decisions you had to make. I get the chess game." He paused, choosing his next words carefully. "But the situation with Robin... you handled it abominably."

The steady, rhythmic beep of the heart monitor filled the quiet ward.

"Inflicting trauma on someone under the guise of protecting them is still trauma," Aaron said, each word dropping like a lead weight. "You know Elise better than anyone. She loves without reservations, she hates without apology, and she never, ever blurs the boundary between the two."

He shook his head, a grim, humorless smile touching his lips. "This time... I think you’ve pushed her past the point of no return."

Dylan stared blankly at the ceiling tiles. His abyssal eyes revealed nothing—no desperate defense, no elaborate explanation, no visible regret. Or perhaps, there was simply too much regret to ever allow it to surface.

Time stretched precariously between them, measured only by the cold machinery keeping vigil.

Eventually, Dylan’s cracked lips parted. "What’s the date?"

The sudden, detached question caught Aaron entirely off guard. He blinked, pulled out his phone, and checked the lock screen. "The thirteenth." He frowned, sensing an underlying current. "Why?"

Dylan’s vacant gaze remained locked on the ceiling. "The divorce cooling-off period ends on the seventeenth."

For several long seconds, Aaron could only stare at him in sheer, unadulterated disbelief. Then, he lunged forward in his chair. "Wait. You’re seriously going to let the divorce go through? After all of this?"

Dylan didn’t offer an answer. Slowly, deliberately, he let his eyelids close again, shutting out the light and the interrogation.

The hospital room sank back into an oppressive silence. Outside the tinted glass window, the late afternoon sun began to bleed through a thick blanket of gathering clouds. Inside, only the monotonous, synthetic rhythm of the monitors remained.

No one could decipher the thoughts occupying Dylan’s mind—whether he was drowning in the past, suffocating on his own choices, or meticulously planning his next calculated move. The only undeniable reality was that with every tick of the clock, the chasm between him and Elise was widening into an uncrossable gulf.

And his time was officially running out.