Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 120475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 482(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 482(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
He’s done worse. Far worse. To his employees. To his wives. To his children. I’ve seen firsthand the wreckage he leaves behind. He grinds people to dust beneath his polished shoes. If it were any other situation than him dying, I’d be far more wary. His gaze has landed on me once more, and when Mad Blackwood sets his sights on someone, it never ends well.
It’s chillier than I expected. A damp, coastal cold that seeps through my clothes and my skin and settles in my bones. I shove my hands into the pockets of my jacket as I walk through the endless, gleaming-white hallways of the premier hospital wing where my father, no doubt, spared no expense to be housed.
Money can buy a lot of things. But it can’t buy time.
Or redemption.
“Bane!” Rotterdam sits in a chair outside the room, his laptop perched precariously on his knees. He looks up at my approach, and a wave of relief washes over his exhausted face. He slaps the laptop closed and tucks it under his arm as he stands to shake my hand.
“You don’t know how glad I am to see you.”
I eye him warily, giving only a grunt. “Is he awake?” I look toward the door.
Because of the time difference between Texas and California, it’s only seven at night, but I have no idea what I’m about to walk into.
Rotterdam nods. “He told me to send you in as soon as you got here. When I checked on him a half hour ago, he was very eager to see you.”
I nod. No point in avoiding the inevitable.
I knock on the door once and then push inside.
I freeze.
Holy shit.
Rotterdam wasn’t lying.
My father looks… already half-dead. His skin is parchment-thin, stretched too tight over sharp bones, veins dark and bulging beneath the surface like cracks in marble. His once-imposing frame has collapsed in on itself, his body devoured by this disease until all that remains is a ghost of the man who once ruled with an iron fist.
I’ve seen death before. Up close. I’ve prayed over men whose bodies were already cooling and given last rites to people who had nothing left but regret and time slipping through their fingers.
But nothing prepared me for this.
Nothing prepared me for seeing the monster diminished.
“Well? What are you doing just standing out there glaring at me from the doorway?” he barks, his voice low and rough, but the weakness is there. The frayed edges of it. The decay.
I realize I’m being rude, gaping at him like this. I force myself to step across the room, closer to his bed.
I’m supposed to be playing the role of dutiful son. But it’s a role I’ve never played before.
A good son—someone who has taken an oath to serve others—should bow their head and offer grace, even to a vile man in his last hours.
I’ve spoken to criminals with life sentences, offering them counsel and a listening ear.
But my father?
Why, God?
Why one test after another of my faith?
First, you took Moira. And now you ask me to forgive this man?
My fists clench at my sides. I swallow hard, still unable to look him in the eyes, my gaze landing somewhere in the landscape of his sunken chest.
He’s dying.
The words echo in my head, but they don’t feel real.
This is Mad Blackwood. The man who made himself king. The man who controlled every room he walked into and every person in his orbit. A man who bent the world to his will because he could.
And now he is frail. Mortal. Small.
For years, he was the shadow looming over me, and now…
Now he’s just another dying man.
I tell myself I should feel relief. I tell myself that this is justice.
But I don’t know what I feel.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel.
His tired eyes finally look my way again, the only acknowledgment that I’ve entered the room.
“Your mother was the only one of all those bitches who wasn’t grubbing after my money,” he says, voice rasping like dry leaves against the pavement. “That’s why I married her. That makes you the only one of my children who’s not a bastard. Which means”—he hacks out a rough cough—“you’re my only true heir.”
I close my eyes.
Of course.
Of course, even now, he can’t stop playing God.
“If this fucking thing gets me,” his fists clench weakly, and he slams them against the mattress in an exhausted fury, “it’ll be up to you to take on the mantle—to marry and produce sons who will continue the name. I’ve had Rotterdam compile a list of women from acceptable families who’ll produce good stock to continue our legacy.”
My stomach turns.
He didn’t want to see me for some last-gasp father-son reconciliation.
Of course not.
Even now, it’s about power.
Even now, it’s about control.
Even now, I am not his son. I’m an asset. A pawn. Just a thing to be wielded as an extension of himself, even after death.