“He got to them because you’re fucking careless. Care. Less.”
“Master, please.” The desperation in Rand’s voice bleeds through his words as he resumes his compressions.
There’s no movement from Roark. No sign that his efforts are working.
Rand lifts the phone for the operator. “It’s not working. He’s not breathing, at all.”
“Keep with compressions until paramedics arrive,” I hear the operator say through the phone.
“Oh, God, Roark!” Amelia lowers her head to the table, her hand clutched to his face, and her sobs are nothing but an irritating distraction from the pain that waits to swallow me up. The agony that I can’t bear to face, for fear I’ll do something stupid.
Minutes tick until two men in uniform enter the room, followed by my mother.
“Lucian? Lucian!” Her voice is frantic, and when her gaze slides toward Roark, she collapses beside the couch across the room, holding her chest. “Oh, no. Oh, not my sweet boy. Not my sweet, baby boy!”
More minutes pass while they hook him up to machines and tubes and a contraption that pumps air into him. One of the men finally speaks into a radio comm, and all I pick up from that conversation is asystole and no pulse. He ends the conversation with, “I’ll notify dispatch. Thank you.”
“What’s going on? What’s happening? Are you taking him to the hospital?” The desperation and despair in Amelia’s voice is enough to curl my lip, and I fear what I’d do, if not for all these people standing around us.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. There’s nothing more we can do. An officer is on his way. They’ll gather information for the coroner.”
“Coroner? As in … he’s … no. No.” She falls into one of the chairs behind her, wailing into her palms.
“He was talking. An hour ago. He told me he felt sleepy.” I can’t see through the blur of tears. “He asked for …” At the memory of his last request, I stride through the small crowd and out of the room, down the hall, to Roark’s bedroom. Scanning the toys lying about, I find his Dede tossed onto the bed. Snatching it up, I race back down the hall to find Amelia sobbing beside Roark, stroking his hair.
My father stands off to the side as emotionless as I’d expect.
I make my way around the desk, away from Amelia and the paramedics, and lower to my knees. Taking his small, cold hand in mine, I wrap his teddy bear in his limp arms.
“Roark, you have to wake up.” For a moment, it’s as if there’s no one else in the room except me and my son. I press my face to his soft baby cheek and inhale the scent of him. The lavender soap of his bath from earlier. “I should’ve left the paperwork. If I’d known …” The pain in my chest is unbearable, like an animal eating me from the inside out. The air turns thick and suffocating, and suddenly I can’t breathe. I can’t fucking breathe. I slide him off the desk, clutching him against me as I fall to the floor. The agony rips through my chest as I rock him, just as I did the first time I held him in my arms. When he stopped crying. When he looked at me with trust and wonder in his eyes. And he stopped crying.
A broken sound of rage and suffering echoes through the room, and I realize it’s coming from me, as I clutch my son for the last time.
Voices reach the void inside my head.
I don’t even know how long I’ve stared at the spot on the desk where Roark’s body lay before he was taken away. An officer outside the office talks with my father, finally drawing my focus away, and in the thick of conversation, he makes eye contact with me and offers a sympathetic nod. When I lower my gaze, I notice the signet ring he’s wearing, and the conversation sharpens to clarity.
“We’ll make sure not a word of this breaches these walls,” he says, shaking my father’s hand. “Not a single word.”
I push to my feet, my body moving on its own, and I exit past the officer, who pats me on the back. Down the hall, then staircase, until I finally reach the foyer.
“Master?” Rand asks from behind. “Where are you going?”
I don’t answer him. I swipe the keys from the console where I left them earlier, and make my way toward the door.