It was such a strange thing to imagine. His father, composed, commanding, the kind of man who filled a room simply by entering it, pacing a corridor in panic. Falling apart quietly in a hospital hallway. Just like this.

"Calm down," Madam Vale said. "And wait."

"Calm down and wait," Julian repeated it back to her, and there was something almost broken in how he said it. "Mother. That is your advice. Calm down and wait." He pressed a hand to his chest, briefly, like he was checking that his heart was still there. "I can barely stand still."

"I know," she said simply.

And then, unexpectedly, without ceremony, she rested her hand on his shoulder. Just one hand. Steady. Warm. The way she had probably never done when he was young, or maybe had, and he had simply forgotten. Either way, it landed on him now like something he hadn’t known he needed.

"She will be fine," Madam Vale said quietly. "She is in capable hands."

Julian didn’t answer. But he didn’t move toward the door again either.

He stood. He breathed. He counted the drips from the water dispenser down the hall, one, two, three, while every few minutes, Amara’s voice came through the wood of that door and tore through him like it had teeth.

Then the door opened.

Not slowly. It swung with the confidence of someone who had things to report, and the doctor stepped out a different one now, shorter, with reading glasses pushed up into her hair and a tablet tucked under her arm.

Julian straightened immediately. Every muscle in his body went taut.

"We’ll be moving your wife to the labor ward," the doctor said, already scrolling something on the tablet. "The cervix is at two centimeters. Crowning has begun..."

"Wait...what?" Julian’s face shifted. "What is crowning. What does two centimeters mean? What does any of that mean? My wife is in there screaming, and you’re giving me numbers and terminology and..." 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

"Alright, doctor." Madam Vale stepped in smoothly, her hand briefly touching Julian’s arm, a quiet signal. Let me. She turned to the doctor with the practiced ease of a woman who had attended enough board meetings to know when to take the floor.

"What you’re telling us is that Amara is progressing. That her body is doing what it should. And that the babies are on their way." She looked at the doctor directly. "Is that correct?"

The doctor nodded. "She’s handling it well. Given how early..."

"Good," Madam Vale said. Firm. Final. Like a door being closed on doubt. "Make sure she is okay."

They wheeled Amara out three minutes later.

Julian saw her before he was ready to. He was never going to be ready. She was on the bed, reclined, one hand gripping the rail with white-knuckled fingers, her hair pulled back but coming loose at the edges, her face, God, her face carrying the particular kind of exhaustion that came not from lack of sleep but from fighting something with your whole body. From being a battleground and a soldier at the same time.

She looked up when she heard him step forward.

Their eyes met.

Julian walked beside the bed for every step he was allowed, his hand finding hers over the rail, holding it the way you hold something you were terrified of dropping. He didn’t say anything clever. He didn’t have anything clever left. He just held her hand and looked at her and hoped she could read in his face everything he didn’t know how to say out loud.

That he was here. That he wasn’t going anywhere. That she was the bravest person in this building and she didn’t even know it.

Then the labor ward doors swung open and the nurses guided the bed through and the doors swung shut again, and Julian was on the other side of them.

Again.

He exhaled slowly. Looked at the ceiling. Then at his mother, who stood beside him with her hands folded and her face still composed, though her eyes were fixed on those closed doors with an attention that gave her away.

They stood together in the new corridor. Different walls. Same waiting.

And then Julian’s phone rang.

He almost didn’t hear it. It rang twice before the vibration in his pocket registered at all, before his hand moved automatically to pull it out. He looked at the screen.

He went very still.

"I’ll be... one moment," he said to no one in particular, and stepped away from his mother, away from the doors, further down the corridor toward the window at the far end.

The city was below, grey and indifferent and going about its ordinary business in the way cities did, completely unbothered by the fact that Julian Vale’s entire world was currently happening behind a set of double doors he wasn’t allowed through.

He pressed the phone to his ear.

"Hello."

"Now is not a good time," Julian said in a low voice, turning further toward the window, his back to the corridor. His free hand pressed flat against the cold glass. "Don’t call me."

"I’m sorry, boss." The voice on the other end was careful. Measured. The kind of care meant the person speaking understood exactly what kind of interruption they were making. "It’s urgent."

Julian closed his eyes for exactly one second.

Behind him, somewhere past those double doors, Amara was fighting the hardest thing her body had ever been asked to do. And here he was. Standing at a hospital window. Because the world outside did not stop simply because his world inside had.

"Go on," he said.

"First, your uncle. Kalian was spotted at the hospital. About an hour ago." Julian said nothing. But his hand on the glass slowly curled into a fist.

"Second, Amira is getting bail. As we speak. The paperwork is moving fast; someone is pushing it through from the inside." A brief pause. "The investigation has shifted toward Leo. Not officially. Not yet. But it’s shifting."

Julian’s jaw tightened.

"And finally, Mr. Creed. He’s selling off his assets. The ones abroad. Moving fast, liquidating quietly, looks like he’s trying to cover the losses before anyone traces them back."

Silence sat between them for a moment. Just the low hum of the hospital. Just Julian’s reflection staring back at him in the dark glass of the window, face unreadable, eyes sharp, the version of him that existed outside this corridor, outside this waiting, outside the man who had been standing at a delivery room door trying not to come apart.

"Should we move as planned?" the voice asked.