Chapter 4 - THE AWAKENING
By 5:30 in the morning, the grey Seattle dawn was beginning to bleed through the rain-streaked windows of Harborview’s private VIP recovery suite.
Griffin had managed to convince the nursing staff to move Sloan from the general ward into the hospital’s top-tier executive suite—a room overlooking Elliott Bay where the monitors were quieter and the security was absolute.
Hazel and Iris were curled up together on the velvet sofa in the corner of the room, fast asleep under a heavy wool blanket Griffin had requisitioned from the hospital administrator. Their breathing was soft and rhythmic.
Griffin sat in a high-backed leather chair beside Sloan’s bed.
He hadn't moved for two hours. He sat with his elbows resting on his knees, his eyes fixed on Sloan’s face. The harsh fluorescent lights of the ER had been replaced by the warm, amber glow of a bedside lamp. Without the grey exhaustion pinching her features, Sloan looked almost like the girl he had met at Cornell ten years ago—the bright, passionate architecture student who used to sit in the back of the lecture hall drawing intricate sketches of gothic cathedrals in the margins of her calculus textbook.
A soft groan escaped Sloan’s lips.
Her eyelids fluttered, fighting against the heavy sedative in her bloodstream. Her head turned slightly on the pillow, and her dark lashes parted.
For a moment, she stared blankly at the acoustic ceiling tiles of the hospital room, her brow furrowing in confusion. Then her gaze drifted to the side.
Her eyes locked onto Griffin.
She didn't scream. She didn't gasp. She simply froze, her breath catching in her throat as if she were looking at a ghost stepping out of a ten-year-old nightmare.
“Griffin?” she whispered. Her voice was cracked, dry, and barely audible over the hum of the IV pump.
“I’m here, Sloan,” Griffin said. His voice was steady, but his hand—the one resting on the arm of the chair—was white-knuckled.
Sloan tried to sit up, but her body betrayed her. Her muscles, starved of proper rest and nutrition, refused to cooperate, and she slumped back against the pillows with a soft gasp of frustration.
“Where... where are the girls?” she demanded, her eyes darting frantically toward the door. “Did you call Child Services? Did you—”
“Look in the corner, Sloan,” Griffin interrupted gently.
Sloan turned her head.
Across the room, wrapped in the heavy wool blanket, Hazel and Iris were sleeping soundly, their small chests rising and falling in unison.
Sloan’s breath hitched. A single tear broke free from the corner of her eye, tracking a slow path down her pale cheek into her hair.
“I didn't call anyone, Sloan,” Griffin said, leaning forward, resting his forearms on the edge of the mattress. “The girls called me.”
Sloan’s head snapped back toward him, her dark eyes wide with terror and disbelief. “You... they didn't know your number. I scrubbed it from my phone years ago. It was only on the encrypted emergency backup—”
“Which was synced to your cloud account, which still had my primary satellite contact listed under the old emergency protocol,” Griffin finished for her, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “Ten years, Sloan. You hid in Fremont, worked yourself into the ground drafting waterfront proposals, and raised two of the smartest, fiercest little girls I have ever seen—all while carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
Sloan turned her face away, staring out the window at the grey waters of Elliott Bay. Her shoulders began to shake, a silent, devastating grief breaking through the armor she had worn for a decade.
“I had to, Griffin,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “You don't understand. Back then... you were becoming a monster. Every rival you crushed, every company you swallowed whole... I looked at you and I saw a man who was eating his own soul. I couldn't raise children in that house. I couldn't watch you turn into a ghost with a billion-dollar bank account.”
Griffin didn't interrupt her. He didn't defend himself. He knew she was right. Ten years ago, after his father’s bitter, violent death over corporate succession, he had been a machine of pure vengeance and acquisition. He would have wrapped his children in steel and bulletproof glass, turning their lives into an extension of his corporate empire.
She had saved him from himself by running away.
“I know,” Griffin said quietly.
Sloan turned her head back, looking at him with surprise in her eyes. She had expected anger, shouting, lawyers, threats of custody battles. She had expected the ruthless billionaire who destroyed his enemies without blinking.
Instead, she saw a man who looked like he hadn't slept in a decade either.
“You know?” she echoed.
“I spent two million dollars looking for you, Sloan,” Griffin said, reaching out slowly to take her cold, thin hand in his large, warm palm. She didn't pull away. “And when I couldn't find you, I spent ten years wondering what I had done to make you vanish. I thought you hated me. I thought I wasn't enough.”
“You were too much,” Sloan whispered, her fingers curling slightly around his. “That was the problem. You were a storm, Griffin. And I was just trying to build something that wouldn't blow down.”
Griffin squeezed her hand, feeling the fragile, brittle bones beneath her skin.
“You don't have to build anything by yourself anymore, Sloan,” Griffin said, his voice dropping into a vow so deep and absolute that it vibrated through the quiet room. “I’m here. My resources, my security, my life—it belongs to you and those two girls. You’re never going to worry about rent, or deadlines, or working yourself into a hospital bed again.”
Sloan closed her eyes, letting out a long, shuddering breath as the ten-year war inside her finally came to an end.
“And us?” she whispered. “What about us, Griffin?”
May you like
Griffin leaned down, pressing his forehead gently against the back of her hand.
“We’re going to start with breakfast,” Griffin murmured, smiling faintly as he heard the stirrings of two little girls waking up in the corner of the room. “And then... we’re going home.”
