The rain hadn't stopped.
It battered the world outside the hospital like it was trying to erase everything — the city lights smeared across glass, the night bleeding into itself.
Tires hissed over the flooded pavement as the ambulance screeched into the ER bay. Sliding doors slammed open. Shouts filled the air — paramedics rattling off vitals that sounded too fast, too desperate.
Aria stumbled into the emergency entrance, her hair soaked, her jacket dripping a trail across the white tile.No one looked at her.No one asked if she was family.
The nurses clustered around Isabelle instead — leading her toward the registration desk, murmuring comfort in syrupy voices that didn't match the brittle tension hanging over the room.
Vincent disappeared behind swinging double doors without a backward glance.
A male nurse intercepted Aria as she tried to follow.
"Family only," he said briskly, already turning away, assuming — like everyone else — that she didn't count.
Aria froze, the sharp sting of it cutting deeper than she wanted to admit.
She wrapped her arms around herself instead, dragging wet sleeves tighter against her skin, and moved toward the waiting area without a word.
The chairs were bolted to the floor, cheap plastic lined up like gravestones.A vending machine hummed in the corner.The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, buzzing, flickering.Everything smelled like bleach and something metallic underneath.
Isabelle settled into a seat near the center, perfectly composed, a silk scarf tied neatly around her throat.Selene hovered at her side, dabbing her eyes delicately with a tissue.Juliet fidgeted, pulling her sleeves over her hands and tapping restlessly at her phone screen.
Aria stayed apart — sitting at the end of the row, near the windows where the rain hammered against the glass in angry sheets.
Someone shoved a paper cup of coffee into her hand. She didn't see who.The cup bent slightly under her white-knuckled grip.She didn't drink it.
Across the room, Isabelle's voice rang out, low and carrying:
"Yes, he's been under a lot of stress. It's no wonder something like this happened. We've all tried to warn him."
A nurse nodded sympathetically.
Aria's jaw tightened.
Vincent had been ruthless, cruel even — but never weak. Never sick.
Selene leaned closer to Juliet, whispering behind her hand, their faces flickering with something too fast, too sharp to be grief.
Aria saw it all.
Saw the cracks.
Saw the calculation already slipping through.
They didn't think she mattered enough to notice.
A soft shift of movement beside her.
Noel.
He sat down without a word, blending into the background like a ghost the others didn't even register.
Without looking, he slid something into Aria's palm — small, cold, metallic.
A USB drive.
His fingers brushed hers for barely a second.
In a voice so low it barely registered over the rain:
"He left this. Told me if anything happened... it was yours first."
Aria didn't react outwardly.
She curled her fingers around the drive and tucked it into her jacket pocket in one fluid motion.
Across the room, Isabelle's head turned — sharp as a blade — but Aria met her gaze blankly and turned away, pretending not to notice.
The minutes stretched.Then an hour.Then two.
The clock ticked overhead, each second a hammer against her ribs.
The sterile air pressed down, heavier with every breath.
Hospitals were supposed to save people.
Tonight, it felt like they were just another kind of graveyard.
Finally, the double doors swung open.
A doctor stepped out, clipboard in hand, shoulders slumped with the weight of bad news delivered too often.
He didn't look at Aria.
He looked at Isabelle.
"We stabilized him," the doctor said, voice clipped. "He's unconscious. We're moving him to ICU. You can see him briefly, but..."
The sentence dangled there, unfinished.
But not unseen.
They moved as a pack — Aria trailing behind the others through the narrow, dim halls of the ICU.
Machines beeped steadily behind thin curtains.The world smelled like alcohol wipes and something sour, something scared.
They ushered Vincent into a small private room.
Aria stood at the threshold for a moment, watching the nurses settle him — pale against the white sheets, wires snaking from his arms, a monitor whispering out a jagged green line.
When they finally stepped aside, she moved to his bedside.
Noel lingered by the door, keeping silent vigil.
Selene and Juliet whispered together in the hall, throwing glances over their shoulders. Isabelle was already talking to a doctor, her voice low and urgent.
Aria barely registered them.
She touched Vincent's hand lightly — half-afraid he would shatter under her fingers.
For a moment, it felt like he might.
But then —his eyes fluttered open, cloudy and pained.
His mouth moved.
Aria leaned down sharply, heart clawing its way up her throat.
Broken words spilled out in a rasp barely above a breath:
"Your mother..."
Another struggle for air.
"Aria..."
His hand tightened weakly around hers, trembling.
The last words came out fragmented, ruined:
"Don't... it's fine..."
And then nothing.
His body sagged into the bed, chest falling still.
The monitors screamed.
Doctors rushed in, shouting for paddles, for medications, for hope that didn't exist anymore.
Hands pulled Aria back.
She stumbled into the hallway, her legs wooden, her mind hollowed out.
The door slammed shut.
Through the window, she saw flashes of white coats and frantic motion.Machines flatlining.
Aria stood frozen, her heart roaring in her ears.
Someone sobbed dramatically behind her — Selene, probably. Juliet's mascara streamed down her cheeks. Isabelle covered her mouth again, mastering the art of controlled hysteria.
But Aria felt nothing.
Just the weight of the USB against her ribs.
And the quiet, steady knowledge that nothing would ever be the same again.
Vincent Moreau — for all his cruelty, for all his failures — had been a wall between her and the worst of what Lyon's elites could do.
Now that wall was crumbling.
And when it fell, she would be the first thing the wolves came for.