Sweet Love 2x: Miss Ruthless CEO for our Superstar Uncle

Chapter 395: It Should’ve Ended With Him

Aunt Estella and Gio arrived twenty minutes later.

Aunt Estella was carrying a bag: sandwiches, fruit, a thermos of coffee. Gio had his phone in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. They had come straight from the estate.

"You need to eat," Aunt Estella said, pressing a sandwich into Franz’s hands.

"I’m not hungry."

"I don’t care. You’ve been here for hours. You need to keep your strength up."

"I can’t. Not until—" He stopped. Swallowed. "Not until I know they’re both all right."

Aunt Estella looked at him for a long moment. Then she nodded and set the sandwich aside. "When she comes out, you’ll need your strength. She’ll need you present. Don’t make her worry about you on top of everything else."

"I’m fine."

"You’re not fine. But you will be."

Gio had positioned himself near the wall, his phone in both hands now. He hadn’t said much since arriving. His expression was difficult to read, but Franz had come to recognize the particular set of Gio’s shoulders that meant he was carrying guilt.

"I heard about the device," Gilbert said, glancing between them. "The doll. Arianne told me."

Franz nodded. "We found it by accident. Leo spilled tea on the Lion and the water shorted it out. If he hadn’t tripped, we might never have known it was there."

"It was my fault," Gio said. "I hired the restorer. I should have vetted him more thoroughly."

"We don’t know the restorer planted it," Franz said. "The expert traced the serial number. The device was reported lost ,most likely stolen, by a legitimate supplier about a year ago. After that the trail goes cold. Sold through channels we can’t trace, passed through hands we can’t account for. We don’t know how it ended up in the doll."

"But someone put it there."

"Yes. Someone put it there. And we don’t know who."

Franz finally turned away from the door. "We’ve made changes. Estate security has been overhauled. The baby and the twins will have their own detail from now on. Everyone who enters or leaves the property will be logged: delivery drivers, contractors, maintenance, everyone. No more gaps."

"That’s good," Gilbert said.

"It’s not enough." Franz’s voice was low but sharp. "Someone was listening to our children. For months. In their bedroom. In our home. It’s not enough until we know who did it and why."

"We will," Gio said. "The expert is working through the serial number chain. It might take time, but there’s a trail. We’ll find it."

"I know." Franz exhaled. "I know you’re doing everything you can. I’m not blaming you."

"You could," Gio said. "It was my oversight."

"It was all of ours. We didn’t think to check."

Franz looked at the closed door again. "Arianne wants to find whoever did this. She’s not going to let it go."

"She never does," Aunt Estella said.

"No. She doesn’t."

Aunt Estella sat down in one of the hard plastic chairs, her hands folded in her lap. She looked, in that moment, like a woman bearing the full weight of a long history: the decades of service to this family, the things she had watched happen and the things she had been powerless to stop.

"It’s unfair," she said. "Everything that’s happened to her. Everything she’s had to carry. She was just a child when Gabriel started all of this. A child paying for sins she didn’t commit." She shook her head. "It should have ended when her father died. All of it — the revenge, the schemes, the cruelty. It should have died with him."

"It didn’t," Gilbert said.

"No. It didn’t. It kept growing. Like a wound that was never treated."

The hallway fell into silence. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. The door remained closed.

Franz stood and watched it.

He had been watching it for two hours and twenty-three minutes. He knew the exact number because he had checked his phone every few minutes, each time willing the number to have jumped forward more than it had. The door was pale blue-gray, scuffed at the base where countless gurneys had knocked against it. There was a small rectangular window at eye level, frosted so you couldn’t see through it. He had stared at that window so long he had memorized the pattern of the frosting.

He thought about Arianne on the other side of it. What she was doing. Whether she was tired. Whether she had everything she needed.

She would be fine. He knew she would be fine. She had told him she would be fine, and Arianne did not say things she didn’t mean.

He was watching the door when it opened.

Dr. Johnson stepped out. Her scrubs were rumpled, her hair coming loose from its tie, but her face was open and unhurried. She looked at Franz, and a smile spread across her tired features.

"Mr. Rochefort. Congratulations. You have a healthy baby boy."

Franz heard the words. They landed somewhere outside him, clear and complete, and for a few seconds his mind refused to move. A healthy baby boy. His son. Arianne’s son. Their son. He had known this was coming. He had known it for nine months, had planned for it, prepared for it, imagined it in every detail. And yet the words arrived like something entirely new.

"She’s all right?" His voice came out rough. "Arianne — is she—"

"She’s fine. Tired, but fine. She did beautifully." Dr. Johnson’s smile held. "Would you like to meet your son?"

He couldn’t speak. He nodded.

Dr. Johnson stepped aside, and Franz walked through the door.

The room was quieter than he expected. The nurses were finishing their work at the edges of the space, and the second doctor had gone. The lights had been lowered. And there was Arianne, propped against the pillows with her dark hair loose around her shoulders and her face pale with exhaustion, and in her arms was a small, wrapped bundle that Franz had never seen before and somehow already knew.

He crossed the room without knowing he’d moved.

"Hi," Arianne said. Her voice was hoarse, worn down to something raw. She looked up at him, and her eyes were wet, and she was smiling — not the polished smile she gave boardrooms and cameras, but something underneath all of that, private and unguarded and entirely hers.

"Hi," he said.

He sat on the edge of the bed beside her, and she turned, and he saw his son for the first time.

The baby was very small. He had a red, crumpled face and dark hair and his eyes were closed. One of his hands was curled against his cheek, the fingers impossibly small, the nails like tiny translucent shells. He was breathing in small, even pulls, entirely unconcerned with the enormity of what had just happened.

Franz had thought he would know what to say. He had rehearsed nothing, because there was nothing to rehearse. You couldn’t prepare for this. But he had assumed some words would come, the way words always came. They didn’t. He sat there and looked at his son and felt something happen in his chest that he had no name for and didn’t need one.

"He’s been waiting to meet you," Arianne said.

Franz reached out and touched his son’s hand, the side of one finger, barely grazing the skin. The baby stirred. His fingers spread open, then curled closed again around Franz’s fingertip.

"Hello," Franz said. His voice was barely there. "I’m your father."

The baby didn’t open his eyes. But he held on.