Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 346

Chapter 346

Dawn came slowly through the hospital windows.

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It came the way dawn comes after the worst nights, no drama, no warmth. Just a gradual lightening of the grey outside the ICU glass, the world becoming visible again without promising anything about the day ahead.

Lucia hadn’t slept.

She sat in the chair by the glass, hands folded in her lap, eyes on Lucas. The curtain had come down sometime after midnight, back against the wall now, and she could see him lying still on the bed, machines beside him doing the work his body wasn’t strong enough to do yet.

Alexander stood next to her chair, holding two paper cups of coffee that had gone cold.

“He’s still not waking up,” she said.

Her voice had the thin, worn sound that comes after too many hours without sleep, not weak, just used all the way down.

“If anyone can find his way back, it’s Lucas,” Alexander said.

She shook her head. Not disagreeing. Just too tired to agree out loud.

“I’m afraid to close my eyes,” she said. “What if he wakes up and I’m not here?”

Alexander set the cups on the floor and took her hand, the same grip he’d held all night, not gentle

reassurance but the grip of someone who understood what was on the other side of that glass needed both of them present.

“Then I won’t let you miss it,” he said.

His phone rang.

Both of them looked at it in the quiet corridor.

His assistant.

He answered.

“Sir.” The voice had an edge that hadn’t been there in the overnight calls, tight and high, a man delivering news he’d been hoping to deliver for hours. “We found him.”

Alexander straightened. “Found who?”

“The driver. Police tracked him to an abandoned apartment in the east district. They’re moving in now. Building’s surrounded.”

His jaw set. “Don’t let him leave that building.”

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“Officers are already in position.”

He ended the call.

Lucia had been watching his face. “What happened?”

He told her.

Something moved through her exhaustion, a sharpening, the look of someone who’d been waiting for movement and just got it.

“I’m coming with you.” She started to stand.

“No.”

She looked at him.

“Lucas needs someone here,” he said. “When he wakes up, he needs to open his eyes and find you.”

“That man ran my son down.” Her voice had gone past shaking, to somewhere flatter and harder.

He cupped her face in both hands, holding her eyes. “Which is exactly why I’m not taking you near an active police operation. You stay with Lucas. I go find out who hired him. That’s how we both do our part tonight.”

She grabbed his arm before he turned.

“Make him tell us,” she said. “Whatever it takes. Make him say the name.”

He kissed her forehead and left.

The abandoned building stood three streets from the river, in a part of the city that used to be something and hadn’t decided what it was becoming next. Police vehicles blocked both ends of the road. Tape stretched across the pavement. Officers in tactical gear moved along the perimeter, rifles low.

Alexander’s car stopped behind the line.

His assistant met him. A plainclothes detective walked over, the kind who wore his years on the job in his shoulders.

“Mr. Kane. Stay behind us.”

“I didn’t come here to watch,” Alexander said.

“You came here as a father,” the detective said, not unkindly. “Let us do our job.”

Alexander held his eyes, then nodded.

The entry team went in. The building swallowed them.

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Time moved the way it does during things that need silence. Alexander stood behind the line and watched the doorway, feeling everything in him trying to escape in a direction that wouldn’t help.

The doors opened.

Two officers came out fast, a third man between them. Large, well over six feet, arms that told their own history, tattoos wrist to collar on both sides. Hands cuffed. A bruise forming along his jaw from the arrest.

Alexander moved before the officers in front of him had fully planted their feet.

He grabbed the man’s collar.

“Why?” The word came out raw, nothing like his usual voice. “WHY DID YOU HIT MY SON?”

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The driver looked at him with the eyes of a man who’d done enough damage to stop being surprised by anger from the other side of it. Then he smiled, blood at the corner of his split lip.

“Wrong place.” He almost laughed. “Wrong time.”

Alexander’s fist connected with his face.

Officers pulled him back. He let them, because hitting the man again wasn’t going to produce answers, not from someone with that many tattoos and that little fear left in him.

“Who hired you?” Alexander said.

The driver worked his jaw where he’d been hit, glanced around.

Then something shifted. The confidence dropped out of him, and his eyes flicked to a rooftop across the street, one quick, involuntary movement, the kind a body makes before the mind can stop it.

Alexander caught it. “Who’s up there?”

The driver’s face had gone pale, the pale of a man who wasn’t afraid of much suddenly afraid of something.

“I’ll tell you,” he said, quieter now. “I’ll tell you everything.”

The detective stepped forward. “Tell us who hired you.”

The driver looked at Alexander and opened his mouth.

“It was…”

The crack came from a distance, one single sound arriving before anyone had time to brace for it.

The driver’s head snapped back. The police vehicle beside him took the spray. He went down.

For one second, nobody moved. Then: “SNIPER! GET DOWN!”

The perimeter broke into motion, officers diving behind vehicles and corners. Alexander’s bodyguard hit him from the side and they went down together behind an SUV, his shoulder against the pavement, ears ringing

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from the shouting.

No second shot came. Just the one. Placed.

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Officers ran for the building across the street, clearing it floor by floor. The radio traffic didn’t stop.

Then: “Weapon recovered. Third floor, east window.”

Alexander was on his feet before his bodyguard could stop him. The detective caught his arm. “Let them clear

it.”

An officer came down five minutes later.

“High-powered rifle. Left at the window. Barrel still warm.”

“Prints?” the detective said.

“None. No casings. No personal items.”

“The shooter?”

“Fire exit at the rear. Long gone before the shot landed.”

Alexander walked over to where the driver lay and stood looking down at him.

The man had been about to say a name. The name was gone now.

Whoever hired him had planned for this exact moment, known that a caught driver would talk, and put someone above the street to make sure he never got the chance.

His fists shook at his sides.

The detective came to stand beside him. “I’m sorry.”

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