Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 347

Chapter 347

There was no pain.

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That was the first thing Lucas noticed. He’d been carrying pain since before he understood he was carrying it, the road, the impact, the long dark after. Now there was none. Nothing hurt. His body felt the way bodies feel in dreams, light, unburdened.

He opened his eyes.

He wasn’t in the hospital.

The sky above him had no color he knew, something between gold and white, warm in a way the eye couldn’t place. Soft grass under his feet. Flowers in every direction, more than he’d ever seen in one place, every shade layered into the next like a painting made with a whole world for a canvas.

Butterflies drifted through the air. Birds called somewhere far off. A breeze carried a scent he recognized from somewhere deep, roses and jasmine together, a garden from before everything went wrong.

Lucas stood in the middle of it, with no idea where he was.

He touched a flower near his hand. Real petals. Real stem. He stood and turned in every direction and found no walls, no ceiling, no road, no gate with reporters outside it. Just this.

He smiled without meaning to. He hadn’t done that in a long time.

“You’ve grown so much, son.”

He went still.

He knew the voice. He’d heard it in old videos, in memories, in the small details grief brought back when he wasn’t ready for them.

He turned.

The man stood a few feet away in a simple white shirt, easy in his own skin the way he’d always been. Healthy. Peaceful. His eyes were the eyes Lucas saw in the mirror, same shape, same quiet attention.

He looked exactly the way Lucas remembered him.

Marco smiled.

Lucas’s eyes filled before he’d decided to cry.

“Dad,” he whispered.

“Hello, Lucas,” Marco said.

Lucas crossed the distance in four steps, no thinking, no holding back. He threw himself into his father’s arms the way he had as a small child, and Marco’s arms closed around him.

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The crying that came wasn’t the controlled kind he’d been managing for months. It was the real kind, the kind that had been waiting since the day someone called to say Marco was gone, the kind a sixteen-year-old with sisters to protect and a family to hold together never got to let out on an ordinary day.

“I missed you,” Lucas said against his shoulder, not caring how he sounded. “I missed you so much.”

Marco’s arms tightened. He kissed the top of Lucas’s head.

“I missed you too,” he said.

They stayed like that a long time. The garden went on around them, patient and still.

Lucas pulled back first.

“Ria misses you,” he said, wiping his face. “Monica misses you. Mum misses you too. We all do. Every day.”

Marco’s smile turned sadder. “I know. I’ve watched all of you carry things that were never yours to carry.”

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He put both hands on Lucas’s shoulders, the way he used to when he had something that needed saying fully.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Lucas started to shake his head.

“Let me say it.” Marco held his eyes, nothing held back. “I wasn’t the husband your mother deserved. I wasn’t the father you deserved. My choices broke what we had, and even after I was gone, they kept coming back and hurting all of you.” His voice caught. “I’m sorry. More than you’ll ever know.”

“Dad.” Lucas wanted to say they’d never stopped loving him, that forgiveness wasn’t the hard thing Marco might have expected. But something in his father’s face had already begun to change.

Marco pressed a hand flat over Lucas’s heart.

“Your mother needs you,” he said. “Your sisters need you. Alexander needs you.” His hand stayed there. “And there are two people who haven’t been born yet who will need a big brother to show them how things work.” A pause. “Be the man I should have been. Protect them. All of them.”

Lucas was crying again. He nodded.

“Come home with me,” he said.

Marco shook his head.

“Please.” Lucas’s voice broke. “We could all be together. We could go back. Things could…”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

Marco reached out and wiped the tears from his son’s face, the way he used to when Lucas was too small to

hide what hurt.

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“Because my journey ended,” he said. “Yours hasn’t.”

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Lucas looked at him and understood, all at once, that the looking itself was time, and the time was running

out.

The flowers at the edge of the garden had begun to fade. Not all at once, just at the far edges of his sight, the colors softening, the light beyond growing brighter.

“Dad.”

Marco was still smiling. “Listen to me. Your mother has been sitting beside your bed, crying, praying, talking to you. She hasn’t let go of your hand.” He held Lucas’s eyes. “Don’t make her cry anymore.”

The fading crept closer.

Lucas reached for his father’s arm.

“Go home, son,” Marco said, his voice steady. “Open your eyes. Live enough for both of us. And never forget…”

The light swallowed the rest of it.

Lucas reached toward him.

“I’ll always love you.”

“Dad!”

White. Everything, white.

The room was quiet.

Morning had fully arrived. The window above the chair where Lucia slept showed the ordinary light of it, warm and indifferent to whatever the night had held.

Her head rested on the edge of Lucas’s bed, her hand still on his. She’d cried herself to sleep sitting up and slid forward sometime in the night. A nurse had draped a blanket over her shoulders and left her there, hand still wrapped around his.

The monitors beeped steadily. Lucas heard them the way you hear things underwater, distant and slow, until they sharpened. The ceiling came into focus above him, white and plain, nothing like the garden.

He blinked. The room blurred, settled, blurred again.

He turned his head.

His mother slept beside him, hair fallen across her face, cheek against the blanket, hand still around his, the grip unbroken even in sleep.

He looked at her for a long moment.

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Then, with the arm free of the IV line, using what little strength he had, he lifted his hand and stroked her

hair. Once.

Her eyes opened, still half in sleep. She raised her head slowly and looked at him.

The moment lasted no time and lasted forever.

“Mum,” he said.

His voice was faint and rough, but it was his.

Her hands flew to his face. She shook, not all over, just enough, the kind of trembling that comes when something too big arrives too fast.

“Lucas.”

Her knees nearly gave out. She grabbed the side of the bed to stay standing.

She laughed and cried in the same breath, a sound she’d never expected to make, and said his name again.

Then she was on her feet, running for the door, laughing and crying at once, past caring how she looked.

“Doctor! Nurse! My son is awake! Please, he’s awake!”

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