Edmund Wakes Up
Chapter 10 - Edmund Wakes Up
Edmund regained consciousness three weeks after the gala, doctors carefully weaning him off sedation once his cardiac condition had stabilized sufficiently to withstand the transition safely.
Adrian was the only family member present when his father first opened his eyes, having taken the overnight hospital shift himself, unable to fully explain, even to Bianca, exactly why he needed to be the one there when it happened.
Edmund's eyes found his son slowly, confusion clearing gradually into recognition.
"Adrian," he said, voice hoarse from weeks of disuse. "What happened."
Adrian sat with the question for a long moment, feeling the specific, complicated weight of an entire family's carefully assembled case sitting silently between them.
"You fell," Adrian said finally. "At the gala. You've been unconscious for three weeks."
Edmund's brow furrowed, trying to piece together fragmented memory. "Bianca," he said slowly. "She was there. In the study."
Adrian felt his entire body go rigid. "What do you remember, Dad."
Edmund's expression shifted, something calculating moving behind his eyes even through the fog of weeks of sedation, and Adrian understood, watching that specific shift, exactly how practiced his father's deflection instincts actually were, even in this diminished state.
"We were discussing the foundation," Edmund said carefully. "I don't recall anything unusual."
"There's security footage," Adrian said quietly. "From the study. I've seen it, Dad. Multiple times, actually, going back years. I know exactly what you did to Bianca that night, and I know about Claire, and Priya, and Grace."
Edmund's face, still pale from weeks of hospitalization, drained further, whatever remained of his careful, practiced composure finally collapsing entirely.
"Adrian," he started.
"Don't," Adrian said, voice shaking with a fury he'd been carrying silently for three weeks, waiting for exactly this moment. "Don't try to explain this to me. I've watched the footage. I've heard four separate women describe, in their own words, exactly what you did to them. There's nothing you can say right now that changes any of that."
Edmund was quiet for a long moment, and when he finally spoke again, his voice carried something Adrian had genuinely never heard from his father before.
Something that sounded, faintly, almost like fear.
"What happens now," Edmund asked.
"Now a detective is going to come speak with you, formally, the moment your doctors clear you for that conversation," Adrian said. "And you're going to face exactly what you've spent years avoiding, real consequences, for real harm you caused real people, people I love, people who trusted you."
"I built this family," Edmund said, something desperate creeping into his voice now. "Everything you have, everything this name means, I built all of it."
"You built it on decades of hurting people who couldn't fight back," Adrian said. "I'm done being impressed by that, Dad. I'm done making excuses for you, the way this entire family has apparently been doing for years without even fully realizing it."
He stood, looking down at his father one final time, feeling something that had lived inside him his entire life, an automatic, unquestioned respect for the man who'd raised him, finally and completely dissolve into something considerably colder and more clear-eyed.
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"Bianca's not facing charges anymore," Adrian said. "Mom withdrew them the moment we understood what actually happened in that study. I want you to sit with that, while you wait for Detective Ostrander. My wife defended herself against you, and this family finally chose to believe her instead of you."
He walked out of the hospital room without waiting for a response, leaving his father alone with the specific, dawning understanding that decades of careful, practiced impunity had finally, completely run out.
