FORCED TO MARRY THE RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE IN 9 DAYS

### CHAPTER 8-A FATHER’S LOVE*

Sterling Manor was not a house. It was a castle.

But for the first time in her life, Elena Alvarez didn't feel poor inside it.

Rowen Sterling meant what he said.

He took care of her like his real daughter.

The first three days, Elena was very sick. Fever. Coughing water from her lungs. Her knee infection from the pool. She couldn't get out of bed. She would wake up shivering at 2 AM, calling for her mother Margaret.

And Rowen was always there.

Not a nurse. Not a maid. Rowen himself.

He would sit in the armchair in her huge bedroom, in his pajamas and reading glasses, reading the Financial Times while she slept, just to make sure she was breathing okay. He would check up on her regularly — every two hours, even at night.

"Elena? How's your chest, sweetheart?"

"Drink water for me. The doctor said your lungs need water."

He brought her soup himself from the kitchen. "My wife — Caspian's mother — used to make this when Caspian was sick. I never learned until today."

He bought her gifts. Not diamond gifts. Father gifts.

Day 4: A soft pink blanket because she said the hospital blanket was scratchy.

Day 5: Slippers with little bunnies because her feet were cold and she was too shy to ask.

Day 6: A stack of romance novels because he heard her tell the nurse she loved reading but never had time.

Day 7: A small gold locket with a picture of Margaret Alvarez inside — which he had gotten from Dr. Richards at The Langford Private Clinic without telling her.

"I never had a daughter," Rowen told her one night while she was sitting up in bed, finally able to breathe without coughing. "Only Caspian. And I taught him to be ruthless like me. I taught him to never show weakness. I think I broke him."

He tucked the blanket around her like she was five years old.

"But you... you remind me of what I lost. You have love even when people don't side you. Even when my son watched you drown. You still have love. That is what my wife had."

Elena started crying. No one had ever spoken to her like that.

"Rowen... I never had a father," she whispered. "My father left when Margaret got sick. I always desired... I always wanted someone to check on me like this. To care if I ate. To care if I was cold."

"You have one now," Rowen said simply, wiping her tears with his thumb. "I am your father now. Real father. Not contract father. Not fake father-in-law. My daughter."

Elena hugged him. For the first time since her mother fell into a coma, she felt fatherly love. The kind she always dreamed of.

Outside the window, in the rain, Caspian was standing there. Every night at 9 PM, after work. Rowen had forbidden him from entering the house, so he stood in the garden, looking up at her lit window, just to know she was alive.

Elena saw him but didn't wave. Not yet.

On Day 10, something happened.

Elena was having breakfast with Rowen in her room — he insisted on eating with her every morning — when Dr. Richards burst in. He wasn't supposed to come until noon. He was panting.

"Mr. Sterling! Elena!"

Elena dropped her spoon. "Is it my mother? Is it Margaret? Did something happen at The Langford?"

Rowen stood up fast.

Dr. Richards smiled. A big, real smile.

"She woke up."

Silence.

"What?" Elena whispered.

"Margaret Alvarez woke up from the coma," Dr. Richards said, tears in his own eyes. "Ten minutes ago. She opened her eyes. She moved her hand. She is awake. She is confused, but she is awake."

Elena couldn't breathe. "No... no, you're lying... eight months..."

Rowen grabbed her wheelchair himself.

At The Langford Private Clinic, connected to Sterling Manor by a private garden path, Margaret Alvarez was lying in her bed. Her eyes — the same brown eyes as Elena's — were open. Tired. Weak.

"Mama?" Elena sobbed from the doorway.

Margaret turned her head slowly. She saw her daughter. She tried to speak. Her voice was hoarse from eight months of silence.

"E... Elena?"

Elena ran — limped — as fast as her still-healing knee could take her and collapsed onto her mother's chest, sobbing like a child.

"Mama! Mama you woke up! You woke up!"

Margaret lifted a weak hand and stroked her daughter's hair. "I heard you..."

"You heard me?" Elena cried.

"That day... you came... you said you married... you said you were falling for your fake husband..." Margaret whispered, her voice breaking. "I tried to wake up for you. I tried."

Behind them, Rowen and Dr. Richards both turned away to hide their tears.

Dr. Richards checked Margaret's vitals and smiled.

"She is recovering. Bit by bit," he told Rowen and Elena. "It's a miracle. But she is recovering. She will need therapy, speech therapy, walking therapy. But her brain activity is good. She woke up because she wanted to. Because she heard her daughter."

Rowen put his hand on Elena's shoulder — his daughter.

"Your mother fought to come back to you, sweetheart," he whispered. "Now you have to fight to get better too."

Elena held her mother's hand and her father-in-law's hand at the same time.

Outside the window, Caspian was still standing in the rain. And this time, when Elena looked up, she saw him.

And for the first time since the pool, she didn't look away.

---