Alessandro’s POV)
The world went silent. The sounds of the study—Lucian’s sharp intake of breath, the quiet hum of the servers, the distant city traffic—all faded away into a dull, meaningless roar. My universe, which had been shaken and fractured so many times in the last few months, had just collapsed into a single, impossible point of focus.
My father.
It was him. Lying peacefully inside the glowing, high-tech medical pod, he looked as if he were only sleeping. He was older than in the last photograph I had of him, his dark hair now streaked with silver at the temples, his face etched with lines that hadn't been there before. But it was unmistakably him. Antonio De Luca. The man I had mourned for years. The man whose death had made me a king.
My legs felt unsteady, and I took a step
