The night had settled deep over the Miller estate, cloaking the mansion in velvet darkness save for the soft golden glow emanating from Alexander's room. The air was still, broken only by the soft humming of the machines keeping vigil beside the young heir's bedside. The heart monitor pulsed steadily—each beep a testament to the fragile tether between life and oblivion.
Sienna sat quietly beside him, the dim lamplight casting a soft halo around her figure. She hadn't planned to stay this late, but something deep in her bones urged her to remain. Something was different tonight. Earlier, Alexander's fingers had twitched, and his eyelids had fluttered for the first time since he was brought in. She told herself not to hope. Not yet. But hope had a stubborn way of creeping in.
As the minutes stretched, silence pressed in. Maybe it was the hour. Maybe it was the overwhelming sense that she was alone in this with him. Or maybe it was the weight of a story she had never dared to tell anyone. Her fingers brushed over his hand gently.
"You know," she said quietly, her voice breaking the stillness, "when I was fifteen, I lost my brother. His name was Daniel. He was the best of us—kind, brilliant, and annoyingly protective. He had this laugh that could make you forget the world was unfair."
Her throat tightened as she drew a shaky breath. "He was in a car accident. It wasn't supposed to be fatal. Internal bleeding, they said. They rushed him to the hospital, but the surgeon on duty delayed the procedure. Said it wasn't urgent. Hours passed. By the time they realized their mistake... it was too late."
Her hand clenched slightly around Alexander's. "His name was Thomas Hernandez. That surgeon. I remember every detail about him. The way he didn't even look my mother in the eye when he broke the news. The way he never apologized. And how... no one held him accountable."
The machines continued their steady rhythm. She thought he was still lost to the darkness, but the air felt heavier, charged. Then suddenly, a spike—sharp, erratic. Her gaze snapped to the monitor.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
"Alexander?" Her voice trembled as she leaned closer. "Can you hear me?"
Then, his eyelids fluttered again.
And deep within that coma-bound mind, something stirred.
Darkness. That's all he'd known for what felt like centuries. But somewhere, a light flickered—small, insistent. Then a voice. A woman's voice. Soft. Familiar. A name floated through the void.
Hernandez.
Like a lightning strike through water, the name jolted something awake.
The flashback came in fragments.
He was seated in his father's office at Sterling & Co., surrounded by spreadsheets, financial logs, and encrypted communications. The company's reputation as a world-class entertainment and media giant had made it a pillar in the industry. But Alexander, brilliant and unrelenting, had noticed inconsistencies. The fraud situation must not leave the company, and he had to get to the root of everything. The media must not get a hold of the news, or they'll all be having a field day. He looked at all the materials he had gathered and sighed. Financial records that didn't add up. Royalty payments that disappeared. Shadow accounts in offshore havens.
He hadn't said a word to anyone, not even his father. Not until he was certain.
Then came the breakthrough. The files were being scrubbed meticulously, almost professionally. Whoever was behind it knew what they were doing. But one day, buried deep within corrupted data, he found a trace—an access login that shouldn't have existed.
It belonged to someone who had no reason to be anywhere near those records.
His mother's elder brother.
Uncle Gerald.
The same man who had vanished from the family's inner circle years ago under quiet circumstances. The same man whom Mrs. Miller refused to speak of. A family ghost. According to his father, he had committed some serious crime and was removed from the family register. He wondered why he was now involved in all this.
Alexander had tried to keep his investigation quiet. He traced financial trails to dummy corporations, hush-money payments, and false contracts. It wasn't just fraud. It was systematic. Coordinated. A rot is spreading through Sterling & Co.
He remembered the night he confronted Gerald in a secluded parking lot. He had sent an encrypted message to a trusted journalist earlier, just in case.
"Why, Gerald?" he had demanded. "Why would you destroy your own family's legacy?"
Gerald had only smiled.
"You don't understand the kind of people involved in this, Alexander. You never should've looked."
And then the blow came. A sharp pain behind his head. The world spun, and everything went black.
He woke up hours later with a concussion. He was now positive that his estranged uncle had something to do with everything. He just had to find out who was behind him. He knew his uncle didn't have the potential to do something so clean, so detailed. His uncle was just a pawn in all this, that he knew.
As if strengthening his resolve, what his uncle said made him more determined in finding the mastermind behind the fraud. He was getting closer, and he could feel it. "It was just a matter of time," he told himself
After days of more digging, he found someone whom his uncle had been contacting through a burner phone. Thomas Hernandez. He tried tracing the coordinates of the call and was led to a building on the outskirts of Country C. He decided to go and check it out by himself.
On getting there, he was met by what seemed like a small motel. He didn't know which of the rooms Thomas was in, and he didn't think he could just barge into all the rooms. He asked the receptionist if anyone had lodged there under the name Thomas Hernandez, but nothing.
Alexander knew a smart guy like Thomas wouldn't do something so risky. There was no way for him to get a hold of Thomas that night, so he had to be patient. He got into his car and decided to go home. All of a sudden, the windows of his car automatically got locked, and so did the car door. Almost immediately, the car sped off by itself. Alexander tried controlling the car, but he couldn't. He then noticed a bike behind him, holding something like a controller. That was when he figured the car was being controlled. He tried increasing or decreasing the speed of the car, but neither would work.
The car then diverted towards an old abandoned bridge and ran straight for a metal partition placed on the road. He couldn't control the car as it rammed into the partition, causing the car to flip over. He gasped rapidly and saw the person on the bike alight.
His eyes were now hazy but for a moment, he saw the face behind the helmet
"Hernandez…"
He said before he gave way to darkness...
In the present, Sienna watched Alexander's face. The twitch of his eyelids turned into something more pronounced. His fingers flexed weakly beneath hers.
"Come on... please..." she whispered.
Agartha, the night nurse, entered quietly, pausing at the sight of Sienna leaning forward, her breath caught in her throat.
"Vitals are climbing again," Agartha said, checking the monitors. "He's stabilizing, but... he's responding. This is real."
Sienna nodded slowly, unable to tear her gaze from his face. Then, his lips parted.
Barely a whisper. A breath. But it was there.
"Hernandez..."
Sienna froze. The room seemed to fall silent around that single word. Her heart thundered in her chest.
Alexander Miller was waking up. And somehow, her past and his were more entangled than she ever could've imagined.