My Scumbag System - Chapter 306

Chapter 306: CPR Stands for ‘Catastrophic Parental Reveal’
The silence stretched into infinity.

I could actually hear the coffee dripping. Each drop hit Luka’s shoe with a soft plop that might as well have been a gunshot in the quiet room. The man hadn’t moved. Hadn’t blinked. I was genuinely concerned he’d suffered some kind of stroke.

His brain was definitely making the dial-up internet sound right now. You know the one. That horrible screeching noise from the ancient computers in old movies. Beeeee-bwoop-bwoop-SKREEEEEEE.

Connection failed. Please try again.

Natalia shifted on top of me, and my ribs screamed in protest. She didn’t seem to notice. Or care. Her weight pressed against my thighs, her fingers still tangled in my hair, and there was still a thin strand of saliva connecting our lips that I really wished would just evaporate out of existence.

The door swung open.

A nurse bustled in with a clipboard, her orthopedic shoes squeaking against the linoleum. “Time for vitals check, Mr. Nakano! How are we feeling this—”

She looked up.

She saw Natalia straddling me like I was a mechanical bull at a country bar.

She saw Luka frozen in the doorway, coffee still dripping from his crushed cup.

She saw Kimiko calmly arranging water glasses like this was a perfectly normal SCENE.

The nurse did a flawless one-eighty pivot. Her clipboard tucked under her arm. Her shoes squeaked in reverse.

“Nope, not paid enough for this.”

The door clicked shut behind her.

God, I wished I could follow her.

I cleared my throat. The sound came out strangled, desperate, the vocal equivalent of a white flag being waved frantically.

“Dad.” I tried for casual. Missed by about a mile. “I can explain.”

Luka’s eye twitched.

“This is, uh…” My brain scrambled for literally anything. “A new CPR technique. The doctors are calling it revolutionary.”

Natalia snorted against my neck. Not helpful, Nat.

“They teach it at all the best academies now,” I continued, because apparently my mouth had decided to commit fully to this sinking ship. “Harvard. Oxford. That one in Switzerland with the chocolate.”

Kimiko sighed. It was the sigh of a woman who had raised children, weathered storms, and was currently watching her family implode in slow motion.

Luka finally moved.

It was small. Just his chest expanding as he drew in a breath. But after an eternity of statue-level stillness, it felt like watching a mountain shift.

“Natalia.”

His voice was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that came before avalanches.

“Get off your brother.”

Step-brother, I wanted to correct. Felt like an important distinction right now. Also felt like saying it out loud would get me killed faster.

Natalia didn’t move.

If anything, she pressed closer. Her arms tightened around my neck, her body curving against mine in a way that was definitely not helping my heart monitor situation. The machine was still going crazy in the corner, beeping like a techno song that somebody had set to “cardiac arrest.”

“No.”

Luka’s jaw clenched. “Natalia Kuzmina—”

“I said no.”

She turned to face him properly, and I caught a glimpse of her expression. Her purple eyes were blazing. Not with embarrassment or shame or any of the emotions a normal person would feel when caught making out with their stepbrother in front of their father.

She looked defiant. Wild. Ready to burn the world down.

Oh no.

Oh no no no.

“Nat,” I whispered urgently. “Maybe we should—”

“I love him.”

The words dropped like a bomb.

The heart monitor flatlined for a second. Then started screaming even louder than before.

“I love him,” she repeated, louder this time. Her chin lifted, that imperial tilt I’d seen a hundred times, but now it was aimed at her own father. “He saved me. He bled for me. He nearly died for me in that dungeon.”

Luka’s face was cycling through colors I didn’t know faces could make. Red. Purple. Something that might have been chartreuse.

“You asked him to look after me, didn’t you?” Natalia pressed on. “Well, he did. He protected me better than anyone else ever has. He stepped in front of a death beam for our healer because that’s the kind of man he is.”

Technically I did it because Emi’s healing was tactically important. And maybe a little bit because letting her die would’ve haunted me, but—

She grabbed my hand. Interlaced our fingers. Squeezed tight enough to hurt.

“I love him. I don’t care if we’re family. I don’t care if it’s wrong. I don’t care if you hate it or the world judges us or—” Her breath hitched. “He’s mine. And I’m his. And nothing you say will change that.”

The room fell silent again.

But it was a different silence now. Heavier. Charged.

I watched Luka’s face. Watched the gears turning behind those warm brown eyes. He was remembering something, I could tell. Maybe that conversation our joyride. Maybe the moment he asked me to look after his little girl.

Be good to her, he’d said. She needs someone in her corner.

His gaze dropped to my body. The bandages. The bacta-patches. The regenerator brace humming against my chest. The bruises that hadn’t fully faded yet.

I looked like I’d been fed through a meat grinder and barely survived.

Because I had.

“Luka.” Kimiko stepped forward and gently pried the leaking coffee tray from her husband’s hands. “You’re making a mess.”

He didn’t resist. His massive fingers uncurled numbly, releasing the crushed cardboard.

Kimiko set the ruined tray aside. Then she turned and fixed Natalia with a look that could freeze lava.

Get off him before you give your father a heart attack.

Natalia slid off me reluctantly. Her fingers trailed across my chest as she went, lingering on the bandages. A silent promise. This isn’t over.

She settled into the chair beside my bed instead, positioning herself close enough that our shoulders touched. Still claiming territory. Still marking what was hers.

Luka ran a hand over his face. He suddenly looked older. Tired.

“Satori.”