His eyes dropped to the rounded swell I clutched with both hands. “With the baby?”
A tear leaked from the corner of my eye. “I’m cramping.”
The flash of fear in his dark brown stare was enough to have a sob bubbling up from my chest. If the man who never exhibited raw human emotion was scared, this was bad.
“Okay, okay.” Gio’s hands ran through his hair as he paced along the side of the mattress. Suddenly, he stopped the frantic motion, brought his cell to his ear, barking, “I need a car out front. Now.”
Pocketing the phone, he pulled the IV from my arm before bending down to scoop me up. Then we were moving.
I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “Where are we going?”
“Hospital,” he bit out.
While Gio kept a level head, I continued to run through all the worst-case scenarios in my mind. Because I was ninety percent certain that what I was feeling went beyond cramping. The waves came in regular intervals, each one growing a little stronger.
I didn’t want to voice it aloud, but these had to be contractions.
It was too soon. Our baby wouldn’t survive if he was born now.
The biting November wind whipped around my bare legs as we crossed the threshold of the front door, but thankfully, the car Gio ordered was waiting at the bottom of the stone steps, and I was enveloped in warmth before the cold could seep deep enough to reach my bones.
“Drive.” The command was issued as the door slammed shut, and tires squealed as the SUV lurched into motion.
Gio hadn’t let me go, keeping me firmly seated on his lap. His fingers dug into my thighs, the point of contact grounding me when I was on the verge of spiraling out of control. Even still, tears spilled down my cheeks, soaking into the fabric of his shirt where I’d buried my face against his chest.
“It’s going to be fine. You’re both going to be fine,” he murmured against the top of my head on repeat, but I could hear it in his voice; he didn’t quite believe his own words.
The car came to a screeching halt, and I whimpered, jolting in Gio’s arms. Then I was in the cold again as I was lifted out of the vehicle and carried through the sliding glass doors of the emergency room.
We stopped at the registration desk, where Gio only paused long enough to demand that the triage doors be opened so I could be seen immediately.
When they didn’t open on command, he spun back around. “Did I fucking stutter?”
I lifted my head to peek at the admin responsible for patient intake. She had a no-nonsense look about her, and mentally I braced for the imminent altercation she was about to have with my strong-willed husband.
The woman with a severe gray bun cocked her head to the side. “Young man, you’re not the first or the last person to burst in here yelling that you have an emergency. In case you haven’t noticed, you walked into theEmergencyRoom. So why don’t you slow down, take a breath, and tell me what brings you in today, so we can get your female companion the proper care?”
“Slow down?” Gio huffed, his face a mix of rage and disbelief. “Slow down?” he repeated, this time his voice rising in volume. “Oh, I don’t think so. Do you have any idea who I am?”
She dropped her head back, face tilted toward the ceiling. “I swear to God, if you say the name Bellini . . .”
My eyes widened. It sounded like we weren’t the first Bellini couple to show up in this hospital demanding special treatment.
“As a matter of fact—” Gio began, but the woman held up a hand, cutting him off.
“Save it.” Spinning around in her wheeled chair, she called out, “Allie! We’ve got one of yours out here again. Can you comeexplain that the buckets of money these people donate doesn’t entitle them to line-skipping privileges?”
A feminine voice replied from around the walled partition. “Wait, who’s here?” Then a nurse in pale blue scrubs appeared. Recognition lit up in her green eyes before they dropped to where I cradled my belly, and Enzo’s wife went pale as a sheet. Lifting a trembling hand to her mouth, she breathed, “Oh, God.”
“Allie.” Gio’s voice was gentle yet firm. “She’s twenty-three weeks and cramping. We don’t have time for this bureaucratic bullshit.”
Her throat bobbed on a thick swallow, and she nodded. “Right. It’s probably better if I take you straight up to OB triage. They’re better equipped to handle situations such as these than we are in the ER.”
“This goes against protocol,” the admin grumbled, glaring daggers at Gio.
Allie rolled her eyes. “Go ahead and write me up. I don’t care.” She disappeared behind the partition before emerging from the double doors that Gio had previously demanded we be let through. Waving a hand, she called over. “This way. Follow me.”
Gio wasted no time, hustling after his cousin’s wife through the open pit of the emergency room, not stopping until we reached a bank of elevators. While we waited for one to arrive, he spoke gruffly to the woman beside us. “Thank you.”
