"There's one more thing," Dr. Patterson said carefully. "Because of the head injury and the bleeding, we need to be cautious with medications. Some pain medications can affect clotting. We're keeping her on a minimal dose, which means she might experience significant pain when she wakes up. We'll manage it carefully, but I want you to be prepared."
"Whatever it takes to keep them both safe," I said.
He nodded and left me alone with my unconscious wife. Angelina looked so small in the hospital bed. Her skin was ashen, making the bruises on her face stand out in stark relief. The bandage on her temple was pristine white against the dried blood they hadn't quite cleaned from her hairline. An IV dripped fluids and carefully monitored medication into her arm.
But she was breathing. Her heart was beating steady on the monitor. She was alive. They were. I took her hand, careful of the IV, and brought it to my lips.
"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I promised to keep you safe and I failed. But I swear to you, Angelina—he won't get another chance. I'll end this tonight."
Her fingers twitched slightly in mine.
"That's it, sweetheart," I murmured. "Come back to me. I need you to wake up so I can tell you about our baby. So I can see your face when you find out we're going to be parents."
A soft knock at the door. Matvey entered, his expression grim.
"Status?" I asked without looking away from Angelina.
"Top floor is secured. Only authorized medical personnel with verified credentials allowed up. Her friends are in rooms down the hall. Karla's out of surgery, doing fine. Shoulder wound was clean, no major damage. The others are shaken but uninjured. We've got eyes on all of them."
"Good."
"There's more." He moved closer, lowering his voice. "We found the shooter's car abandoned three blocks from the scene. Stolen plates, wiped clean. But traffic cams caught the driver's face."
He handed me a tablet showing a grainy but clear image of a man in his thirties, tattooed neck, dead eyes.
"Recognize him?"
"No. But I sent it to our contacts in the Seattle PD. They ID'd him as Andre Smith. Former military, dishonorably discharged, now works as muscle for hire."
"And who hired him?"
"Working on it. His last known address was in Tacoma. We've got people on the way."
"When you find him, bring him to me alive. I want to know everything." I looked back at Angelina. "And double the security. If Vincent hired one shooter, he might have hired others."
"Already done. I've got twelve men on this floor, rotating shifts. Nothing gets through."
I nodded, satisfied. With Matvey running security, the hospital was probably safer than Fort Knox.
But still?—
"I want to move her," I said. "As soon as the doctors clear it. Bring her home where I can control the environment completely."
"Dr. Patterson says minimum seventy-two hours. They need to make sure the bleeding doesn't worsen and that she wakes up without complications."
Seventy-two hours. Three days of my wife being vulnerable in a place I couldn't completely control. But I'd make it work. I had to.
Night fell. Angelina's friends came to visit one by one. Charmaine with tears streaming down her face, Lisa pale and shaking, Imani cold with fury, Karla drugged but insisting she needed to see that Angelina was okay despite the bandages on her shoulder.
I let them in for a few minutes each, then sent them back to their rooms to rest under guard. Marco arrived around nine, going straight to Imani's room. I heard raised voices, her anger, his concern, before it went quiet. Good. She needed someone right now, and my brother was surprisingly good at being there when it mattered.
My father came and went, updating me on the search for Vincent. No luck yet. The ankle monitor showed him at a hotel in Bellevue, but when our people checked, the room was empty. He'd cut the monitor off and run. Smart but desperate. And now he was in the wind with nothing left to lose.
Around midnight, a nurse came in to check Angelina's vitals, one I recognized from earlier rounds.
"How is she?" I asked.
"Stable. Blood pressure is good, heart rate steady. No signs of increased intracranial pressure, which is excellent." She made notes on her chart. "Dr. Patterson will be by in the morning to do another neuro assessment."
