How much is Bellamy going to have to go through? What happens if she dies or the twins are lost? Sebastian won’t come back from that. The children won’t either. I’m not sure I will. It’ll be the final straw in our family’s story. The nail in our coffin.
Dread tears through me with the speed and precision of a bullet. This car ride feels never-ending as the minutes tick by with impossible slowness.
Gabe is quiet. He didn’t ask me anything about Marcella, and I didn’t offer, but he heard the end of my conversation with her. He worked late into the evening, searching for anything that could relate to Marie and the tiara.
But like a ghost, Marie materialized and was gonewithout a trace. No more fingerprints. The camera images we have of her aren’t much to go by. She was wearing all black, had her hair off her face, and had a hood over her head. She kept her head down as if she were aware of where the cameras were.
All we have is her old employee photograph, but that’s more than twenty years old. She’s aged. She could have had plastic surgery to alter her appearance. We don’t know what type of car she was driving or what alias she goes by now. All we know is that she’s alive, knows how to stay under the radar, and stole back Desta’s tiara.
It’s maddening.
Yet I can’t stop. I have to keep searching for her.
It felt less tangible before.
The onesie, the tiara, the blanket, even the newspaper clipping were old. They were discovered recently, yes, but they were from the time right after Desta was taken. After that, I was following small leads. Tiny events that made me think I was onto tracking Marie, which I likely wasn’t.
But this is real. It’s renewed hope.
This is her right on the edge of my fingertips but just out of reach.
Gabe enters the hospital ahead of me, and I keep my head tucked down. Sebastian told me they have Bellamy on the labor and delivery unit in a special room, and when we arrive on the floor, it’s easy to see that the word is out that the queen is here. Two attendants are stationed down the hall, but the whispers aren’t quiet. Neither are the looks we get as we walk down the hall.
I give a nod to the nurses, noting a few blushes and flirty waves.
The old me would have loved that. I might have even taken a few of them up on that to cut the edge off all this shit inside me that I can’t control or stop. But now the thought of sex withanyone other than Marcella feels empty. Flat. Wholly unappealing.
Sebastian is out in the hall on the phone when I approach, but the moment he spots me, everything I heard in his voice on the phone is right there in his features.
“Thank you, Aunt. I’ll keep you updated.” He ends the calls and puts his phone back in his pocket. “The children are happy,” he says instead of a greeting. “Althea just informed me that she and your Marcella are taking them swimming and after that, they’re going to bake something with extra chocolate. I didn’t ask what, nor do I care.”
I grasp his shoulder. “Tell me what’s happening with your Bellamy.”
He cracks. Right here before my eyes, my older brother, the king of my country, my eternal rock, cracks. It breaks me apart. My stomach twists painfully, and my breath is robbed from my lungs. I heave out breath after breath, and fuck, I’m legit about to cry.
“They think she has something called HELLP syndrome. It’s rare, but it can happen with twins. It affects her blood and liver. They were surprised it came on so fast for her.”
I curse under my breath in Russian. “But she’s here. They caught it.”
“She complained of a headache last night and went to bed early. But she’s had a lot of headaches, so I didn’t think anything about it. This morning when I got up to work out, she was still asleep, and I didn’t wake her, figuring she needed the extra rest. She’s been swollen and having some rib pain. Bellamy told me it was likely typical end-of-pregnancy stuff. Especially with twins. I didn’t question it. I have no clue what Nora went through when she was pregnant. We didn’t…I mean, I was there during the pregnancies and part of them, but she and I…” He ends it there. “I’m not sure what would have happened if Marcella hadn’t been there and triggered the alarm.”
I shake my head. I can’t think about that.
“They have her on some medication that’s making her miserable,” he continues. “She says she’s hot, but also it’s making her sleepy and a bit lethargic. And they…they gave steroids to help the babies’ lungs mature because the likelihood that they’ll have to deliver the twins in the next day or two is very high. They said they can treat the syndrome, but they can’t reverse it. The longer this goes on, the greater the danger for all of them. The only way to fix this is for Bellamy to deliver.”
I gulp. “This early?” She’s barely thirty-one weeks.
“They’re trying to hold off, but yes, this early.”
“Fuck” slips out before I can stop it.
“Yes. Fuck is right.” His hands go to the top of his head. “Rowan?—”
“Don’t. Don’t say it and don’t think it. It won’t help anything.”
He swallows thickly and nods. “I love her more than my life. I can’t lose her. I can’t lose them.”
“You won’t.”
