Page 303 of Ricardo

A son in the bed.

A child inside the woman asleep against me.

A bastard somewhere outside these walls who put one in danger and sent men to take the other from me before I even knew it existed.

My jaw clenches.

Harrison Winthrop.

The name has become insistent in the back of my skull.

I know there is a plan in motion. I know we are gathering footage and connecting dots. Luca is using his connections to pull threads attached to other women Harrison has hurt. Our people and Luca’s are working together to take down a powerful family.

Everyone is doing exactly what needs to be done.

Correctly.

Slowly.

I hate it.

My hands remain still because Julia is sleeping against me, and I refuse to wake her with the violence inside me. But in my mind, I am already at Harrison’s throat. I have been there since the moment I saw Dante’s blood on Julia’s hands. Since I understood just who put it there.

And I know this process is not going to be quick. I know before I ever get my hands on Harrison that we have to take down the family. That may take months, and I have to be patient.

But I want my hands around his throat now.

I've never had a problem with patience before. Not before that bastard came after what's mine.

He had entered her home and turned her safe place into one where she had to watch my son almost die, where she had to keep him alive with her bare hands.

My eyes move from Dante to the glass wall beyond the room and the life there.

Out of necessity, the rooms in the ICU are all made of glass. It feels like too much exposure where there should be privacy. There's movement where there should be peace.

Even now, nurses pass with computers on rolling carts. A doctor in blue scrubs stops at the station, speaks to someone briefly, then moves on. Across the hall, I see an older man sleeping with a breathing tube in his throat while a woman sits beside his bed with a paperback she isn’t reading.

A nurse adjusts a medication bag in another room.

A family stands outside a door of yet another room, speaking in low voices to a doctor. One of them cries silently into a tissue.

Death moves through this place as frequently as life.

I hate that Dante is here.

And I hate that Julia spends the first days of her pregnancy in these walls. I hate that she knows this room well enough to know which chair is more comfortable, which nurse will bring extra blankets without a fuss, and which vending machine is a hopeless cause.

She shifts slightly in her sleep, burrowing into me.

I lower my mouth to her hair and breathe her in.

Almond lotion and hospital soap mingle on her hands. The combination is wrong.

For a moment, the memory of last night cuts through my thoughts.

Her at my window. Her hands on my chest. Her lips on my skin when she said she missed me. Her body beneath mine as we joined.

Celebrate with me.