Chapter 10 - The Sovereign's Protection
Dante did not look back at the sobbing woman crumpled against the hospital wall. He walked past her with the absolute indifference of an emperor stepping over garbage in the street.
Two heavily armed men in dark suits—Dante’s personal Sicilian bodyguards, who had just arrived via the executive elevators—stepped into the corridor. They did not need instructions. One look at Dante’s face, followed by a glance at Emily’s degrading uniform, told them everything. With silent, terrifying efficiency, the two men seized Vanessa Laurent by her bare arms, hauling her upright as she kicked and shrieked, dragging her toward the heavy service doors that led down to the private subterranean garage. Her diamond necklace snapped in the struggle, scattering hundreds of glittering stones across the Crema Marfil marble like frozen tears, before the heavy doors swung shut, cutting off her screams forever.
Dante returned to Examination Room 4B.
The anger that had transformed him into a demon evaporated the instant his eyes found Emily again.
She was still leaning against the doorway, but her strength was entirely gone. Her eyelids fluttered, her breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps, her body beginning to slide downward toward the floor.
Dante moved with blinding, effortless speed.
Before her knees could touch the stone, his massive, muscular arms were around her. He caught her securely against his chest, one arm wrapping around her shoulders to support her neck, the other sliding beneath the heavy, rounded swell of her eight-month twin belly, taking the crushing physical burden of the pregnancy entirely onto his own body.
With a swift, decisive motion of his shoulders, Dante shrugged off his bespoke black wool suit jacket.
The three-thousand-dollar garment, lined with pure black Italian silk and smelling of his signature cedarwood and amber cologne, fell over Emily’s shivering frame. Dante carefully, deliberately wrapped the heavy black fabric around her, covering the humiliating short skirt, shielding the cheap white scalloped collar, and concealing the stained, degrading lace apron beneath the impenetrable armor of his own colors.
He lifted her entirely off the floor.
Emily weighed almost nothing beneath the immense volume of her pregnant stomach. She buried her face into the crook of Dante’s neck, her tears soaking into his black silk shirt, her trembling hands clutching the lapels of his jacket as if it were the only solid thing in a drowning universe.
“I’m sorry,” Dante choked out, his voice finally breaking as he carried her across the threshold into the warmth of the examination room. “Forgive me, Emily. Forgive me, my love. I was blind. I was a fool.”
Dr. Harrison stepped into the room immediately behind them, gesturing toward the wide, motorized obstetrical bed. “Lay her down, Mr. Russo. We need to administer intravenous fluids and magnesium sulfate immediately to stop the contractions. If we can stabilize her vitals, we can delay delivery by forty-eight hours to give the babies’ lungs time to mature.”
Dante laid Emily onto the clean white sheets with an agonizing, reverent tenderness. He did not let go of her hand. He pulled up a stainless steel chair, sitting directly beside the mattress, his large, tattooed fingers threading tightly through her bruised, swollen knuckles.
He leaned over the bed, his lips pressing against her damp forehead, then against her tear-stained cheek, and finally down against the crest of his bespoke jacket where it covered his twin sons.
“You did it, Emily,” Dante whispered, his brown eyes shining with unshed tears and an ancient, unbreakable vow of blood and devotion. “You kept them alive. You kept my sons safe.”
Emily looked up at him through her tears, the terrifying exhaustion in her face finally giving way to a soft, fragile peace. The nightmare was over. The scullery maid had returned to her throne, and the king was home.
Dante turned his head toward the door, where his lead lieutenant stood waiting in the shadows of the corridor, ready for orders.
Dante’s eyes hardened into twin shards of black ice.
“Lock down this entire hospital wing,” Dante commanded, his voice cold, final, and absolute. “Fifty men on the perimeter. No one enters without my personal clearance. And tell the family council that by sunrise tomorrow, every single person who stepped foot inside my house while my wife wore that uniform will be hunted to the ends of the earth.”
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The lieutenant bowed his head and vanished into the amber light.
Dante turned back to his wife, his hand resting warm and immovable over the two heartbeats beneath the black wool, sealing Chicago in terrifying silence as the reign of retribution began.
