By the time I recognized the woman on the emergency gurney, my phone had already slipped out of my hand and hit the carpet outside the VIP waiting lounge.
I still remember the sound.
A dull little thud.
Small.
Meaningless.
Nothing like the sound inside my chest when I saw her face.
Brin Holloway.
For one second, everything else in Northwestern Memorial disappeared.
The television in the corner with the silent home renovation show.
The faint smell of antiseptic and expensive lilies.
The glass doors.
The polished floors.
The men I had stationed outside.
The woman beside me in the waiting chair pressing one manicured hand to her stomach and asking me, again, to pay attention.
All of it went dim.
There was only the gurney.
Only Brin.
She was drenched in sweat, her skin so white it looked almost blue under the fluorescent lights.
Her dark hair was stuck to her temples.
An oxygen mask fogged and cleared over her mouth in quick, panicked bursts.
One hand clawed at the rail.
Under the thin hospital blanket, her stomach rose in the unmistakable shape of a full-term pregnancy.
A doctor in scrubs jogged alongside her and barked into a radio.
“Blood pressure dropping.”
“Thirty-eight weeks.”
“Possible PPCM.
Get OB and cardio in place now.”
PPCM.
Peripartum cardiomyopathy.
I didn’t know much about medicine, but I knew enough to hear the danger in the room.
Brin didn’t see me.
Or maybe she did and didn’t have the strength to react.
Her eyes were half-open, glassy with pain, and then the double doors swallowed her.
Just like that.
Gone.
My bodyguard Royce stepped inside from the hallway and lowered his voice.
“Boss.
That’s the old bartender from Vesper Row, right? Want me to find out where they’re taking her?”
I was still staring at the doors.
“No.”
He blinked.
“No?”
“No one touches her.
No one pressures anyone.
No one says her name.
Stay back.”
That was the moment Yara stood up behind me.
“Cormack,” she said sharply, “who is that?”
I didn’t answer.
I couldn’t.
Because the math had already started in my head, and every answer led to the same place.
Nine months.
Nine months since the apartment above the club.
Nine months since Brin sat on the edge of my bed in one of my shirts, looking at me with red-rimmed eyes and asking, very softly, whether I ever got tired of pretending I had no heart.
Nine months since I told her she didn’t belong in my world.
Nine months since I put on my jacket, left cash on the counter like a coward, and walked out while she cried behind me.
I told myself it was protection.
That was the lie I used because the truth was uglier.
The truth was that loving anyone in my life was dangerous, and leaving had felt cleaner than staying long enough to become weak.
I had spent years building a reputation around that belief.
Men obeyed me because I was decisive.
Ruthless when necessary.
Calm under pressure.
I ran laundering channels through tech shells and shipping through private docks.
I handled things before they became threats.
I answered to no one except power itself.
But power is a useless thing in a maternity corridor.
I crossed the floor and reached
