Chapter 4 - The Longest Night
By 5:30 AM, the specialist from Johns Hopkins, Dr. Emil Vance, arrived via Dante’s private chopper. The private wing was a hive of intense medical activity. Equipment was wheeled in, high-potency corticosteroid drips were initiated, and a cooling blanket was wrapped around Noah’s tiny frame to bring down his catastrophic 105.1-degree fever.
Harper sat on a couch in the corner of the private waiting room, her head buried in her hands. She was exhausted to her core, her emotional reserves completely spent.
Dante walked over, holding two paper cups. He sat down beside her and handed her one.
She looked at the cup. Black coffee, two sugars, a pinch of cinnamon. Exactly how she had ordered it six years ago at the coffee shop where they first met.
Harper looked at him, startled. “You remembered.”
“I remember everything about you, Harper,” Dante said softly, looking straight ahead. “I remember the day you wore the yellow dress to the library. I remember the sound of your laugh when you beat me at chess. And I remember the note you left on the kitchen counter five years ago.”
Harper took a slow sip of the hot liquid. “I had to leave, Dante.”
“I know,” he said quietly.
Harper turned her head toward him, surprised. “You know?”
“After you left, I was furious,” Dante admitted, his gray eyes dark with old shadows. “I ordered my men to search every state. But three weeks after you vanished, my rival, the Moretti family, bombed my primary office building. Two of my closest lieutenants died. If you had still been with me... if you had been carrying my baby in that house... you would have been targeted.”
He turned to look at her. “I realized that my world was poison for you. So when your lawyer served the divorce papers, I signed them. I pulled my men back. I let you go because I thought it was the only way to keep you alive.”
Harper’s breath hitched. “You let me go on purpose?”
“I never stopped loving you,” Dante whispered, touching her cheek gently with the back of his fingers. “Not for a single second. But I believed you were better off without my blood on your hands.”
Before Harper could process his words, Dr. Vance stepped out of Noah’s room, removing his mask.
Both Harper and Dante jumped to their feet.
“Doctor?” Harper asked, her heart pounding in her throat.
Dr. Vance offered a weary, hopeful smile. “The corticosteroid therapy worked. The swelling in his brain stem has stopped advancing, and his fever has finally dropped to 100.2. He is breathing on his own now.”
Harper let out a breathless sob of pure relief, her knees giving out. Dante caught her around the waist, pulling her flush against his chest, burying his face in her hair.
“He’s going to make it, Ms. Lane,” Dr. Vance added. “He’s a very strong little boy. He pulled through the worst of it.”
“Can we see him?” Dante asked, his voice strained with emotion.
“Yes. He’s resting comfortably now.”
They walked back into the room together. Noah looked far better; the bright red flush was gone from his cheeks, replaced by a peaceful, natural sleep.
Dante knelt by the bed, taking Noah’s hand again. He kissed the back of his son’s small fingers.
May you like
For the first time in five years, Harper felt a ray of light break through the heavy dark clouds that had hung over her life. But outside the hospital window, in the dim glow of dawn, black sedans were pulling up to the street below.
Danger was coming.
