“I’m bleeding too much,” her tone resigned, defeated, and it cut him.
“Yeah, and you will be fine,” he grit out. “Don’t you dare give up. Not now. Not after all this.”
“I’m so tired, Dante,” she whispered, and something in her voice made his gut clench.
“I know, baby.”
“I just want to sleep.”
No, this wasn’t good. “Just stay awake a little longer, yeah? Keep me company. We’re almost there.”
“You know,” she began. “I used to have nightmares in the beginning about that place. That someone would drag me there again, and I wanted to die before it ever happened.”
Fuck, he wanted to murder every asshole who had been involved all over again.
“But I never understood why they took me,” she mused, her fingers playing with the hem of the bloodied shirt. “I was no one. And yet, they kept asking me questions like I knew so much.”
He let her talk, glad that she was staying awake.
“They asked me if they should tell you your little girlfriend was there,” she huffed a laugh. “I wasn’t anything to you then.”
She was wrong. “You were always something to me. I just didn’t know what it was.”
“I don’t even know when my feelings for you changed,” she continued, adjusting in her seat. “I used to dream you would be my first kiss, you know. But it was a dream. You were so far away.”
“I’m not anymore,” he pointed out, and she turned her head to look at him, her green eyes somber.
“You saved me from my nightmares then, and you saved me from them now,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “Thank you.”
Hit by the emotion in her voice, Dante kept his eyes on the road, taking her bloody hand and kissing it. “You’re mine, Amara. Mine to cherish, mine to protect, mine to love. We may not be husband and wife to the world but I have been married to you in my heart for eight years. And no matter what comes at us, we will get through it together. We build our empire together. No more running. Promise me.”
“Even if we lose the baby and I can’t give you any more?”
He tightened his grip on her hand. “Even then.”
Swallowing, she pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “No more running.”
With that, he swerved into the hospital emergency parking and prayed for both his woman and his child to be safe.
They lost a baby.
They didn’t lose another.
It was in the hospital, lying on white sheets while Dante got his side stitched, refusing to leave her when the middle-aged female doctor had come in with the news.
She’d been eight-week pregnant with twins, and one of them had latched onto her strong enough to make it through the ordeal while the other hadn’t made it.
She was still pregnant but she had lost a baby.
She didn’t know what to feel.
The doctor said it was a phenomenon called the ‘vanishing twin syndrome’ that wasn’t as rare as people believed. It was odd, the sense of loss interlinked with the sense of euphoria she was feeling. Looking at Dante, she saw the same reflected back at her, the emotion intense on his face, his eyes on her stomach as the doctor checked her with a stethoscope.
“It’s too early to know the gender,” the doctor told them. “But the ultrasound showed this little one doing well. However, I have to urge you to be careful throughout the whole pregnancy. The miscarriage puts you at high risk.”
Amara nodded, still processing the grief and the relief.
“Anything specific we should be doing, doctor?” Dante asked from her side, his hand holding hers, his gaze determined.
“For now, I would suggest refraining from any strenuous physical or mental exertion,” the doctor said. “We’ll keep monitoring as we go.”
Dante nodded. “And sex?”
Amara felt her face flush as the doctor smiled. “It should be okay. Just be careful not to put any pressure on her stomach or be too wild.”
Dante stood up, still shirtless but completely clean, a bandage on his side, wearing scrub pants he’d taken from a male nurse. He’d drawn a line at donning a gown and the female nurse hadn’t minded too much, not with the way her eyes had been drinking in his torso. It had made Amara both laugh and sympathize with the woman. She knew how it felt.
“Oh my god, are you okay?!”
The feminine voice from the door had Amara turning to see Morana standing there, her hair in a loopy bun, wearing black leggings and a yellow billowy top, her rectangular glasses on her nose, her hazel eyes wide with concern, and a very rigid Tristan looming behind her.
Lips turning up in a smile at seeing two of her favorite people, she waved them in as the doctor left.
Morana rushed to perch herself on the space by her bed, her eyes going to Dante’s shirtless chest that he deliberately flexed because he knew it would rile Tristan up.
On cue, Tristan glared at him. “Don’t you have a shirt?”
Dante grinned. “Actually, no, I don’t Tristan.”
Tristan sighed, and Amara chuckled as Morana leaned forward to hug her.
“I’m here for anything you need, okay?” she whispered in Amara’s ear.
Amara squeezed her back, her heart full, glad every single day that she’d trusted this girl, both for her sake and Tristan’s.
Tristan leaned down and gave her a kiss on the cheek, something he had never done before, and focused his blue eyes on her. “Don’t disappear again like that.”
Those five words were enough to let her know that he’d been worried. Over the years, while he had never spoken much to her, he had been there for her time and time again, keeping that promise he’d made to her in the garage. Amara blinked back her tears, nodding.
“Did you find anything?” Dante’s voice broke their moment, his demeanor grave.
Morana pushed up her glasses and exchanged a look with Tristan.
“We did,” she answered. “I flagged two calls right after you left for Los Fortis. One was made by Vin, and one by Nerea.”
Dante tightened his fingers around Amara’s. “Did Vin check out?”
Morana hesitated. “I think so. I mean he was in Shadow Port at the time so I kept an eye on him. He didn’t do anything except make a call, but he’s been cagey. I don’t know.”
Amara felt her head begin to shake before Morana had stopped speaking. “I don’t care how cagey he’s being, Vinnie would never, and I mean never, do anything like that.”
“He was there, Amara,” Tristan spoke quietly from the side. “When you were taken, he was there.”
“And you didn’t see him fight to save me,” Amara countered, her voice straining. “It’s not him. He might be shady with other people but he would never, ever hurt me.”
“I believe that,” Dante supported her claim. “I’ve known him for a long time, especially with Amara. He would lay his life for her.”
Morana nodded. “I trust your judgments on this. And anyways, Nerea was being cagier than Vin.”
Amara felt her heart drop. While she wasn’t particularly close to Nerea, she was still her half-sister. Amara had come to care for the woman.