“Cal, what—”
He held up a finger and placed another call on the landline. “It’s Cal. I need you to hold an OR open for me. Yeah. Is she still there? Good. Tell her I need her to assist.”
“Cal, how bad is it?”
“I’m not going to lie to you, Ellie. Bri’s slipped into a coma. I don’t have her charts or images yet, but aside from her obvious injuries, I believe she has a fractured skull and internal injuries.”
She swallowed a sob and knelt beside the bed, taking her sister’s hand in hers. “Did we hurt her when we moved her, Cal? Did we make it worse?”
“The five-hour drive here didn’t do her any favors. But I honestly have no idea how she walked out of that hospital on her own.” He crouched beside the bed and took Bri’s other hand in his, placing his fingers around Bri’s slender wrist, monitoring her pulse. “She’s tough, stubborn too. A fighter just like you. If anyone can pull through, it’s your sister.”
“Can you keep Richard, her husband, away from her at the hospital? You can’t let him near her, Cal.”
“I’ll do what I can. But unless she brought charges against him, Ellie, we’ll have a hard time keeping him away. If he brings lawyers into it, there won’t be anything we can do to stop him.”
But Ellie could. She could go to Dimitri Ivanov with her mother and show the man what Richard had done to his daughter. Ellie placed Cal’s phone on the foot of the bed and then lifted her own, taking photos of her sister. She sent them to her mother.
“Ellie, the hospital in Charlotte will have taken a full set of images. I should have them within the hour.”
She nodded. She couldn’t tell him why she needed the photos. No one could know what she was going to do.
“Ellie, get out. Get out now.”
“Why? Oh God, no,” she cried when he started chest compressions. As Ellie stumbled from the room, she heard him say, “Come on, baby. Don’t give up now.”
“What is it? What’s wrong?” her grandfather said when Ellie leaned against the wall outside the room, tears streaming down her cheeks.
She couldn’t bring herself to tell him that Cal was trying to revive her sister. “Cal has to operate on Bri. The ambulance is on…Thank God,” she cried at the sound of sirens. She ran down the hall to the reception area and opened the door. The ambulance was backed up to the porch. “She’s in here.” She waved the paramedics inside. Joe, Ryder, and the judge moved out of the way.
They stood huddled together in the reception area, waiting for the paramedics to come out of the room with Bri on a stretcher. It felt like an hour had passed but it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes when they rushed past with her sister. Cal’s long-legged strides ate up the distance between them, his entire focus on Bri.
As if he’d just remembered they were there, he stopped and turned. “I don’t know how long she’ll be in surgery. But prepare for a long night. I’ll talk to you after it’s over,” he said, then jogged to the ambulance and jumped inside, closing the doors behind him.
“Grandpa, can you and Jonathan take Ryder and Toby to Mallory’s? I’ll meet you at the hospital. Mom’s on her way. I have to wait for her.”
“I’ll drive,” the judge said, taking the keys from her grandfather’s shaking hand.
Ellie called Mallory and explained the situation. “Of course, bring him right over. He can stay the night. I’ll go to the hospital as soon as Gabe comes home. Sometimes it helps to have a go-between. But Ellie, you couldn’t ask for a better surgeon than Cal. Bri’s going to pull through this.”
She talked for a few minutes with Mallory. Then she disconnected and called her grandmother and Sadie. She had a feeling they were halfway out the door before she’d said goodbye. She hugged her grandfather and the judge as they left, promising to see them soon.
She stopped Ryder with a hand on his arm. “Are you okay staying with Mallory and Gabe?”
“Yeah, but I’d kind of like to be at the hospital for Joe and the judge. They might need me.”
Ellie hugged him. “Has anyone told you lately what an amazing kid you are?”
“Yeah, you. Yesterday.” He smiled. “So is it okay if I go to the hospital?”
“Of course. Just drop Toby off at Mallory and Gabe’s. I’m sure the boys won’t mind looking after him, and I don’t want him staying here on his own.”
Ellie’s mother pulled into the parking lot fifteen minutes after they’d left. Ellie had locked everything up tight, grateful that the executives from Happy Ever After Entertainment had left earlier that day. She ran to her mother’s SUV.
“How is she, Ellie? How’s Brianna?”
“She’s in surgery, Mom.”
Her mother nodded as she backed out of the parking lot, nearly taking out the inn’s sign. She slammed on the brakes. They jerked to a stop, and her mother pressed her forehead against the steering wheel. “Maybe you should drive to the hospital, Elliana.”
“We’re not going to the hospital, Mom. Not yet.”
“I don’t understand. Why aren’t we going to the hospital? We need to be there, Elliana. We need to be there for Brianna.”
“Right now, there’s nothing we can do at the hospital for Bri. She’s safe where she is. Cal will make sure she pulls through this. I know he will. But Mom, they can’t stop Richard. If he goes in there with a lawyer and says he wants Bri transferred to another hospital, they won’t be able to stop him. He never told us she was hurt, Mom. Not a word. But Brianna’s father, he can stop Richard. We’re going to Dimitri Ivanov’s.”
Her mother stared at her. “How did you know? How did you know Dimitri was Bri’s father?”
She told her mother about Dimitri showing up at the inn yesterday. “I don’t think he’d let a man who would do this to his daughter near her, do you?” She held up her phone, pictures of her sister open on the screen.
Ellie felt like she was betraying her father. She knew how much he loved Bri. Knew he would do anything to protect her. But he didn’t have the ability to control Richard. Dimitri Ivanov did.
Her mother covered her mouth. “No. No, he wouldn’t,” she whispered into her hand.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Nate rubbed his eyes and reached for his cup of coffee. It was cold. “I’m getting too old for this,” he said to Chase, who sat beside him at the table, looking annoyingly wide awake.
They’d worked twenty-four hours straight, and they weren’t any closer to providing the evidence required for a search warrant of Dimitri Ivanov’s vacation home and offices.
“Have you been taking a nap every time you leave the boardroom?”
Chase huffed a laugh. “No. I’m used to working on little to no sleep. Michaela barely slept when her molars were coming in. Wait until you have a kid—you’ll see what I mean.”
An image of Nate holding a baby girl who looked just like her mother, all big purple eyes and wavy black hair, came to mind, and instead of feeling panic tighten every muscle in his chest, he smiled. He got up from the table and tossed his cold coffee in the garbage. Obviously, he was sleep deprived.