Cormack walked toward him slowly. “Leave.”
Yara’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”
“Take your father and leave this hospital.”
Aurelio regarded him. “Careful.”
“No. You be careful.” Cormack’s voice dropped. “Whatever alliance you thought you had with me, whatever marriage contract your people drafted, whatever future you imagined with your blood in my house—it ends here.”
Yara stared at him as if he had slapped her.
“You’re ending an alliance over her?” she asked.
Cormack looked at the operating room doors. “No. I’m ending a lie.”
Aurelio’s polite mask faded.
“That is unfortunate,” he said.
“It usually is.”
For several seconds, no one moved.
Then Aurelio placed a hand on Yara’s back and guided her away.
As they disappeared down the corridor, Cormack saw Yara look back once.
There was no heartbreak in her face.
Only calculation.
Hours passed without mercy.
Cormack saw his daughter through glass.
She was impossibly small beneath wires and tubes, though the nurse told him her weight was good for her gestational age. Her skin was flushed dark pink, her tiny chest rising with the assistance of a machine. One fist curled beside her face, no bigger than a walnut.
Mara.
He pressed his palm to the glass.
A nurse in the NICU asked if he wanted to touch her.
His first instinct was to say no.
His hands had done too many things.
But then Mara moved. Barely. A twitch of fingers. A stubborn little announcement that she was there, that she had survived being dragged into his world by blood and secrecy and bad timing.
So Cormack washed his hands for a full three minutes.
He scrubbed beneath the nails. Around the rings. Up to the wrists.
When he reached into the incubator and touched one finger gently to Mara’s foot, she kicked him.
The nurse smiled. “Strong girl.”
Cormack stared.
“Yes,” he said hoarsely. “She is.”
By evening, the hospital had changed its rhythm. Day visitors left. Night staff arrived. Corridors dimmed. The world outside the windows turned blue, then black, Chicago glittering beyond the glass like a city made of knives.
Brin remained unconscious in cardiac ICU.
Cormack was not allowed inside for long, but he stood beside her bed for seven minutes under the watch of a nurse built like a prison guard.
Brin looked less pale now, but not better. Machines breathed and measured and complained around her. Her hair had been braided loosely to one side. Someone had cleaned her face. Without the pain twisting her features, she looked young.
Too young for what he had done to her.
Cormack stood with his hands at his sides.
“I met her,” he said quietly. “Mara.”
Brin did not move.
“She kicked me.” His mouth almost became a smile. “You’d have liked that.”
The ventilator hissed.
“I didn’t know,” he said. “But I should have. That’s the part I can’t get away from. I should have made sure you were safe before I walked away. I should have come back myself. I should have burned every bridge between us instead of letting another man stand on it.”
Still nothing.
He looked at her face.
“Luca knew,” he said. “I’m going to find out why.”
The monitor kept its steady rhythm.
Cormack leaned closer. “And I made you a promise. I heard you. I’ll keep it.”
A nurse stepped in. “Time.”
Cormack straightened.
As he turned to leave, Brin’s fingers moved.
So slightly he thought he imagined it.
Then her lips parted around the tube, unable to form sound.
Cormack moved back instantly. “Brin?”
Her eyelids fluttered.
The nurse came closer. “Ms. Holloway? Can you hear me?”
Brin’s eyes opened halfway, unfocused and glassy. They drifted, found Cormack, and filled with panic.
He took one step forward. “You’re safe.”
Her fingers scratched weakly against the sheet.
The nurse checked the monitor. “Try not to speak.”
Brin’s gaze burned into Cormack’s with desperate force.
Her hand moved again.
Writing.
Cormack looked around. “Give her something.”
“She shouldn’t—”
