Chapter 4 - The St. Jude Hospital Ward
The private VIP wing of St. Jude Medical Center in downtown Seattle smelled of fresh bleached linen and expensive antiseptic. Outside the window, the morning sun was finally beginning to burn through the gray Pacific Northwest overcast, casting a pale, weak light across the sterile white walls.
I woke up slowly.
My eyelids felt like they were lined with lead, and a sharp, metallic taste coated my tongue. An IV line was taped securely to the back of my right hand, feeding a steady drip of saline into my veins.
"Easy, Sloan. Don't try to sit up too fast."
The voice came from the shadows near the corner of the room. It was deep, rich, and instantly recognizable—a voice I hadn't heard in a decade, yet one that had haunted every quiet moment of my adult life.
My head snapped toward the sound.
Sitting in a leather armchair beside the bed, dressed in a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms and his suit jacket draped over the back of the chair, sat Damian Cross.
He looked older, harder, and infinitely more dangerous than he had in Chicago. The sharp lines of his jaw were cast in shadow, the pale scar across his collarbone barely visible beneath the open collar of his shirt, and his dark hair was slightly tousled as if he had run his hands through it a hundred times during the night.
But it was his eyes that stopped my heart. They were fixed entirely on me, burning with a mix of fury, relief, and an agonizing, profound hunger.
"Damian..." I choked out, my voice raspy and dry.
"Don't talk," he said, standing up and pouring a small cup of water from a plastic pitcher on the bedside table. He stepped closer, sliding one large hand gently behind my neck to support my weight as he held the cup to my lips. "Drink slowly."
I swallowed the cool water greedily, my strength slowly returning. I pushed myself up against the pillows, pulling the hospital blanket up to my chest.
"Where... where are the girls?" I asked, panic instantly spiking in my chest. "Where are Hazel and Iris?"
"They're fine," Damian said, his tone instantly smoothing out, though his jaw remained tightly clenched. "They're asleep in the executive family suite down the hall. Mrs. Gable, my trusted housekeeper, is watching over them with a detail of four armed men outside the door. Nobody is getting near them, Sloan."
I let out a shaky breath, closing my eyes. "Thank God... Wait. Armed men?"
"You collapsed from severe physical exhaustion, chronic dehydration, and acute malnutrition, Sloan," Damian said, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous growl as he pulled the chair closer to the bed and sat down. "Your body simply shut down after months of working eighty-hour weeks to support a household while living on black coffee and toast. Care to explain why my daughters were living like refugees while you built sustainable housing projects for ungrateful corporations?"
My eyes snapped open. The defensive fire that had kept me alive for ten years flared up instantly.
"Don't you dare judge me, Damian Cross!" I snapped, pulling back against the pillows. "You know damn well why I left Chicago! You know what your world looks like! Blood on the carpets, rival syndicates blowing up warehouses, enemies leaving dead bodies on your front lawn—I couldn't raise children in a war zone!"
"So you ran," Damian whispered, standing up slowly. His imposing frame towered over the hospital bed, casting a dark shadow across my face. "You ran across the country, changed your name on professional architectural registries, and hid my children from me for eight years."
"I protected them!" I shouted, tears hot and angry spilling over my lashes. "I gave them a normal life! They go to public school, they play soccer in the park, they have bedtime stories and birthday parties without armed guards standing by the cake! You think I wanted to raise them alone? Do you have any idea how many nights I sat at that dining room table crying into my blueprints because I was terrified I couldn't afford their dental checkups?"
Damian didn't yell back. That was what terrified me the most. He stood there, completely still, his chest rising and falling slowly.
"You should have called me, Sloan," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "You could have taken every dollar I own. You could have stripped my accounts bare, taken my cars, my houses, my entire empire, and I wouldn't have blinked an eye. But you denied me my daughters. You made me a ghost to my own flesh and blood."
"Because once you hold a child, Damian, you can't un-hold them," I whispered, my voice breaking. "And if your enemies had ever found out about Hazel and Iris... they would have used them to rip your heart out through your chest. I saved their lives by keeping them away from you."
Damian closed his distance, his large hands gripping the metal rails of the hospital bed so hard his knuckles turned white.
"Well, your secret is over, Sloan," he said, his voice dropping into a chilling, absolute decree. "The moment Hazel dialed my number tonight, the math changed. I am not letting you go back to that Fremont duplex. I am not letting you work yourself into an early grave."
May you like
"You can't control my life, Damian!"
"Watch me," he replied coldly. "Because as of right now, you, Hazel, and Iris are moving into my penthouse under round-the-clock protection. And we are going to figure out what it means to be a family... whether you like it or not."
