Chapter 3 - THE FOUR WORDS|
The hospital smelled of disinfectant, wet coats, and fear.
Laura lay beneath a thin white blanket while Dr. Harris explained that the baby was stable but that the fall had caused a small placental bleed. They would monitor her overnight. She was not to walk without assistance, and she needed rest.
Rest.
The word felt almost insulting.
Her husband was somewhere across Miami hunting the people who had attacked his estate. His assistant had called twice to ask whether she needed anything. Dominic had not called once.
At 2:15 a.m., Laura asked the nurse for her phone.
There were seventeen missed calls from Marco, six from an unknown number, and none from Dominic.
She opened her messages.
Dominic's last text was from that afternoon.
Don't wait up. I may be late.
She stared at it until the letters blurred.
A nurse entered with a tray.
“Your husband called the front desk,” she said. “He asked whether you were awake.”
Laura looked up.
“What did you tell him?”
“That you were sleeping.”
“Thank you.”
The nurse hesitated.
“Would you like me to tell him you're awake?”
“No.”
The nurse nodded and left.
At dawn, Marco arrived carrying a paper bag and wearing the same suit from the night before. There was a fresh bandage across his temple.
“I brought coffee,” he said.
“I can't drink it.”
“Then I'll drink both.”
He sat beside the window.
Laura watched him for a while.
“Did Dominic find the shooter?”
“Two of them. One is dead. The other is in custody.”
“And Elena?”
“Safe.”
“Of course she is.”
“Laura—”
“Don't defend him.”
Marco looked down at the coffee.
“I wasn't going to.”
She studied his face.
“Did you know he would run to her?”
“No.”
“Did you know she was carrying something important?”
“I knew she had information about the Salazar organization.”
“That's not what I asked.”
Marco rubbed his thumb against the paper cup.
“No. I didn't know he would leave you.”
It was the first honest answer anyone had given her all night.
Laura turned toward the window.
“I want to go home.”
“Which home?”
She looked at him.
“The house I lived in before Dominic.”
“Your apartment?”
“My sister's place in Tampa. She still has the spare room.”
Marco frowned.
“You shouldn't travel yet.”
“Then arrange somewhere safe in Miami. Somewhere Dominic doesn't own.”
“Dominic will never agree.”
Laura's voice became very quiet.
“I'm not asking him.”
Marco did not answer.
Later that morning, Dominic finally called.
Laura watched his name illuminate the screen. She let it ring until it stopped.
He called again.
Then a message appeared.
We need to discuss last night. Don't make any decisions until I get home.
She read it twice.
Not Are you okay?
Not Is our baby okay?
Not even I'm sorry.
Just an instruction.
She asked Marco to bring her handbag. Inside it was a small notebook where she had written the names of pediatricians, the color she wanted for the nursery, and a list of things Dominic had promised to do before the baby arrived.
The last line read: Choose a name together.
She tore out the page.
“Can you get me a pen?”
Marco handed her one.
Laura wrote on a clean sheet of paper. Her hand shook, but she forced herself to keep the letters straight.
You chose your world. I choose our child.
Four words, she thought. Four words that could carry more weight than a thousand explanations.
She folded the paper and placed it inside her wedding ring.
Marco watched her.
“Are you sure?”
“No,” she said. “But I'm finished waiting for certainty from a man who won't tell me the truth.”
She removed the ring from her finger. The pale line beneath it looked strangely unfamiliar.
“Please give this to Dominic when he comes home.”
“Laura, you should give it to him yourself.”
“If I see him, he'll talk. He'll tell me there was a reason. He'll say he had to protect me. And I'll remember the man who sat on the bathroom floor with me when I was frightened, and I'll start believing that man is still enough.”
Her eyes filled.
“But I can't raise a child on memories of who he might be.”
Marco closed his hand around the folded paper and ring.
That afternoon, Laura left the hospital through a private entrance. A nurse helped her into a dark sedan. Marco had arranged two drivers and a route that avoided the estate.
As the car pulled away, Laura looked at the city disappearing behind the glass.
She did not know that Dominic had reached the hospital twenty minutes after she left.
She did not know he had stood outside her room holding a tiny white blanket he'd bought for their daughter.
And she did not know that, when he finally opened the folded paper, he would find the ring and four words that would haunt him for three years.
Because before he could read them, his phone rang.
A voice from the estate said, “Boss, we found something beneath the west wing.”
“What?”
“Blood, sir. A lot of it.”
“Whose?”
The guard hesitated.
“That's the problem. The trail begins where Mrs. Romano was supposed to have been taken after the attack.”
Dominic looked down at the ring in his hand.
May you like
Then the guard said the words that made the room turn cold.
“There's a tunnel under your house, boss. And somebody has been using it.”
