24. Chapter 24
twenty-four
Bianca
I was alive, but when the surgeon told me what it took to save my life, I almost wished I wasn’t. This wasn’t what I wanted, wasn’t what I wanted my future to become.
I burst into tears and couldn’t stop crying long enough to hear the words Mark whispered to me as he held me. The words were quiet, but his tone was reassuring. It calmed me, gave me hope that none of this was a deal breaker for him.
Because Angelo may have been aiming for something more final, but the bullet tore through my torso, into my uterus. I was alive, but Mark and I wouldn’t be making a family of our own now or ever. The doctors said it was no longer possible.
The tears wouldn’t stop, but Mark’s soothing voice and gentle hands stroking my face, my hair, my neck, were eventually enough to lessen the sobbing. I could hear his whispers.
“I love you, Bee. I love you. I love you. I love you. We’ll be okay.”
He didn’t say everything would be okay because it clearly wouldn’t. But we, us , would be fine. He still loved me. He wasn’t going anywhere.
I took a shuddering gasp of air, and then the tears slowed, eventually stopping.
I was heartbroken, but I hadn’t lost everything.
“There’s plenty of foster kids and orphans,” he assured me. “We can adopt as many as you want. Or use a surrogate. Whatever you want whenever you’re ready.”
The tears returned, but they were tears of gratitude. We could have a family. It wouldn’t happen in the traditional way, but all wasn’t lost. I could hold on to that and somehow survive the devastating loss of the ability to carry my own children.
We’d make a family eventually. It would take time for me to get my head on straight, but I was relieved Mark was open to other options.
I blinked the moisture out of my eyes and let the pain meds take me back under.
It was easier to deal with the legal aftermath than the medical one, so I focused on that during my hospital recovery.
My father was arrested. Mark’s strange SWAT pal Brandon Burke stopped by to give us the details, weirdly proud of the black eye he said my father was sporting from resisting arrest. Usually a smart man, he tried to run when the swarm of commando police guys came bursting in, and Brandon got to take him down.
“You’re really proud of socking a fifty-seven year old man in the face?” Mark asked, the skepticism clear in his voice.
“Yup,” Brandon said. “Dude deserved it for what he put those women through.”
I rolled my eyes. It was easier to think of my father as merely a criminal than a parent, now that he was willing to see me beaten. Choked. Shot. Whatever else Angelo had in mind when he tried to take me upstairs to the other men waiting there. He wasn’t my Daddy anymore, even if he was still technically my father.
I couldn’t wait to take the witness stand against him.
Angelo was another story. He was in this very same hospital right now, unconscious in the ICU. Mark hit him square in the chest, perfect aim. It was that hit that caused Angelo’s aim to falter, hitting a “non-vital organ” in the doctor’s words.
It felt pretty damn vital to me, I raged internally, but took a couple of deep breaths to calm myself down. The anger and despair ebbed and flowed, but I knew it would get easier to push it back down. It would just take time.
Angelo came through surgery just fine, but was in a medically induced coma because of the extent of his injuries. When they eventually eased him off the anesthesia, he’d be handcuffed to the bed until he could be taken down to the county jail to await trial.
Two low-level cronies were also taken into custody from the second floor of the manor.
No one knew where Ella Louise went. The poor, broken woman probably took the opportunity and ran away in the chaos of everything. I could only hope she would heal and survive to move on now that she was on her own.
SWAT, the FBI, and the DA’s office still wanted to talk to her, get more evidence against Angelo and the Morelli operation, but I secretly hoped they didn’t find her. She’d been through enough. I just wanted her to get a fresh start somewhere far away from everything.
Now that Angelo was gone from her life, I hoped she’d never need to relive any of it ever again.
I was supposed to stay in the hospital for at least another few days, and on strict bed rest for six weeks afterward, but Mark was already busy making plans, doing his all to keep me occupied and my mind distracted.
He found all my paperwork, and my shop and business were indeed in my name alone, so we started the process of selling the building. I didn’t want a single thing that tied me to Carlo Morelli. My car was already at a local dealership, and Mark took the lead in planning a weekend trip once I was fully healed up to a little chapel in Reno to get rid of that pesky last name of mine as well.
Things weren’t perfect, but we were alive, we were in love, and would have an amazing life together.
“Do you want a big poofy dress kind of thing, or something more chill?” Mark asked, pausing as he perused the checklist he brought with him everywhere.
“Oh, it’s going to be the biggest, poofiest dress you’ve ever seen. You’re going to be wondering if it’s me in a wedding dress or if the fog traveled up to Nevada with us,” I said, holding in a smirk.
“Gotcha. Are you going to have time to shop for it between bed rest and road trip, or should we push things back a couple more weeks?”
I didn’t want to wait even longer to marry this wonderful man. If he’d go for it, I’d ask for a justice of the peace to do the deed right there in the hospital, but Mark’s mother was right to talk us into waiting.
It costs you nothing to wait just a few weeks when you have the rest of your lives to live, Dina Rosenberg had said. Just a little longer and you can have your dream fairytale wedding and we can have such beautiful photos to remember the day by!
Dina was a kind woman; a little nosy, but her intentions were good. Who could blame her for being insanely curious about the woman her son said he was going to marry, especially when Dina didn’t even know I existed before she visited my hospital bed?
And she also tore Mark a new one for not introducing me to her six weeks ago. She was having none of it when he tried to explain the circumstances.
“Nonsense, you should have looked up this beautiful woman sooner and we would have been past all this sooner. Look at me; I’m a woman and I love you and I’m not leaving my only son, so there’s never been a gosh darn curse!”
I held in my laughter as I met Mark’s eyes. It was different when she was his mother, but the sentiment was right. She was right about the future, too: there was no rush when you knew you already had forever together.
“I’m good. Your mother has been looking online and calling shops for me, and Athena said she’d be my go-between for pick up and drop off to try things on.”
Thankfully, Athena forgave me for blowing her off. She even agreed to teach me self-defense moves. I couldn’t imagine ever being in another situation where I’d need to fight off an attacker—I planned on being thoroughly boring from here on out—but it still meant the world to me.
If all else failed, Mark could trust that I knew how to take care of myself, and I wouldn’t be scared to face the world around me after the trauma I experienced.
And Athena, with her gorgeous blonde hair and figure to die for, was Badass Barbie mixed with the crass kindness of Betty White. There was no one in the world like her.
“I knew you two would get along,” Mark said, nuzzling his face into my neck. “I’m glad you gals hit it off.”
“Me too,” I said. Hanging out with Athena let Mark cement his friendship with Lucas further, and now the man of my dreams didn’t feel so alone in the world anymore. We could be a set of those cutesy couple friends, going out to dinner and hosting game nights or whatever adults did with each other socially. “I was thinking of asking her to be my second bridesmaid.”
“I think she’d love that. But…”
I could guess where this was going. “But she might be a little too much for Frannie?” I continued for him. He nodded.
Frannie was…
Well, she was doing alright, considering the circumstances. There was no way I would let her continue to stay with her parents after everything they allowed her to go through, so she was staying with a friend for now, but it definitely wasn’t a permanent situation.
Once I got out of the hospital, she was coming to live with Mark and me until she left for college in a couple of months. She was too old to go into foster care at eighteen, but I cared for her, and Mark cared for me, so we were going to take her in.
“Frannie is actually pretty excited,” I said. She was in awe of Athena for the same reason I was, and having a strong but feminine role model was amazing for any young woman, but especially one who had been through what Frannie had.
My shop was gone—all the pieces of any real value stolen and replaced with fakes in the last several months. Even if that wasn’t the case, I didn’t want to keep anything my father gifted me. The sale of my car would pay for our wedding, but the sale of the building would pay for Frannie’s college tuition and a down payment on a newer, bigger home for all of us.
Mark and I would begin house hunting after the wedding. He had a decent salary, so we could afford something pretty good sized if we looked outside of the city. Even if I couldn’t give birth to my own babies, I could still be a suburban housewife and mom. I had no regrets about downgrading my passion from career to hobby because we were taking the next steps and looking into becoming foster parents.
It was part of the reason why we were hurrying through the wedding planning and house-buying process. We wanted our application to look as good as possible so we could start building our family as soon as possible. That meant we needed at least four bedrooms and a big yard, to boot. Soon enough we were going to have plenty to keep me busy, even without the business to run.
In a way, it was a relief because I hated handling the paperwork that came with owning a business. We could live off Mark’s salary and the proceeds of the sale for a while. I didn’t need fancy or expensive things in my life as long as I had Mark and whatever family the courts would grant us.
Because the way Angelo’s bullet tore through my uterus caused what doctors thought was likely irreparable damage to the uterine wall. A fallopian tube and ovary burst on impact. It would take a miracle to carry a kid of my own; the specialists doubted it would be safe to do so even if that miracle occurred.
But the world wasn’t perfect. It didn’t always turn out the way you expected it to. Through it all, I would have Mark, the man who was made just for me. Even if the world was imperfect, my life was blessed.
And time healed all wounds, right?