Chapter 29
PENELOPE
Four months had passed since I’d escaped my father’s mansion, since betrayal had become my shadow.
Now, I lay on the narrow hospital bed in a New Jersey ICU, the antiseptic tang biting at my nostrils, the relentless beeping of monitors echoing like a countdown.
Thirty-two weeks. That’s all my baby had held on for—and now my water had broken prematurely.
The Russian medications had kept me alive, kept the baby stable, but fear clawed at me with every contraction.
Pain gripped me like iron bands.
My muscles burned, my body trembled, sweat slick against my skin, and every push felt like scaling a mountain that refused to give way. “Push, ma’am!” the senior nurse barked, her voice sharp, commanding, slicing through the haze of agony.
I tried again, and again, but three hours in, my body had betrayed me entirely.
Humiliation and exhaustion tangled with the pain—I’d soiled the sheets. The nurses had cleaned, changed, and smiled professionally, but the shame burned hotter than any contraction.
Dr. Patel leaned close, her dark eyes sharp and steady behind glasses that reflected the harsh hospital lights.
“Ms. Romano, you’re not progressing,” she said, calm but cutting. “The baby is showing signs of distress. Prolonged labor increases risk—hypoxia, infection. I recommend a cesarean. It’s the safest way for both of you.”
I gasped, trembling, voice hoarse from hours of screaming. “Do it,” I rasped. “Anything... anything to get my baby out alive.”
The nurse’s hand squeezed mine, firm and grounding. “You’re doing amazing, Ms. Romano. We’ll get your little one here safely.”
She raised a hand, holding a clipboard. “But we’ll need a family member or legal guardian to sign the consent form, per hospital policy.”
A chill ran through me. I had no one. No one to sign, no one to hold my hand, no one I could trust to protect us. “I have no one,” I whispered, voice cracking, tears streaking my cheeks. “Just... just do it.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” she said gently, tone firm. “It’s protocol. Someone has to authorize the surgery.”
The words felt like a knife twisting in my chest.
My hands shook as anger and desperation surged through me. “I have no one!” I snapped, voice sharp.
In a flash of defiance, I grabbed the pen from her, propping myself on the bed despite the burning in my limbs, the monitors beeping wildly at my movement.
I seized the consent form and, hand trembling, scrawled my signature across it. “Will that do?” I demanded.
Dr. Patel’s eyes widened, a flicker of surprise passing over her composed features.
Then, with a slow nod, she gestured to the nurses. “Prepare the OR for an emergency C-section. We’re proceeding under patient authorization.”
A nurse approached, syringe in hand, moving briskly but carefully. “We’ll administer a spinal anesthetic to numb you from the waist down,” she said, swabbing my lower back. “You’ll be awake, but you won’t feel the incision.”
I groaned, every muscle taut, as another contraction ripped through me.
The needle’s prick was sharp, sudden, then a wave of cool numbness spread across my lower body.
Relief mingled with terror.
The blue drape was set across my chest, shielding me from the surgical site, yet my mind raced with only one thought: Please, let my child be okay.
Every sound—clinks of instruments, the murmur of nurses, the steady beeping of the monitor—was magnified in the quiet tension of the room.
My hands trembled, fingers clutching the sterile sheet, heart pounding like a drum in my chest.
Time blurred—minutes or hours, I couldn’t tell.
The pain in my stomach flared and eased in jagged waves as the nurses worked beyond the blue surgical curtain.
I was alone, every sensation magnified—the ache of my body, the raw sting of stitches, the hum of machines surrounding me.
No hand to hold.
No voice to soothe me.
The weight of my isolation pressed against my chest, almost unbearable.
Then the curtain moved.
A nurse stepped through, her face alight with a gentle smile, and cradled a tiny, swaddled bundle in her arms. “It’s a boy,” she whispered, her voice trembling slightly as she approached.
Tears burned my cheeks as she placed him in my arms.
His skin was translucent, almost glowing under the fluorescent light, and his chest rose and fell in delicate, shallow breaths.
A faint whimper slipped from his lips, a fragile melody that pierced through the fog of my exhaustion and fear.
“A miracle,” I whispered, clutching him tightly, my heart swelling in a way that overshadowed every pain, every betrayal.
The nurse’s expression shifted, the joy dimming with the weight of reality.
“He’s premature, born at thirty-two weeks,” she said gently, yet firmly. “He’s at risk for respiratory distress syndrome and neonatal jaundice. We need to transfer him to the NICU immediately for monitoring, oxygen therapy, and possible phototherapy to stabilize his lungs and liver.”
I nodded, my throat tight, swallowing hard as they carefully lifted him from my arms and wheeled him away.
The emptiness hit me instantly.
I sat up, wincing at the pull of my stitches, my stomach swollen and tender.
My body was unfamiliar—soft, stretched, altered—but I pushed the insecurity aside.
My son was alive, and that alone made every ache and scar worth it.
Hours later, Dr. Patel returned, clipboard in hand, her expression professional but tinged with concern.
“Ms. Romano,” she said, voice clipped, “we need payment for the C-section, NICU care, and your postpartum recovery. You’ll also need a specialized formula for premature infants, high in calories to support growth, and a portable pulse oximeter to monitor his oxygen levels at home.
These are critical to prevent complications until he’s strong enough for discharge. ”
My pulse quickened as I reached for my purse, hope sparking at the thought of Dmitri’s card.
But when I opened it, my stomach dropped.
Instead of the card, a single candy wrapped in shiny red foil sat mocking me.
My hands shook, disbelief twisting into panic. “Someone put a candy in here?” I whispered, my voice barely audible.
Dr. Patel’s expression darkened, her tone grave. “That’s... a signature tactic of street thieves here in New Jersey. They steal valuables and leave candy to mock their victims.”
My chest tightened, the air leaving my lungs.
That card—the twelve million dollars—was supposed to secure our survival.
Without it, I was trapped, penniless, powerless. “Ma’am, do you have another option?” Dr. Patel asked softly, urgency threaded through her words.
I clenched my fists, desperate, thinking back to the past month.
I’d considered transferring the funds to a new account, but the pregnancy and exhaustion had kept me from acting.
Now, it was too late.
I was alone, uninsured, and my baby’s life hung in the balance. “Hold on,” I said, grabbing the burner phone. “I’ll figure something out.”
Dr. Patel gave a brief nod. “I’ll return shortly,” she said, stepping out, leaving me with the sterile silence and my spiraling fear.
Calling my parents was unthinkable—their betrayal was still raw, a wound that refused to heal.
But for a fleeting, foolish moment, I thought of their grandson. Surely... they’d help him.
I dialed my father’s number, my voice tight and trembling as I leaned back against the hospital bed.
“Dad,” I said, wincing at the sting of my stitched abdomen, “I just gave birth... they won’t discharge me without payment.
Please, If there’s even a trace of decency left in you. .. send something. For your grandson.”
The response was not my father’s.
A deep, familiar voice cut through the line, sharp and urgent. “You were pregnant?”
My heart froze.
It wasn’t Dad.
I blinked at the screen, confusion rippling through my exhaustion.
Dmitri.
A sick chill crept down my spine as realization dawned. I hadn’t dialed my father’s number at all. I had called the one Giovanni gave me at the airport, back when he escorted me out of Lake Como.
Only now did the truth sink in. Giovanni hadn’t saved his own number in the burner phone.
He’d saved his boss’s.
Dmitri’s.
My stomach lurched, every muscle taut, every emotion raw.
“Stay there. I’m coming right away,” he said, and the call ended abruptly.
My hands trembled as the receiver slipped from my grasp.
He was coming... for his child.
Not for me.
Not for the years of love and betrayal we’d shared.
I felt the weight of every choice, every lie, every betrayal crash down. Seraphina, my parents, the stolen pieces of my past. None of it mattered now.
Dmitri would come. I could feel it in my bones—the storm of his power, his obsession, his hunger to claim what he thought was his.
I gripped the edge of the hospital sheet until my knuckles went white.
“You’ll never take him,” I whispered through trembling lips. “Not while I’m still breathing.”
I lay back against the hospital bed, the sterile fluorescent lights glaring down like interrogators, my body throbbing from the cesarean, every stitch a reminder of what I’d endured.
Alone.
That word weighed heavier than the pain in my abdomen.
Alone, with my newborn son fighting for every breath in the NICU.
He was somewhere down the corridor now, tiny and fragile in an incubator, his chest fluttering like a trapped bird’s.
The NICU nurses had promised to call if anything changed, but silence felt like its own kind of torture.
Alone, yes. But a mother now, and that made me dangerous in ways they would never understand.