Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Maya
Heath’s skin is too hot beneath my hand.
Not warm. Not flushed from sleep. Hot.
The kind of heat that makes everything else in the room go sharp around the edges.
Erin cries harder when I pull my hand away from his forehead, and Heath makes a small, miserable sound in the back of his throat that does something awful to my chest. His eyes open halfway, unfocused and glassy, then close again as if even seeing the room costs too much.
“No,” he mumbles. “Don’t.”
“I’m here,” I say, keeping my voice calm because someone in this room has to sound like the world is not splitting open. “No one is taking you.”
His fingers twitch weakly around mine.
This time, he doesn't let go.
That almost breaks me more than the fever.
Omar stands in the doorway with his phone already in hand, face hard, eyes moving from Heath to Erin to me. “I’m calling Stefano.”
“Call a doctor.”
“I will call Stefano.”
“Omar.”
His gaze cuts to mine. “His doctor. His house. His orders.”
I want to fight him. I want to tell him I do not care whose house this is, whose doctor lives close enough to be useful, or whose permission unlocks basic medical care for a sick eight-year-old. But Heath shifts in the bed, breath hitching, and Erin’s crying turns thin and panicked beside me.
I do not have time to win a power struggle with Omar Strada.
“Fine,” I say. “Call him.”
Omar steps into the hall.
I look back at Heath. His cheeks are too red, his hair damp at the temples, lashes dark against skin that should not be this pale beneath fever. He has one hand wrapped in mine and the other fisted in the blanket like he is still trying to hold onto something in the dream.
Erin crawls onto the bed before I can stop her.
“Careful,” I say softly.
She freezes. “Am I hurting him?”
“No. Just slow.”
She moves the rest of the way like the mattress might shatter. Then she curls near his side without touching too much, clutching Mr. Buttons to her chest and watching him with huge wet eyes.
“Is he going to die?”
The question is so blunt and small and terrified that for half a second, I cannot breathe.
“No,” I say.
Too fast.
Too sharp.
I soften it because children hear desperation even when adults call it confidence. “No, sweetheart. He has a fever. We’re going to get a doctor.”
“What if the doctor is bad?”
“He won’t be.”
“What if Dad knows him?”
The room goes cold.
I glance toward the doorway, but Omar is still in the hall, voice low and urgent. I turn back to Erin and brush her hair out of her damp face. She lets me. That alone tells me how scared she is.
“He won’t be your dad’s doctor,” I say. “He’ll be Stefano’s.”
Her lower lip trembles. “Is that better?”
I wish I had a clean answer.
Instead, I give her the only one I can trust. “Right now, yes.”
Erin looks toward the door. “Where is Stefano?”
“Coming, probably.”
“Will he be mad?”
“No.”
“At Heath?”
“No.”
“At me?”
“No, Erin.”
“At you?”
That one stalls me.
Probably.
Maybe.
Always.
Not for this.
“I can handle Stefano,” I tell her.
Omar appears in the doorway again. “He is in the west office. He said to bring you.”
I stare at him. “I’m not leaving Heath.”
“His doctor will answer faster if he calls directly.”
“Then hand me your phone.”
“No.”
“Omar.”
“No.”
I look down at Heath, at his flushed face, at his fingers still caught around mine. Then at Erin, crying beside him and trying so hard to be quiet it makes every tear worse.
I carefully loosen Heath’s grip from my hand. Even feverish, his fingers tighten in protest.
“I’m coming back,” I whisper.
His eyelids flutter.
“I promise.”
Erin reaches for me. “Don’t go.”
“I’m getting help.” I squeeze her hand. “Stay with him. Omar will be right here.”
Omar’s expression changes by a fraction, as if being included in that promise irritates him and binds him at the same time.
Good. Let it.
I stand and follow him into the hall before I can think too long about Heath’s hand going empty.
The walk to Stefano’s office feels longer than it should.
Omar moves quickly, which is the only reason I do not start yelling at him again. He is worried too. He hides it well, but I see it in the way he checks each corridor before we pass, in the stiffness of his jaw, in the fact that he doesn't once tell me to calm down.
Smart man.
The west office is smaller than Stefano’s study and brighter, built for business instead of intimidation.
Morning light cuts through wide windows and lands across a desk covered in files, a laptop, and two phones.
Stefano stands behind it, one hand braced on the wood, speaking into an earpiece in Italian.
He looks up when I enter.
For one reckless second, his mouth curves.
“There you are.”
I do not have time for that voice.
“Call a doctor.”
The curve dies before it becomes a smile.
His eyes move over my face once. Whatever he sees there changes him faster than anger would have. The teasing vanishes. The dangerous amusement from the car, from the club, from every conversation where he enjoys watching me fight him, disappears beneath something colder and far more useful.
“What happened?”
“Heath has a fever. He’s hot, confused, barely awake, and he was up most of the night after a nightmare. I don’t know how long he’s been sick because no one told me he hadn’t been sleeping.”
My voice breaks on the last word.
I hate that.
Stefano hears it. He pulls the earpiece out and sets it on the desk. “How high?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have a thermometer.”
“Omar.”
“Already getting one,” Omar says behind me.
“Dr. Bellini,” Stefano says, picking up the second phone.
The shift is instant.
No hesitation. No need to ask whether Heath is worth the interruption. No irritation that I came into his office demanding things. No reminder that I have no authority here.
He calls.
Someone answers on the second ring.
“Marco,” Stefano says. “I need you at the house. Now.”
A pause.
“Child. Eight years old. Fever, confusion, poor sleep, possible dehydration, stress response. Bring what you need.”
Another pause.
Stefano’s eyes remain on me while he listens.
“No. Now.”
He ends the call.
“Twenty minutes,” he says.
I stare at him.
It should comfort me.
It doesn't.
“Twenty minutes is too long.”
“It is how long it takes to get here without killing someone on the road.”
“I can drive faster.”
“I know. That is why you aren’t driving.”
I almost snap at him. The words are already there, sharp and useless. Then Heath’s face flashes through my mind, flushed and damp and too small beneath all those blankets, and the anger drops straight through my feet.
Stefano sees that too.
Damn him.
“He is going to be fine,” he says.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know fever. I know exhaustion. I know panic. I know what a body looks like when it is fighting and what it looks like when it is losing.”
“That isn’t as reassuring as you think.”
“It is true.”
“I don’t need true right now.”
“Yes,” he says, stepping around the desk. “You do.”
He comes toward me, but not too close. For once, he seems to understand the wrong kind of closeness might make me fracture instead of fight. His voice lowers, not soft exactly, but steady enough to hold onto if I were the kind of woman who reached for things.
“Heath is hot. He is frightened. He is exhausted. That’s dangerous enough to take seriously and common enough not to panic over before the doctor sees him.”
I swallow.
My throat hurts.
“He wasn’t sleeping,” I say.
“I know.”
The words land wrong.
My head snaps up. “You knew?”
“Omar told me he had nightmares.”
“And no one thought to tell me?”
“You had known him less than two days.”
“I’m his aunt.”
“You are also an FBI agent trapped in my house and looking for every reason to hate me.”
“I don’t need reasons.” I want to hit him.
Stefano’s gaze sharpens. “Do not mistake triage for indifference, Maya.”
The words stop me.
He picks up a small black case from a drawer I didn't notice and comes to the door. “Let’s go.”
“You’re coming?”
He looks at me like the question is stupid. “Yes.”
We walk back faster than before. Omar meets us halfway with a thermometer and a bottle of children’s fever reducer from somewhere in the house, because of course Stefano’s home has medical supplies organized well enough that his men can retrieve them inside two minutes.
Useful.
Infuriating.
When we enter the bedroom, Erin is crying harder.
She stands at the side of the bed, one hand on Heath’s blanket, the other pressed over her mouth like she is trying to hold the panic inside. Heath has shifted onto his back, breathing through parted lips, cheeks still flushed. The sight of him makes whatever is left of my composure tilt.
Stefano enters behind me.
Erin looks up and goes still.
Her fear of him is not dramatic. She doesn't scream or hide. She simply freezes, eyes wide, little body caught between wanting to run and not wanting to leave her brother.
Stefano stops immediately.
That is the first thing I notice.
He doesn't move closer. He doesn't demand calm. He doesn't fill the room with his presence the way he does everywhere else. He stops in the doorway and lowers his voice.
“Erin.”
She sniffles.
“No one is angry.”
Her chin trembles. “He’s hot.”
“I know.”
“He didn’t wake up right.”
“The doctor is coming.”
“What if he takes him?”
“No one takes him from this room unless Maya goes with him.”
I look at Stefano.
He doesn't look back.
Erin does. “Promise?”
Stefano steps into the room slowly, then crouches near the foot of the bed. Not too close. Still lower than he was, which somehow changes the size of him in the room without making him smaller.
“I don’t make promises to children unless I intend to keep them,” he says.
Erin looks at me as if checking whether that is allowed to be believed.
I do not know what my face does.
Whatever it is, she climbs onto the bed and curls closer to Heath.
Stefano watches her for a moment, then looks at Omar. “Thermometer.”
Omar hands it over.
Stefano doesn't try to touch Heath immediately. He gives it to me.
I sit on the edge of the bed. “Heath.”
His eyes move beneath his lids.
“I need to check your temperature.”