Chapter 34
GIOVANNI
Matteo hasn’t even brought the car to a stop before Dante leaps out of the front passenger seat, flings open the door next to me, then assists me in lifting an unconscious and severely bleeding Valentina out of the back.
Blood is everywhere. Between her legs, in her mouth, and trickling from her nose.
I crash through the hospital doors like a hurricane roaring through a glass factory.
Valentina is flopped in my arms, and that terrifies me more than the amount of blood she lost during the commute to San Giorgio’s.
She’s always felt vibrant and alive. Now she’s limp like a fragile doll and cold against my chest.
“Help!” My beg bellows over the sound of doctors being paged. “Please, someone help!”
My lungs are burning from how fast I ran from the dining room to the convoy of SUVs my family is never without. I can barely feel it. Pain doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except getting Valentina the help she needs.
When nurses rush forward with a gurney, I hesitate. Letting go feels like I’m surrendering the last thread of hope stitching her to my life.
If it weren’t for the violent sloshes of blood splattering my shoes, I’d never hand her over.
My arms barely open before she’s rolled away on a gurney and swallowed by fluorescent lights and starched sheets.
The emptiness of her no longer in my arms hits harder than any physical blow I’ve faced.
“What happened?” a nurse questions while cutting off Valentina’s dress. She’s already snapped gloves on her hands and covered her hair with an ugly bonnet.
“She… ah… she collapsed.” I don’t recognize my voice. It’s weak and submissive. Nothing close to how it usually sounds. “She was standing… Then she clutched her stomach…” My teeth grind. I can’t finish explaining what happened after that.
Another medical professional joins us. His composure brims with urgency. “Are there any medical conditions we need to know?”
A hundred different responses flash through my head, but not a word leaves my lips. My mind is a blank slate, wiped clean by the panic slowly killing me.
Mercifully, not everyone turns mute when overcome with fear.
“She’s pregnant.”
I turn so fast my neck muscles crack. Concetta stands at my right. Her face is pale, and her wet eyes are wide with guilt.
“How far along?” the doctor asks.
“I don’t know,” Concetta replies, shrugging.
When she peers at me, hopeful I’ll fill in the gaps in the timeline, I offer nothing but silence.
Valentina and I agreed to keep the pregnancy a secret until she reached the safe zone.
Although she’s close to her mother, and I was confident she’d eventually crack under the weight of the guilt she unnecessarily placed on herself, she never tattled.
I’m confident in this because I haven’t left her side in weeks, and I monitor all her calls and messages.
Yeah, yeah. Save your lecture for when my woman isn’t bleeding to death. When she’s safe, you can do your worst, and I won’t retaliate. I doubt I’ll feel it. Nothing could hurt more than the pain tearing me in two right now. Not a single fucking thing.
“What?” Concetta’s one word scrapes out of her throat like gravel being dragged over bitumen. “A mother knows these things.” Her voice is strong now, and unashamed. It reminds me that there’s strength in confidence.
I am Giovanni Caruso.
I don’t bow for anyone—except her.
“Do whatever it takes to save her. I don’t care what it costs.” My brothers spread out behind me in silent support when I put decades of sacrifices on the line. “I’ll give you everything I have… every last cent.”
Before the doctor can reply, a male nurse enters Valentina’s cubicle. His expression hardens with distraught the moment his eyes land on Valentina’s beautiful face. He knows her. Not intimately. He’d already be dead if that were true.
After cursing under his breath, the nurse’s eyes find mine. I’ll give credit when it’s due. His glare could melt ice. He’s either an extremely confident man or stupid. I’m itching to kill, and his glare makes him a prime candidate to face my wrath.
The fear blooming out of him when I return his silent hatred doesn’t weaken his accusatory tone when he diagnoses Valentina’s condition without viewing the monitors screaming in alarm.
“It’s most likely a hemorrhage from multiple gravidities or OHSS.
” His eyes are back on me, full of silent accusations.
“I told them this was dangerous. Inserting sperm directly into a surrogate who is on gonadotropins can be fatal if the pregnancy isn’t monitored by trained physicians.
That’s why we inseminate the eggs after they’ve been retrieved. ”
I’m lost. Completely and wholly fucking lost.
“The patient is on gonadotropin?”
“She was.” The male nurse shifts his eyes to the head doctor, who asked the question. “I’m uncertain if she still is.”
The doctor nods before appearing like a shadow at my side. “She needs immediate surgery. Best-case scenario is that we’re looking at an ectopic pregnancy or pregnancies, but I’m afraid it could be OHSS.”
“OHSS?”
“Ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. It’s a severe condition where the ovaries swell and cause fluid buildup in the abdomen and lungs. If it isn’t caught early, it can also cause blood clots and kidney failure.”
My fury collapses under the weight of my fear. “She could die?”
My fists curl so fast my knuckles crack when the male nurse mumbles under his breath.
“All because you care more about an heir for your legacy”—he air quotes his last word—“than a living, breathing person. I only gave Valentina information on the clinic so she could help her mother, not for her to get trampled by a plan too stupid to be logical.”
He looks like he wants to spit at my feet. I might let him if he’ll take some of his attitude and apply it to saving Valentina’s life. Even with nurses and doctors probing and prodding her, she hasn’t moved an inch.
“You should be ashamed of yourself.” He glances past my shoulder to someone entering the ER from the main entrance. “Both of you. If you had just let the clinic remove her eggs and inseminate them the right way, all of this could have been avoided.”
Hate so black it singes the earth between my feet roars through me when I crank my neck back. Valeria is barely a foot inside the ER waiting room. Her face is ashen and marked with tears.
Her unvoiced remorse does little to cool my fury when she mouths, I’m sorry, two seconds before she races back through the double doors faster than a bullet leaving a gun.
My head screams at me to take off after her and rip her to shreds, but a question too fragile not to fracture my psyche concretes my feet to the floor. “There’s little chance we can do anything for Valentina’s baby, but if you could choose, who should we save?”
Not even confirmation that my child is also Valentina’s sees me hesitating. “Valentina,” I say, my voice rough with emotions. “Save Valentina. Always.”
The doctor nods before he reenters the cubicle, where the male nurse is frozen in shocked silence. He didn’t anticipate my reply, and the instant Valentina is safe and conscious, I’ll find out why. “We’ll do everything we can, Signor Caruso.”
He waits for me to nod before he wheels Valentina behind the flapping plastic doors of the operating room.