Chapter Thirty #2
If I weren’t bleeding out on a stretcher, I would laugh, or collapse for a different reason entirely.
But there’s no time to process the name or what it means.
“We need to perform an emergency C-section.”
The words slam into me.
I blink up at him through tears I cannot control. My face is soaked, my chest is tight, and my brain is scrambling to catch up to the world spinning at double speed.
Emergency C-section.
One month early.
Not ready.
“What does that mean?” I choke out, wiping at my cheeks even though more tears just take their place. “I still have four weeks. I’m not ready—”
“Are the babies okay?” The question bursts out before I can stop it. It’s the only thing that matters. Everything else, my fear, the shock, the pain, falls away, hovering, waiting for his answer.
The doctor softens. “Yes, the babies are fine.”
My breath shudders out, but relief barely has time to register before panic claws right back up my throat.
“Then what happened?” My voice trembles so hard the words almost splinter.
“There’s a tear in your placenta,” he explains gently but firmly, like he’s walking a line between truth and urgency. “Your membranes ruptured prematurely, and the amniotic fluid is mixing with blood.”
Another bolt of pain explodes through my lower back, stealing my breath.
The world tilts.
The heart monitor spikes beside me.
“We need to proceed with the C-section now,” he continues. “For your safety, and the babies’. You’re losing too much blood.”
Too much blood.
My mind spirals. I can feel it happening, logic fighting terror.
I know people have surgery every day. I know modern medicine saves lives, that doctors do this a thousand times without hesitation.
But fear does not listen to reason. It sits heavy in my chest, whispering all the things logic tries to silence.
I have never had a major operation. I have never been cut open from hip to hip, never felt the cold certainty of a scalpel meant to open my body.
I have never walked into a room knowing there is a chance I might not walk out again.
A horrible, selfish thought slips through me like poison:
I want my babies to be born—
but I want to live.
Does that make me terrible?
Weak?
Human?
What if something goes wrong? What if the anesthesia fails?
What if I bleed out on that cold table while strangers fight to keep my heart beating?
The questions circle in my mind, relentless and merciless.
Tears stream faster now, hot and unstoppable.
I cannot even lift my hand to wipe them away anymore.
“We’re taking you to the operating theatre now,” the doctor says, already signaling to the nurses surrounding me. “We’ll start as soon as you’re prepped.”
There’s no space for a decision.
No room for bargaining.
No slowing down.
My stretcher is already being wheeled toward double doors, lights passing overhead in sharp blurs.
The speed of everything makes it feel unreal, like I’ve stepped into someone else’s nightmare.
All I can do is nod, because there’s nothing left to do except surrender, to the doctors, to fate, to the terrifying miracle dragging me forward.
I grip the railing with trembling fingers, and under the screech of wheels and my own ragged breathing, one thought pulses over and over—
Please let us live.
I close my eyes one last time, forcing my lungs to pull air past the panic tightening them shut. The world tilts, the hallway blurs, and then a voice I know better than my own slices through everything.
“Get the fuck out of my way or I’ll blow your head off.”
My eyes snap open, or at least I try to make them. They’re heavy, like they’ve been painted shut. My head lolls sideways on the stretcher, but I can’t lift it far enough to anchor myself.
A nurse tries to reason with the storm barreling down the hallway.
“Mr. Moretti, we need to prepare her for surgery. You can change and assist her if you want—”
“I said,” Lorenzo growls, voice low, lethal, vibrating straight through my bones, “get the fuck out of my face.”
There’s a collective gasp, shoes scrape on the floor, carts rattle.
“I’m only asking nicely because I don’t want to distress my wife during this difficult time,” he continues, voice all gravel and razor edges. “But it’ll take me two seconds to throw you through a wall.”
Wife.
The word lands heavier than the stretcher beneath me.
I’m not his wife.
But God, hearing it feels like a lifeline splintering the terror closing in around me.
“Let him see her, Lara,” the doctor orders, and the wall of bodies finally parts.
And then he’s there.
I see him.
Lorenzo.
Beautiful, wild, frantic Lorenzo.
His face is flushed and furious, hair disheveled like he sprinted straight through hell to reach me. But it’s his eyes that break me, the raw fear sitting in them, the way they're drinking me in like he’s terrified I’ll disappear if he looks away.
He kneels beside me, hands trembling as they touch my face. I lean into him instinctively, my body recognizing safety before my brain catches up.
“Serena,” he whispers, his voice a rough caress. “I’m right here, baby. I’m right here.”
He presses the gentlest kiss to my lips, and the tears I thought had dried burn their way down my cheeks again.
Every piece of me aches for him, aches with the truth that even if life forces us apart, some quiet part of me will always find its way back to him.
“I’m scared,” I breathe. The words spill out before I can stop them. And once they start, they don’t end.
I’m scared of the surgery.
I’m scared I won’t be the mother I want to be.
I’m scared I’ll lose myself in trauma again.
I’m scared of losing him, losing them, of everything all at once.
His hand cradles my cheek again, thumb brushing my tears with heartbreaking tenderness.
“Everything will be okay,” he murmurs. “You’ve been through hell, and you’re still standing. You don’t even realize how strong you are.”
He lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses each shaking knuckle.
I close my eyes, imagining, willing, a future where it’s just us and Maddox and Celeste. No guns. No blood. No past clawing its way into the present.
“Mr. Moretti,” the doctor says cautiously. Lorenzo shoots him a warning glare I feel rather than see. “We need you to change. We’ll begin the surgery in five minutes.”
Lorenzo doesn’t look away from me. “I’ll be there in a minute.” It sounds like a promise. Like a vow.
I breathe out a tiny “Okay.” Even that feels like climbing a mountain.
As the team unlocks the brakes and pushes my stretcher toward swinging double doors, I hear him speak again, low, quiet, but deadly in that way only men like him manage.
“If she gets hurt,” he murmurs, every word precise, “I will make sure you understand pain on a level you didn’t know existed.”
My stomach drops.
The doctor replies with the sterile calm only people used to danger can muster.
“We have everything under control, Mr. Moretti.”
“For your sake, I hope so,” he mutters.
And then the doors close behind me, swallowing him on the other side.
I’m rolled beneath piercing lights into a cavernous room centered around a single operating table, cold steel, sterile sheets, gleaming equipment waiting.
I blink hard, trying to anchor myself in the bright, clinical room.
But the present dissolves.
Flashbacks hit me like a punch to the sternum.
Cold metal presses against my back, hard and unforgiving.
A needle sits in my wrist, the dull sting pulsing faintly with every beat of my heart.
My vision begins to blur at the edges, like someone has smeared oil across the world, softening shapes and swallowing details until everything feels distant and unreal.
I’m not in a maternity operating theatre anymore.
I’m back there.
On that table.
My hand strapped.
The light humming above me.
And the faceless figures surrounding me.
I can hear the woman’s heels—sharp taps on marble, echoing like gunshots.
Then two silhouettes, men, slide into the scene, their faces slick blanks my mind refuses to fill in.
“Is she going to be prepared in time?” one of the men asks.
Prepared for what?
The woman bends over me, her perfume wrapping around me. Her touch grazes my cheek, gentle in a way that makes it worse.
“Of course,” she replies smoothly. “He’ll be pleased with her.”
He.
Pleased.
Like I’m a product.
A package.
An item being inspected before delivery.
My stomach rolls.
“What about the pregnancy?” the man presses. Impatient. Businesslike.
Pregnancy?
My hand twitches on the memory table.
“Her body will be prepared and flawless,” the woman assures him, almost bored. “No need to worry, we’ve already taken care of that matter.”
Prepared.
Flawless.
Taken care of.
“He’s getting impatient,” the man repeats. “She needs to be delivered soon.”
The faceless woman turns toward him, posture stiffening, irritation brushing her voice.
“I said don’t worry,” she snaps. “Everything is under control.”
My body tries to move, to scream, to fight, but I’m trapped, weighted down by drugs and terror.
I strain to look around, to see anything that makes sense.
But the figures blur, thinning at the edges, melting like smoke in a draft.
And then, all at once, they vanish.
Like ghosts that were never really there.
“Serena, I need you to stay still,” the anesthetist says, already guiding me onto the operating table.
My body trembles, but I nod, because I don’t know what else to do.
The doors slam open.
Lorenzo storms into the room. He’s half in surgical scrubs, hair messy, jaw locked. The only thing in focus is me.
He drops into the chair at my head and takes my hand. “I’m here,” he murmurs, voice low and steady despite the storm burning behind his eyes.
They turn me onto my side. Something warm rushes into my spine, then my legs flicker into numbness. I’m rolled onto my back again just as a spreading blanket of heat blooms across my abdomen, followed by a bright kind of nothingness.
“Feel that?” the doctor asks, pressing something cold against my skin.
“No.” The word escapes like air leaving a balloon.
“Good. We’re starting,” he announces. “You’re going to be fine.”
Fine. I cling to it like a life raft.
Lorenzo squeezes my fingers, drawing my eyes back to him. “Look at me, love.”
His voice is all gravel and reverence.
My whole world narrows to his face.
“Good girl,” he adds, quiet praise meant only for me, and if my body weren’t pinned open on a table, I’d blush.
Pressure builds. Deep, foreign, wrong. No pain, but the unmistakable sensation of hands moving inside me, pulling, pushing, rearranging things that were never meant to be touched.
My breath shudders.
“You’re doing great,” Lorenzo whispers, leaning close so I can hear him over the soft clatter of instruments. “Just stay with me.”
I try.
God knows I try.
But the pressure changes, intense, spreading from chest to ribs, as if someone is untangling my insides and putting them back in a different order. My skin prickles with sweat.
And then a sound slices through the room.
A cry.
High-pitched, furious, perfect.
Followed by a second one, so close behind it they blend together.
My heart stops, then starts again, too fast, too hard.
Lorenzo turns toward the drape, his face gone still. Reverent.
His eyes glaze, not with fear this time, but with something dangerously close to awe.
“Mr. and Mrs. Moretti,” the surgeon announces, and I don’t correct him, “you have two healthy twins.”
Just like that.
Two tiny, swaddled miracles are placed onto my chest, and my entire ribcage cracks open. They are warm and slippery-limbed and furious at being in the world. Their cries soften the moment my skin touches theirs.
My breath breaks.
Lorenzo looks from me to them, and I watch it happen, the moment even monsters fall.
A tear slips down his cheek.
Lorenzo Giovanni Moretti.
The man who’s ended lives without blinking.
Crying over two babies who weigh barely five pounds each.
My throat closes.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispers, and I almost laugh, because I’m pale, sweating, numbed from the ribs down and literally open on a table.
Then he huffs out a breath, half laugh, half disbelief.
“The babies aren’t too bad either.”
I laugh with him, shaky and wet-eyed.
He touches a tiny hand, Maddox’s, and then Celeste’s. Their fingers curl as if they recognize him already.
“Maddox and Celeste,” he says like a prayer.
His voice breaks. “Thank you.”
My brows pull together. “For what?”
“For coming into my life and making everything better,” he murmurs.
“Serena.” The second sentence shatters me. “And I’m sorry,” he adds, rougher.
“What for?”
“For doing the exact opposite for you.”
And just like that, the hardest man I've ever known is confessing regret with my blood still drying on his hands.
My heart can’t hold it all.
“I love you,” I whisper, because I can’t pretend I have room for walls anymore. Not with our children on my chest. Not after everything.
He freezes.
A beat.
Two.
Then his mouth crashes into mine.
It’s clumsy, desperate, careful, like he’s kissing me with every piece of himself he has never shown another living soul.
When he pulls back, his forehead rests against mine.
“I love you so fucking much,” he says, the words rough with truth. “You’re the center of my damned universe.”
And with our babies breathing against my skin, and his hand gripping mine like a vow, I think that, for one moment, we might actually survive the world trying to destroy us.