Chapter 66
Vienna
One Year Later
“Dante,” Gabriella panted. “Why can you still not drive a bastard car?”
Rachel cemented her words by smacking Dante on the arm. “I knew this would happen! You should have let me drive!”
“Fat chance of that happening. We’d have ended up dead in a ditch!”
“Don’t say that! You’re stressing her out!”
“You’re all fucking stressing me out!” Dante hissed back. “Just let me fucking concentrate.”
“Breathe, Gabby,” I said, clutching her hands in mine. “Remember what the doctor—”
“I don’t give a shit about the doctor!” she yelled, her face contorting in pain.
“Can you drive faster?!” Rachel said, hitting Dante again.
“I’m going as fast as I can. There’s traffic, woman!”
“Move them out of the way!”
“I don’t have magic powers, Rachel. I can’t—”
“I do,” I interrupted.
“Vienna, fuck off!” Dante roared back, narrowly dodging a car.
“Oh, nice going,” Rachel huffed. “Jerking us about like that. Gabriella is only writhing about in agony back there.”
“You told me to go faster!”
“Don’t pin this on me, buddy. I’m not the one driving.”
“I have no words,” he groaned, rounding a corner at reckless speed.
“I hate you,” Gabriella groaned, clutching her stomach.
“You want me to crash this car? Because that’s the way this is going to end up.”
“Clearly she doesn’t, Dante!” Rachel huffed. “However, I want you to get us to the hospital before—”
Her words were cut off as Gabriella moaned in pain again.
“You’re doing so good, baby,” I said to her, raising her hands to my lips and kissing her knuckles.
“I’m not going to make it,” she panted, looking frantic.
“It’s okay,” I soothed. “It’s okay. I—”
“Will you slow down!” Gabriella shrieked, clutching her swollen stomach and clenching her teeth through the pain.
“You just told me to speed up!”
“Don’t argue with her!” Rachel slapped him again.
“Fuck me,” Dante hissed.
“There will be no fucking!” Gabriella said. “No one will ever fuck again. In fact, I’m putting it in the suggestion box that fucking is now outlawed if this is what it leads to!”
“Aw… You used my suggestion box,” I grinned at her. “I’m so proud of you.”
“Fuck off, Vienna!” she hissed, kicking me with her foot.
And as she did so, her insides seemed to explode.
“Err… guys? My old lady is leaking.”
“Shit!” Rachel hissed, twisting in her seat to look at us. “Her waters have broken, Dante! Hurry up!”
“How long do we have?” I asked Rachel, feeling my heart rate spike.
“I don’t know. They say first-borns aren’t usually quick but…”
Her face twisted in sympathy as Gabriella went through another contraction.
“Hers seems to be progressing quicker than mine did,” she eventually finished.
“A…fir…mative,” Gabriella panted.
Rachel shot me a smug grin. “Told you.”
“Shit.” I looked down at my old lady, her face contorting again. “Dante, hurry up!”
“Hurry up!” Rachel slapped him for the third time.
Dante pressed down the accelerator, only for Gabriella to swing at him. Her arm completely missed her target, considering she was lying in the backseat, her legs spread with me in the middle of them. But she gave it a good shot.
“Slow. Down,” she panted.
“Right!”
The brakes slammed on.
I braced myself against Rachel’s seat with one hand and held Gabriella with the other.
Rachel wasn’t so fortunate. She had been leaning over her seat to look at us and went flying backwards into the dashboard.
“What the fuck?!” she muttered, stuck in the gap between her seat and the dashboard.
I looked over the back of the seat, grinning down at her.
“Alright?”
“Fuck off, Stoic.”
“Oh, we’re back to Stoic, are we? That’s real nice.”
We began to bicker back and forth, only for Dante to punch his steering wheel with both hands.
“Enough!” he growled. “This isn’t working for me. From now on, there will be no backseat driving. No more demands. No more petty fucking bickering. I will get you to the hospital safe and sound, but in the meantime, all of you, shut the fuck up!”
“Rude,” Rachel scoffed under her breath, hauling herself back up. “Thanks for helping me, by the way.”
“I’m trying—”
“And failing.”
“—to get us to the hospital!”
“No time,” Gabriella moaned. “The baby is coming.”
She spread her legs wider, having already removed her trousers, and as I looked down, I saw a head of black hair between her legs.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, pulling a disgusted face.
“Don’t look like that!” Rachel said, having recovered from her fall. She was leaning back over the seat and slapped me around the head. “That’s your child!”
“That’s horrific!”
“Vienna!” Gabriella whined, looking heartbroken.
“Oh, no, baby, it’s not horrific. It looks…” I looked back down and swallowed. “… lovely.”
“Another one is coming,” she said, her eyes closing tight.
“Right. I need you to push, Gabriella. Vienna, hold on to her stomach. When you feel it tighten, that’s a contraction. Gabriella, put your chin to your chest and push. I need you to push all the way through it. Take a deep breath and—”
Gabriella nodded, focusing on her movements. She shuffled back, her back against the door, sitting up ever so slightly.
“Are you ready?” Rachel asked.
Gabriella nodded once more. I put my hands on her stomach and felt it tighten.
“It’s coming, princess. Are you ready?”
Gabriella breathed deeply through her mouth and then sucked in a deep breath. As her stomach tightened even more, she began to push, her face turning red with the effort.
“That’s it, that’s it,” Rachel encouraged. “Keep going, don’t stop.”
I lost track of time in that car.
I have no idea how long she pushed for. I have no idea what was said or what was done.
All I knew was that in no time, I was holding my baby girl in my arms, her face screwed up in anger, looking like a huge injustice had been done to her.
“Are they okay?” Gabriella said, beginning to cry.
“More than okay,” I breathed, gently cradling my baby’s head as I lowered her onto her mother’s chest.
The baby immediately settled, nuzzling against the mother who had carried her all this time.
I looked at Gabriella then.
Her hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat, her chest rising and falling with every exhausted breath. Tears streamed freely down her cheeks, yet somehow, she was smiling wider than I’d ever seen before.
I had watched men survive bullets. I’d seen brothers crawl through unimaginable pain without making a sound. I’d witnessed torture, death and more violence than anyone should ever have to.
None of it came close to what she’d just done.
And in the back seat of a car, no less.
I’d never seen anyone stronger.
“She’s here,” Gabriella said to me, laughing with relief.
“She sure is.”
I reached out, stroking her little hand with my index finger.
“Welcome to the world, little Michelle.”
She grabbed my finger and wrapped her little fist around it so tightly, and I felt my heart fly from my body and into this little girl.
My little girl.
“Michelle?” Rachel asked, wrinkling her nose. “Who the fuck is Michelle?”
“Her mother?” Dante muttered as though Rachel was a moron.
“Well, I know that,” she hissed back. “But what happened to Viennetta?”
“Don’t be so ridic—”
“Dante, shut up!” she snapped, interrupting him. “She’s just given birth in the back of your fucking car. Could you please drive? Hospital. Now!”
She slapped him for a fourth time before he muttered under his breath and started the car.
But I didn’t notice any of it.
All I could see was my two girls.
And a new life beginning.