Chapter 31
VIOLET
"—vitals are stable, blood pressure's normalizing, and the shoulder is bruised but not fractured. She got lucky."
The voice comes from somewhere above me, filtered through cotton and fluorescent light. I'm lying on something flat and uncomfortable. The unmistakable scent of antiseptic is heavy in the air.
Everything’s so blurry. I groan and roll a little bit, my shoulder screaming in pain as I do.
"She's waking up," Gianni says from somewhere close.
I open my eyes and blink until the bleariness is gone. I’m in a hospital room. It’s small and private, with a curtain drawn around the bed. Gianni’s next to me, his tuxedo jacket gone. His white dress shirt is wrinkled and there’s a small, dark stain along the right cuff.
Blood? His? Mine? I try to remember what happened, but it’s all so foggy.
Gianni’s bow tie is loosened and his hair is slightly disheveled, which is a look I’m not at all used to seeing on him. His knuckles are scuffed and red, and he looks like he hasn’t moved from the chair in hours.
"Hi," he says.
"Hi." My voice sounds like sandpaper on gravel. "How long was I out?"
I shift a bit. My head hurts and my shoulder is sore, but the bed is soft and Gianni is here and I feel safe.
"Three hours. You fainted. Concussion from the fall, bruised shoulder from the attack. Nothing broken."
“What happened?”
He shifts in his seat. “How much do you remember?”
I try to focus. “We were at the gala, then we were walking… then the men came out of the alley.”
They come back to mind, those four figures that seemed to appear out of nowhere. I remember movement and violence and that’s it.
“We were attacked.”
He nods. “We were. But you’re safe now.”
"The men who attacked us,” I ask. “What happened—"
"Handled."
One word with zero elaboration. I don't ask what "handled" means in Gianni Russo's world because I'm not sure I want the answer right now.
The door opens and a doctor walk in. He glances at his chart, then at me, then at Gianni.
"Mrs. Russo," he says. "Good to see you awake."
I frown, the name sounding so surreal. "No, I'm not—"
"How is she?" Gianni asks, cutting me off smoothly. His hand finds mine on the mattress, his touch firm and grounding.
Mrs. Russo. He told them he was my husband.
Of course he did. Gianni doesn't sit in a hospital waiting room for three hours as a boyfriend or a boss or whatever ambiguous, undefined thing we are.
He walks in as a husband because husbands get information, husbands get access, and husbands don't get asked to wait outside.
The doctor flips a page on his clipboard. "The shoulder will heal on its own with ice, rest, and anti-inflammatories. The concussion is mild, but I'd like to keep you for observation overnight, just to be safe." He pauses and looks at his chart again. "There is one other thing."
The room shifts. I don't know how else to describe it, like the walls get taller and the floor gets smaller and the ceiling vanishes, as if I’m anticipating something my body already knows.
"The blood work we ran when you were admitted," the doctor continues, "came back with elevated hCG levels.
We ran it twice to confirm." He looks at me with the cautious gentleness of a man who's about to change someone's life and knows it.
"Congratulations, Mrs. Russo, you're pregnant. Approximately five weeks along."
The room stops. The beeping monitor, the fluorescent hum, the traffic noise bleeding through the window. It all goes silent, replaced by a single high-pitched ringing in my ears and the feeling of the room spinning.
“What?” I shake my head. “No. That can’t be right.”
Five weeks. Five weeks. The number I counted backward to at the gala, the number I was hoping I'd gotten wrong, the number that just became a confirmed, medical, undeniable reality spoken out loud by a doctor who thinks I'm married to the man sitting beside me.
“It is.” The doctor pauses. No doubt he’s informed more than a few women that they’re pregnant, and he’s likely learned it’s not always happy news. I can sense that right now he’s trying to figure out which this particular scenario is.
I look at Gianni. He's not moving. He's staring at the doctor with an expression I've never seen on his face before. It’s not fear, it’s not worry, but it’s hard and serious, like he’s strategizing in real time while grappling with news he never expected.
"Pregnant," he says.
"Yes, sir. Very early, but the levels are strong." The doctor looks between us, registering the shock on both our faces. "I'll give you two a moment. The nurse will check in shortly."
The door clicks shut behind him, and it’s just Gianni and me and the little person growing in my belly.
"I can't do this," I say.
"Violet—"
“I can’t do this, Gianni. I… I just can’t.”
“You can.”
I shake my head. “No. Not right now. Not with Lance stalking me and this grand jury thing about to happen, and… No.”
“We’ll handle it. All of it.” His voice is calm and steady, but I’m not sure it’s enough.
“Gianni, I can barely keep Patrick safe. Hell, I can barely keep myself safe. And the only reason my situation isn’t totally hopeless is because I’m living in your apartment and have freaking bodyguards on me twenty-four-seven and even that wasn’t enough to stop what happened tonight.”
He doesn’t say anything, as if he understands the best thing for me right now is to just talk.
“What if the men tonight had hurt me, hurt the baby? What if next time we’re not so lucky?” I press my hands over my face. My shoulder screams in protest, but I don't care.
"I didn't plan this," I say through my fingers. "I didn't want this. This isn't—this can't—"
"Violet." His voice is quiet and steady, the voice he uses when the world is falling apart and he needs everyone in the room to focus on him so they don’t spiral further. "Look at me."
"I can't."
"Look at me."
I lower my hands. My eyes are burning and my chest is heaving. But the way Gianni is looking at me, like I’m the only thing in his universe, slows my heart rate just enough that I can focus and breathe.
“I need you to listen to me carefully. Can you do that?”
“Yes, I can.”
"Good. That child is mine," he says. "And so are you."
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean just what I said. You and the baby are mine.”
The way he looks at me makes it clear he’s not going to argue about it. But I argue anyway.
"No. This is my life we’re talking about here. It’s my life and Patrick’s life and the baby’s life.” The word sounds so goddamn surreal coming out of my mouth. “And you don’t get to just—"
"I do." He stands and moves to the bed. "I understand that you're scared. I understand that the timing is impossible and the circumstances are insane and nothing about this is how it should be. But I need you to hear me."
"Gianni—"
"I am not him."
I stare at him, silent.
“I’m not the man who used you and hurt you and scared you.
” He’s standing over me now. There’s a fierceness in his eyes I’ve never seen before.
“You’re worried I’m just like him, that it’s only a matter of time before you see my true colors.
But I’m showing them to you now. I’m the man who’s going to protect you—you and Patrick and our child.
And I’m going to do it whether you’re ready for it or not, whether you’re asking for it or not. ”
He takes my hand and presses his lips to my knuckles.
"I'm working on a way out," he says against my skin.
"For all of us. The grand jury, Dawson, Marino—I have people in motion, I have plans you haven't seen yet, and I swear to you, on everything I am and everything I've built, I will get us through this. "
I can't speak. My hand is in his hair—I don't remember putting it there—and my tears are falling onto the starched hospital sheets. The monitor is beeping with my heartbeat, which is fast and uneven. I’m terrified, but I feel alive.
“I’m going to keep you safe. And I will start by handling him.”
What is he going to do?
He leans down and kisses my forehead. Holds his lips there.
"We figure it out together," I say. “No secrets.”
"Together.”
I close my eyes. His hand lays on my stomach. The monitor beeps.
Run. The word appears in my mind unbidden. Run and don’t look back. Take Patrick and this child inside of you and run. Don’t even tell Kylie. Just run.
But I don’t. I stay right where I am.
I don’t want to run any longer.