Chapter 24 For Keeps
For Keeps
Fee:
I watch Moira smile as Eden checks her vitals, her hand protectively curved over her baby bump.
"Blood pressure's completely normal," Eden confirms, her warm gaze on Moira as she removes the blood pressure cuff from her arm. She looks at the baby's monitor. "Baby's heart rate is perfect, too."
The three families had the entire floor secured after everything happened. There are Basov, Carlucci, and Quinn guards everywhere in this hospital wing.
"I was so terrified, it felt as if I was having the baby early. The contractions were so strong," Moira says.
"There are no signs of contractions. But you've started dilating already. You'll need to be monitored every other day until delivery." Eden glances at her tablet. "At thirty-two and a half weeks, we want to keep this little one cooking for at least another four weeks, if possible."
I try to focus on their conversation, but my brain feels like it's been run through a blender and poured back into my skull.
Eden hangs her stethoscope around her neck. "The doctor is going to put some restrictions on what you can and cannot do."
Moira groans, her hand still curved protectively over her bump. "Bed rest?"
"Probably limited activity at minimum. No stairs, no lifting, nothing that could trigger contractions or raise your blood pressure. That includes sex."
Moira sighs dramatically. "Lorenzo is going to lose his mind over this no-sex rule." Her hand traces gentle circles over her belly. "That man is insatiable."
Eden laughs. "He'll survive. Though when you hit thirty-eight weeks, and we're still waiting for this little one to make an appearance, sex would actually help get things going."
"I never expected sex with an arranged husband to be good.
But that man knows how to satisfy a woman.
Sex was the first thing I enjoyed about my arranged marriage to Lorenzo, even before I fell in love.
" She looks at her baby bump. "Though lately, the baby takes so much of my energy that this doctor-ordered break might be secretly welcome.
Not that we'd ever tell Lorenzo that." She pauses.
"Fee? Are you with us?" Moira asks when she sees me staring through the window.
"Sort of. I think a few of my neurons died in all this." I press my fingertips against my temples.
Eden gives me a reassuring smile. "It's an expected side effect of the drugs Kirill gave you. The fog will clear completely in the next two to three days."
"It was such a weird experience." I lean back against the chair, trying to piece together the fractured memories.
"I was unconscious for some time, then woke up kind of.
..in a car, I think? Everything was blurry and spinning.
I was worried about...what he might have done.
I managed to feel that I had clothes on, or so I thought. "
The memories shift and become sharper. "Next thing I know, Kirill was holding me against him, and the knife was—" My hand moves to the bandage on my neck where the blade had pressed.
Eden steps closer, gently moving my hand away from the wound. "Try not to touch it too much. The surgical tape will keep it together. It didn't need stitches, thankfully."
I look over at Moira, grateful she's safe, that my nephew is safe.
Moira reaches for my hand, her expression softening. "I'll be there for you through this, Fee. This has to be hard." She pauses, studying my face. "You're in love with him."
It's not a question.
"When I thought Anton had been shot at the docks, something in my chest just...stopped. It wasn't like worrying about Shane or Cillian. This was different. Bigger. Like losing him would break something fundamental."
Moira's expression softens. "That's what being in love feels like."
"It terrifies me," I admit quietly.
Eden stops gathering her supplies, her expression knowing. "Loving men like ours comes with special terrors."
"Come sit." Moira pats the space beside her on the hospital bed. "We're having girl talk."
Eden hesitates for a moment, glancing at her tablet, then sets it down with a smile. She sits next to Moira, like we're teenagers at a sleepover. The sight of Moira and Eden looking at me expectantly makes me smile.
"This might sound unrealistic, given our world and circumstances, but I was hoping to go on dates with him first," I say.
"But we just jumped from cordial conversations, because Anton was definitely not a man of many words, straight to 'Hi, I'm not a soldier but the Basov assassin and head of international ops, but I'd like to worship your body now.
' And I just...went with it and...it was amazing. "
Moira squeezes my hand, giving me space to talk, to process everything that's happened in the last six days.
"I love him," I continue. "That might sound a bit crazy or clingy, but that's how I feel." My voice softens. "Even though I don't know how to do this. How to love someone when every day he may not come home."
Eden nods, understanding in her eyes. "I get it. I fell for a stalker, torturer, Russian mobster." Her smile is wry. "And I wake up every morning grateful he made it through the night. That's just our reality now."
"Does it get easier?" I ask.
"No," Moira says honestly. "But you learn to live with it. Because the alternative is not having them at all."
I nod slowly, letting that truth settle. Then I squeeze Moira's hand back, needing to shift to something I can control, something concrete.
"I've decided something, Moira," I announce. "I'll go to Providence with you, help you, and stay until after the baby's born. I can be your personal servant while you're on bed rest."
"That's sweet of you, but you need to recover," Moira protests, her eyes scanning my face.
"We can be invalids together," I reply with a weak smile. "I'll read to you and the baby. My calculus textbook should put you both right to sleep."
The room fills with soft laughter, a strange, bright sound in the aftermath of so much darkness.
"I missed my calculus final," I suddenly remember.
"I can ask the doctor to write a valid excuse for a make-up test," Eden says.
"Seriously, Fee?" Moira shakes her head. "You were drugged and nearly lobotomized by a revenge-obsessed psychopath, and you're worried about a math test?"
"I even studied for it, sis."
And I had; I like math, and I fell in love with the comfort of it years back.
All the late nights memorizing formulas and working through problem sets created the foundation for the life I want, piece by piece, beneath the watchful eyes of my family.
My professors don't care that I'm Connor Quinn's daughter; they only care if I can solve the equations.
"You are such a nerd," Moira says with affection.
"Maybe." My fingers fidget with the hospital blanket. "But what's life if you can't live it?"
That's the thing my family never understood. I'm not scared of dying, that's an occupational hazard when you're born a Quinn. What terrifies me is not living, not making choices that matter to me.
For years, they've tried controlling every aspect of my life. Which schools I attended, who I could be friends with, what I should study. Always with the same excuse: protection, safety, and family loyalty.
But in protecting me, they've forced me to surrender pieces of myself. My independence. My choices. My future.
"I have dreams, you know," I say quietly. "And that stupid calculus exam was part of them."
Moira's eyes soften. "I know you do."
Eden steps closer to me. "Fee, I was serious about submitting a medical excuse for your calculus final."
"That's something our families can arrange easily," Moira adds.
"No. I'd like to do it on my own. Not with help from the family."
Moira gives me a look I know well, the one that says I'm being stubborn for no reason.
"It's not about being difficult," I say.
"Or stubborn..." Moira replies.
"It's just...school is the one thing that's truly mine. Where I earn things myself."
"Okay, no family help, but you know we'd have to lie on the medical excuse, right? For obvious reasons," Eden says.
"That's okay. That's help I can accept. I'm not denying what our families do, or what we sometimes have to do."
"Severe gastroenteritis with dehydration requiring IV fluids?" Eden suggests with a straight face.
We all laugh at the absurdity of our reality, momentarily bright in the sterile hospital room.
"Perfect," I reply.
"I'll draw up the paperwork, and the doctor can sign it," Eden promises. "And Fee? I respect wanting something you've earned."
I squeeze her hand gratefully. In our world, where everything comes with strings attached, where family connections open every door, there's something pure about struggling through a difficult problem alone, about sitting in a classroom where my last name doesn't matter, where only my understanding counts.
That's what I'm fighting to protect, not just my life, but my right to build one that means something to me.
The clock on the wall says it's 4 PM. Anton's been gone since yesterday.
I keep glancing at my phone, checking for notifications that aren't there. The screen remains stubbornly blank, no texts, no calls, nothing from Anton.
"Has one heard from any of these men?" I ask.
Moira shakes her head. "Lorenzo texted earlier this morning. They were still handling things."
"Handling things. Such a neat, tidy phrase for something I suspect is messy beyond imagination."
"You know you can text him too," Moira points out, watching me check my phone for the twentieth time.
I set my phone down with a sigh. "I don't want to be the clingy type. It's barely been over twenty-four hours."
"Just ask him to send you a text or message more often when he's out on business. That's one of the few things I demanded from Lorenzo. At least I know he's alive that way."
"Is that allowed?" I ask, only half-joking. "Creating expectations with men who kill people for a living?"