Chapter 32 Helena
HELENA
Ow.
Just. Fucking ow.
My body hurt. Everywhere. I was fairly certain the afterlife wasn’t supposed to come with migraines that registered somewhere around a twelve on the Richter scale, and I was equally certain the last thing I remembered involved taking a knife to the gut courtesy of a very stab-happy Theodora Lancaster.
Which meant two things.
One: I was absolutely adding her to the tippy top of my personal shit list, and I was going to haunt the shit out of the bitch. And two: if this was the afterlife, their pain management policies were absolute garbage, and I wanted to speak to a supervisor.
“Lena, baby. If you can hear me, try not to move too much.”
Well, that settled that.
If Erryn Loxley had just called me baby, there was absolutely no way I was still topside.
“Lena, can you hear me?”
Warmth wrapped around my hand, fingers squeezing mine gently, and I groaned as even that small movement sent another pulse of pain hammering through my skull.
“Nope,” I rasped weakly. “Hard pass. Put me back out, this is awful.”
There was a sound beside me that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t been threaded through with so much tension.
“Close enough,” Erryn said quietly.
I forced my eyes open.
It took a moment for the world to settle into something resembling focus, but eventually the blur of light resolved into a hospital room and the vague shape leaning over the bed sharpened into a familiar face.
Erryn looked like hell.
Her hair was a mess, there were dark circles under her eyes, and she looked like she had just seen war.
I blinked slowly. “Huh,” I murmured. “You look worse than I feel.”
Her brow raised slightly, the corner of her lips tilting in the ghost of a smile. “Just stay still,” she murmured.
“Tempting as it may be to get up and do some yoga,” I replied faintly, “I think gravity might win this time.”
She exhaled slowly, dragging a hand over her face before looking back at me with an expression that made something uncomfortable twist in my chest.
Relief.
Pure, unguarded relief.
“You scared the hell out of me,” she said quietly.
I shifted slightly, immediately regretting it when my stomach protested violently. “It’s just a flesh wound,” I teased weakly.
Erryn ignored me, her hand clasping mine while her thumb traced slow lines up and down. I never wanted it to end.
“You aren’t hurt?” I asked, craning my head to try to see all of her.
She pushed my head back down with a growl of irritation.
“No. Can you not be stubborn right now? You have a concussion and very delicate internal stitches that were difficult to put in. She nicked part of your lower intestine.”
“Oh, that’s what that feeling is,” I said, letting out a careful breath.
“Lovely.” I rolled my head to look at her, taking in every line of her face and wishing I had the strength to reach out and touch her.
I wanted to take every moment I could before she remembered what I had done and walked out the door.
“Erryn, I—” My voice broke, and to my horror, my eyes began to swim, a tear rolling warm and wet down my cheek.
“Hush,” she murmured, wiping the tear away with her knuckle. “Not now.”
“Please,” I said, anxiety rising. “I just need to…before you go. I just need to make it right.”
“Go?” She frowned at me. “Go where?”
My breath hitched. It was the drugs. Clearly. The fuckers were messing with my emotional regulation.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Erryn said. “Not until you are strong enough to come home.”
I blinked. “Home?”
“Well.” She shifted. “I sold the Meridian this morning, so home will be the hotel until I have a chance to talk to a real estate agent.
I blinked at her, trying to make sense of everything she had just said.
“What do you mean home? I pressed. “Are you extending my contract?”
She didn’t answer, just leaned in and brushed a kiss against my lips, then the tip of my nose and my forehead, and settled back in her seat as she began to press kisses to each of my fingers one by one.
“No,” she said, her breath hot against my fingers. “I want you to come home, Helena,” she said, her own voice thick with emotion. She looked at me, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “Because you are my home.”
I stared at her, scared to even breathe in case I’d heard wrong.
“I watched you bleed out,” she whispered. “I held you until the doctors came and took you into surgery. I felt you slipping away from me, and all I could think about was how you were taking my heart with you, and I never even had the chance to tell you that you owned it.”
My breath caught, and she rested a gentle hand over my stomach.
“So, I need you to rest and recover, then I’m taking you home. To stay. If you want that.”
“What about the Triarchy?” I rasped. “What will people say?”
A small smile tilted her lips, though her eyes looked wary.
“Were you aware that your medical file had your father as your emergency contact?” she asked, and I stilled.
“They rang him before I could intercept, and he…” She paused.
“He called repeatedly, trying to see how you were, and harassed the staff until I took the call and let him know you had survived surgery.”
“I don’t like where this is going,” I said.
She grimaced. “Neither do I really, but the outcome of that little discussion was that I agreed to talk to Mattia Vitale yesterday.
“What?” I tried to sit up and then groaned as my stomach flared in pain.
“Helena!” Erryn scolded, standing and fussing over me as I breathed through it.
“Tell me Theo is alive,” I hissed through my teeth.
“She…is?” Erryn said haltingly.
“Cool, because I’m going to kill her,” I muttered, breathing through the last of the waves. “Followed by my fucking uncle.”
“I’d actually rather you didn’t,” Erryn said, giving me a sheepish look that was so unlike her I nearly laughed.
“Pardon?”
“Maxim has aligned himself with Vanguard’s interests,” Erryn said.
“He has been very vocal in his opinion that the Triarchy should begin influencing European politics more aggressively, and it just so happens that Mattia Vitale has very similar opinions to my own about that. We came to…an agreement. The Head signed off on it this afternoon.”
I stared at her, trying to formulate words. “Lox, what did you do?”
“The Vitale family have been given their first termination contract,” Erryn replied calmly. “If they succeed, Mattia will take Rome’s seat. We’re going to need their resources if we intend to survive the internal affairs investigation that will inevitably follow the Obáir job disaster.”
My drug-addled mind whirred sluggishly for a moment before the pieces finally slid together.
“Maxim,” I said.
“He signed his own termination the moment he aligned himself with Vanguard,” Erryn said coldly.
“He tried to take my seat, and now I’ll take his.
Who do you think pushed the narrative that the Vitale family were at war with the Triarchy?
Every single conflict has been raised by Maxim.
He knew that if the Vitale and Triarchy united, he would never be able to steer things in the direction he wanted. ”
Her fingers tightened gently around mine, her thumb absentmindedly tracing slow circles into my palm as she spoke.
“What is the Vitale motto?” she asked.
“Family before all else,” I replied automatically. “Why?”
Something cool pressed into my palm.
“Family before all else,” she murmured. “And if anyone believes they are entitled to an opinion on that, they’re welcome to see how little I care.”
Her gaze lifted to mine. “I plan on marrying into the Vitale family,” she finished quietly. “If you will have me.”
I stared down at the ring resting in my hand. Slowly, I lifted my eyes back to her.
“Lox,” I said carefully, “did you just propose to me while I’m on morphine, as part of a multinational organized crime treaty?”
Her lips twitched faintly. “Yes.”
A slow smile spread across my face. “In the most uniquely fucked up way, that’s a little bit perfect,” I said, my eyes stinging with the tears I refused to let fall.
She laughed softly, her hands still holding mine. “Is that a yes?” she asked with genuine worry in her voice.
I pretended to contemplate, slipping the absolutely stunning ring on my hand and admiring it for a moment.
“Lena,” she breathed, her expression agonized.
I slid my eyes to hers, studying her face, memorizing her in this moment, and smiled again.
“Fuck yes,” I whispered.