by Olivia Gates
But since he was, what right did he have to Rico? Wouldn’t he be better off without a father like him? It was even worse now that his turmoil over them could have gotten him killed today. What would that have done to Rico if he’d already known Richard was his father?
Why had he invaded their lives? What had he been searching for? Redemption? When he’d long known he was beyond that? Love? When he knew he didn’t deserve it?
If he loved them, and he loved them far beyond anything he’d thought possible, he had to make them happy. To keep them safe. There was only one way he could do that.
He rose, in an agony worse than when multiple bullets had torn through his flesh, looked down into Isabella’s searching gaze and dealt himself a fatal injury. That of saying goodbye. Forever this time.
“Actually, I think you were right not to want me near your family. I’m glad that interruption stopped me from making an irretrievable statement, gave me time to realize it’s not in Rico’s best interests to have me in his life. Nor is it in Rose’s and her family’s. I’m sorry I forced myself into your lives and disrupted your peace, but I promise to leave all of you alone from now on. Once you tell Mauricio I’m not his father, he’ll reconsider being called Rico, and there won’t be any irreversible damage when I disappear from his life.”
* * *
Shocked to her core, Isabella watched Richard walk away, feeling as if he was drawing her life force out with him.
Then the front door clicked shut behind him and everything holding her up snapped. She collapsed on the couch in an enervated mass.
She’d thought he’d be delighted with her blessing, had been about to follow it with a carte blanche of herself, if he’d consider her as a lover again.
She’d been ready with assurances that whether or not it worked out between them, it wouldn’t impact the lifelong relationship she’d been sure he’d wanted with his son. The worst she’d thought would happen was his rejection of her, had been prepared to put up with anything, even watching him find love with another woman, so Rico would have his father, and she’d have him in her life at all.
She hadn’t even factored in the possibility that within hours he’d decide he didn’t want Rico, either.
There was only one explanation for this. He’d given the domestic immersion a go, and when the moment of truth had come, he’d decided he couldn’t have her and Rico in his life on an ongoing basis. He didn’t need them the way they both did him.
So he’d decided to walk away, thinking it the ideal time to curtail damages. Little did he know he’d been too late. Mauri was already so deeply attached she dreaded the injury the abrupt separation would cause him.
As for her, he’d damaged her eight years ago. But now...
Now he’d finished her.
* * *
On Mauri’s return, she rushed to her room to postpone the confrontation until her own upheaval had settled. But he came knocking on her door, something he never did, bounding inside, asking when Richard would be coming the next day.
Sticking hot needles into her flesh would have been easier than telling him Richard wouldn’t come at all.
Rico’s reaction gutted her.
He wasn’t upset. He was hysterical.
“He wouldn’t leave me!” he screamed. “He promised me he’d come back to tell me everything. It’s you who never wanted to tell him about me. You don’t like him and keep silent when he’s here, no matter how nice he is to you. You kept looking at him with sad eyes until you made him go away. But I won’t let him go. He’s my father and I know it and I’ll go get him back!”
“Mauri...darling, please...”
“My name is Rico!” he screamed, and tore out of her grasp.
It was mere seconds before she realized he hadn’t bolted to his room, but downstairs and out of the house. She hurtled after him, spilled outside in time to see him dart across the street. She hit the pavement the moment a car hit him.
Eleven
It was true that catastrophes happened in slow motion.
To Isabella’s racing senses, the ghastly sequence as her son flew into the trajectory of that car, the shearing dissonance of its shrieking brakes, the nauseating brunt of its unyielding metal on Rico’s resilient flesh and fragile bones was a study in macabre sluggishness. It had been like that when her father had been shot dead a foot away from her.
Then her son’s body was hurled a dozen feet in the air, with all the random violence one would toss a scrunched piece of paper in frustration. He impacted the asphalt headfirst with a hair-raisingly dull crunch, landing on his back like one of his discarded action figures. At that point, everything hit an insane fast-forward, distorting under the explosion of horror.
She hadn’t moved, not consciously, but she found herself descending on him, crashing on her knees beside him, her mind splintering.
The mother in her was babbling, blubbering, falling apart in panic. The woman whose life had been steeped in tragedy and loss looked on in fatalistic dread. The doctor stood back, centered, assessing, planning ten steps ahead.
The doctor won over, suppressing the hysterical mother under layers of training and experience and tests under fire.
From the internal cacophony and external tumult rose her mother’s voice, as horrible as it had been when her husband lay dying in her arms, shouting that they were a doctor and a nurse, and for everyone to stand back. Everything stilled as she accessed the eye of the storm inside her, examined her unconscious son as detachedly as she would any critical case.
Her hands worked in tandem with her mother’s as they zoomed through emergency measures, tilting his head, clearing his airway, checking his breathing and circulation. Then she directed her mother to stabilize his neck and spine, stem his bleeding while she assessed his neurological status. The ambulance arrived and she used all its resources and personnel as extensions to her hands and eyes in immobilizing, transferring and resuscitating Rico.
Then there was nothing more to do until they reached the practice. Nothing but call for reinforcements.
She knew she should call her partners. But the first call went to the only one she needed with her now.
Richard.
Even if he’d walked away, half of Rico remained his. Even if he’d chosen not to be Rico’s father, he’d once told her he wanted to be her ally. Only an ally of his clout would do now.
While she was a pediatric surgeon with extensive experience in trauma, this was beyond her ability alone. Rico needed a multidisciplinary approach, with a surgeon at the helm who counted neurosurgery as a top specialty. Only one surgeon with the necessary array of capabilities came to mind. Someone only Richard could bring her.
The line opened at once and a butchered moan escaped her lips.
“Richard, I need you.” This sounded wrong, was irrelevant. She tried again. “Rico needs you.”
* * *
The moment Richard felt his phone vibrate he just knew it was Isabella. Even if the look in her eyes as he’d walked away had told him he’d never hear from her again. If he was right, and it was her calling him now, then something terrible must have happened.
Then he’d heard her voice, sounding like the end of everything. Richard, I need you. Rico needs you.
He listened to the rest and the world did come to an end around him.
Rico. His son. Their son. In mortal danger.
Without preliminaries, she ended the call. The worst possible scenario lodged into his brain like an ax.
No. No. He’s fine. He will be fine. She’ll save him. He’ll save him. Antonio. He must get Antonio.
Barely coherent as he tore through traffic on his way to her, to his son...to his family, he called Antonio. He was Black Castle’s resident omnicapable medical genius, who’d saved each member of the brotherhood, except him, as he’d never been part of it, from certain death at least once. After Isabella herself, he’d trust no one else with his son’s life.
As per their pact, Antonio answ
ered at once. In his mounting panic, everything gushed out of him. Antonio calmly estimated he’d be in New York with his fully equipped mobile hospital in an hour. But if the condition was critical, they must start without him.
Richard called Isabella back, including her in a conference call so she could give Antonio her diagnosis directly, as the expert, and the one who’d been at the accident scene.
But that had been no accident. He’d done this. Every time he came near her—them, he almost destroyed them.
In a fugue of murderous self-loathing he heard Isabella give Antonio a concise, comprehensive report of Rico’s injuries and her measures to save him, her voice a tenuous thread of control.
Isabella... This miracle fate had given him when he’d never deserved her, who’d given him another miracle, only for him to throw her—throw them away, time and again.
His mind fragmenting under the enormous weight of guilt and dread, he’d almost succumbed to despair when Antonio’s authoritative tone dragged him back to focus with the first ray of hope. His verdict.
“From his signs, your diagnosis of a subdural hematoma with a coup-counter-coup cerebral contusion is correct. From his vitals, your measures have stabilized him and stopped the brain swelling, which will resolve over time. But he will need surgery to drain the hematoma and cauterize the bleeders. It’s not as urgent as I feared, so I can be the one to perform it. Bring him to the tarmac. I’ll have the OR ready.”
The terrible tension in Isabella’s voice rose. “We’re already at the practice, and I wouldn’t move him again. Our OR is fully equipped. I’ll prep him and wait for you there.”
Antonio didn’t argue. “Fine. I’ll bring my special equipment. Continue to stabilize him until I arrive. Richard—send a helicopter to the jet.”
Emerging from the well of helplessness, latching on to something useful to do, Richard pledged, “I’ll get you to the OR ten minutes after you land.”
* * *
Once at the practice, Rose intercepted him, restraining him from stampeding in search of Rico and Isabella.
They were in the OR, and the most she could do was take him to the lounge where surgical trainees observed surgeries, if he promised not to distract Isabella or to agitate her, when she was miraculously holding it together.
Ready to peel his skin off to bolster Isabella, he gave Rose his word. Once they arrived, nothing could prepare him for what he saw through the soundproof glass. It would scar his psyche forever.
Rico, looking tinier than the strappy, big-for-his-age boy he adored, lying inert and ashen on the operating table. Isabella in full surgical garb, orchestrating the team swarming around him: Jeffrey, Marta, other nurses, an anesthesiologist.
Then Isabella raised her head. The one part of her visible, her eyes, collided with his. What he saw there before she turned back to their son almost brought him to his knees.
“He’ll be fine.” Rose caressed his rock-tense back, tugging him to sit on the viewing seats.
His eyes burned. “Will he?”
Assurance trembled on Rose’s lips. “She already saved him from the worst at the accident scene. The surgery is necessary, but I believe the life-threatening danger is over.”
A rough groan tore from him, and he dropped his head into his hands, unable to bear the agony of hope and dread.
“She’s amazing, isn’t she?”
Rose’s deep affection made him raise his head and look down at Isabella once more. He wondered again how fate had found it fit to bless him with finding her. His only explanation was so he’d lose her, the worst punishment it could have dealt him. But that was what he deserved. Why had fate chosen to punish her by putting him in her path time and again?
“Look at her—functioning at top efficiency even though it’s her son on that table. I don’t think I would have held together in her place. But Isabella’s survived and conquered so much, she channeled that strength to take on the unimaginable responsibility of Rico’s life.”
Realizing she’d just said Rico’s name, he looked at her.
A smile of reproach quivered in her tear-filled eyes. “I almost fainted when Isabella finally told me the truth. It’s why I am up here, not down there.” A beat. “Not that I didn’t know it from the first moment I saw you together. I kept hoping you’d tell me all this time. Why didn’t you?”
“I...I...left it up to her to tell you.” It hurt to talk, to breathe, to exist. And he deserved far worse, a life of constant agony. “I was on probation, and she didn’t know if I’d work out. I didn’t. I was a catastrophic failure. I was leaving them, leaving all of you. I’m the reason this happened. I almost ended up killing my son.”
“You were leaving? God, Rex, why—?”
Rafael, Eliana, Numair and Jenan walked in, cutting off Rose’s anguished exclamation.
Eliana rushed to hug him. “Antonio called us.”
Rafael hugged him, too, and he saw in his eyes that Numair had told him everything. But there was no surprise there, just reaffirmed faith. Rafael had always believed in him, no matter the evidence against him.
“I called him as I walked in, and he said he’ll be landing in a few minutes,” Rafael said. “My helicopter is waiting beside his landing lane. He said he’ll drop off with his gear outside the practice like he does on missions. I coordinated with the police so they don’t pursue him or my pilot.”
Numair added, “The others are on their way. Is there anything else we can do?”
Richard shook his head, choking on too many brutal emotions to count. His son lying there, his fate undecided. The love of his life doing what no mother should, fighting for her son’s life. The unwavering support of Isabella’s and Rose’s families. All his friends rallying around him.
Yes, friends. Brothers-in-arms. Just...brothers.
And he again wondered...how he deserved to have all these people on his side when he’d done nothing but waste opportunities and make horrific decisions.
Suddenly, Antonio rushed into the OR already gowned. And as if they’d always worked together, he and Isabella took their places at the table. After Isabella filled him in as he set up his equipment and examined scans, Antonio looked up, gave Richard a nod, a promise. His son would be fine.
Isabella looked up, too, sought only his eyes, and he wanted to roar for her to leave it all to Antonio. She’d suffered enough. But he knew she’d see it through, could only be thankful his son had such a mother.
“All right, everyone...” Antonio’s voice filled the lounge. “Out.” Before Richard could protest, he pinned him in his uncompromising gaze. “Especially you, Richard.”
Everyone rushed out immediately, but Richard stood rooted, even as Rose and Rafael tried to pull him away. He couldn’t leave Rico. He wouldn’t leave her.
He’d never leave either of them again.
His gaze locked with Isabella’s, imploring her.
Let me stay. Let me be there for both of you.
Her nod of consent was a blessing he didn’t deserve, but he swore he’d live his life striving to.
She murmured and Antonio exhaled. “Dr. Sandoval decrees that you stay. But make one move or sound and you’re out.” At Richard’s eager nod, Antonio looked at Rose. “Sorry I kicked you out with the rest, Dr. Anderson, but I did only so you’d keep your big brother on a leash. Now you’ll do it in here.”
Rose’s relief was palpable as she dragged him to sit down. He sank beside her, clinging to Isabella’s eyes in one last embrace, trying to transfer to her his every spark of strength, pledging her every second he had left on this earth, whether she wanted it or not. She squeezed her eyes, as if confirming she’d received it all.
Then the procedure started.
* * *
Richard had been in desperate situations too many times to remember. But none had come close to dismantling him like the two heart-crushing hours before Antonio announced he was done, and they wheeled Rico to Intensive Care.
Richard found himself there,
pushing past Antonio as he came out first. “I must see him.”
Antonio clamped his arm. “I let you watch the surgery against my better judgment already, because Dr. Sandoval needed your presence. But if I let you back there, she’ll go back, too, and I barely managed to tear her from your son’s side. I don’t want her around him while he’s still unconscious one more second. She’s been through enough.”
As Richard struggled with his rabid need to touch his son, to feel him breathe and to spare Isabella further anguish, Antonio’s gaze softened as she and the others came out.
“The surgery went better than even I projected. Seems Rico has his father’s armored head.” Rose and his Black Castle friends who’d caught up gave drained smiles as Antonio’s gaze turned to Isabella. “But seriously, Dr. Sandoval’s impeccable damage control presented me with a fully stable patient.” His gaze turned to Richard, hardening. “Without her, the prognosis wouldn’t have been the perfect one it is now. Rico is a lucky boy to have his mom’s healing powers and nerves of steel.”
Another breaker of guilt crashed over Richard. He wanted to snatch Isabella in his arms, beseech her forgiveness. Only knowing she wouldn’t appreciate it held him back.
Antonio extended a hand to Isabella. “It was a privilege working with someone of your skill and grace under fire, Dr. Sandoval, though I wish it wasn’t under these circumstances.”
Seeming to operate on autopilot, Isabella took his hand. “Isabella, please. It’s me who’s eternally in your debt. You were the only one I could trust my son’s life with.”
Antonio waved him off. “Any neurosurgeon worth his salt would have done as good a job. His condition, thankfully, didn’t require my level of expertise. But it was a privilege to operate on him. He’s sort of my nephew, too, you know. Whether Richard likes it or not, he’s been drafted into our brotherhood.”