Page 99 of The Arrangement

Maybe Anton should start going to the temple like his mother kept bothering him about. Considering some God was up there looking out for one of them. It was probably Viviana. The girl was a goddamn angel while he was nothing more than a well-dressed sinner.

“What’d they say about Rocco?”

Anton flinched at the question. His tongue peeked out to wet his lips as he considered the phone call he’d received a little over a half an hour ago.

“Operation went okay, he made it out which was more than they thought he’d do. Covered with seventy percent burns. Three broken ribs. The blast likely ruined his scenting ability, or most of it. Pup’s going to be in a lot of pain for a long time.”

There was a choice he had to make … one that damn near killed him. Put Rocco down or see how he fared in the next few months. It’d be rehab, constant pain medication, and skin grafts. Costly, but that was the least of his master’s worry.

“I’m going to have him put down in the morning,” Anton managed to say, ignoring the thickness that built in his tone. “They’re keeping him sedated so he doesn’t wake up. Vine isn’t going to be happy about it, but I can’t let that dog suffer. There’s no respect in that.”

“And Vine?”

Anton breathed, letting the pain from the action soak him from head to toe. He hadn’t spoken to his lover on the phone, but from Ivan’s account, she was doing okay. After she’d calmed down about him not being there, of course. And when he asked again about the blood work, he hadn’t gotten a response because his lawyer was too much of a fucking pussy to ask.

“Awake, talking, being her usual self …”

“That’s good,” Bo said, shrugging.

“And pissed off like nothing else because I’m not there.”

The younger man chuckled with a nod. “No doubt.”

With his arm reaching back into the SUV’s cab, Anton’s hand came in contact with a gun case. Agony rocked him from the action, but he didn’t care a bit. The boss had business to attend to and his own issues could wait.

Only a few more hours, and he’d be right where he needed to be: beside Viviana.

“I made a promise to be there with her every morning. I need to make good on that.”

“Get it done, then. Let’s smoke this rat out.”

Chapter Twenty-One

“You didn’t tell him, did you?”

Ivan, resting back in the comfortable leather chair in Viviana’s private hospital room, shook his head and grinned like a fool. “No.”

“But he asked?”

“Yep. You do know he’s going to kill me when he finds out I knew before him, right?”

Viviana sighed, resting back into the pillows meant to help ease the pain in her back. Holy hell was she sore … and tired. She was also terribly worried and had little to no memory of the last forty-eight hours.

Maybe the memories would come back slowly, the doctor said. And maybe they wouldn’t.

Viviana wished they wouldn’t. She didn’t want to remember any of it, but she swore she could hear Anton yelling her name. Or maybe that was just her muddled brain creating the recollection. She also wished that little drip of morphine she had finally accepted to take when it was offered for the fifth time would actually do something.

Not long after the sweet nurse and quiet mannered doctor woke her up, one of the first things out of their mouths was the fact that she was pregnant. Not very far along, and from what they understood, everything seemed okay. The mandatory blood work that was done on all new patients had shown that her hGC level was at twenty-eight mlU/cc.

A definite positive for pregnancy.

They then proceeded to calmly explain the accident, her injuries, and what happened after. It didn’t matter how soft they kept their voices, or how quick they were to say it most likely wouldn’t affect the pregnancy, Viviana still cried herself into an anxiety worthy mess. She couldn’t figure out when it had happened and she’d been so worried that maybe—oh God, just maybe—it had been before she was back in New York.

That all disappeared when she was able to remember her last menstrual cycle, and the doctor guaranteed her conception date would have been between the last fourteen to eighteen days, given the level of hormones doubled with every passing day and hers was still showing a low enough number to be an early pregnancy.

It might have gone better if she’d woken up to Anton in her room with the nurse and doctor instead of Ivan.

“He’ll get over it,” she finally replied, wincing on the last word when her fluid IV jostled.