Page 235 of Diego

Blair

It is late enough that the hospital has that strange quality that happens after visiting hours are over, but nobody in our corner of the waiting area looks remotely ready to sleep.

I should be exhausted. A few hours ago, I was sitting behind a reinforced steel door while armed men tried to get into Diego’s house.

Since then, I have been questioned by security, driven across the city, examined by the doctor, and put through an emergency ultrasound while Diego stood beside the bed watching the screen as if his life depended on every movement.

Dr. Mehta had taken her time, checking the baby first and then everything around it. The heartbeat was strong. Growth looked exactly where it should. There was no sign that tonight had caused any harm, and after several minutes of looking for the subchorionic hematoma that has dictated most of my life for the last few weeks, she finally sat back and told me she could no longer see it.

Gone.

I had made her check again.

Now I sit beside him in the waiting area with one of his hands resting over mine while the relief slowly works its way through me. Dr. Mehta warned me that she still wants me to take things easy until my next appointment, particularly after everything that happened tonight, but the hematoma appears to have resolved, so my restrictions have been lifted.

After weeks of thinking about it every time I stood up too quickly, walked too far, felt a cramp, or noticed anything different, hearing that it is gone feels almost unreal.

Diego has checked on me at least six times since we left the examination room.

I finally turn my head toward him. “Still fine.”

His eyes narrow slightly. “I didn’t ask.”

“You were about to.”

His thumb moves across the back of my hand. “Maybe.”

I lean against his shoulder and let him have that one because I understand now in a way I probably did not before tonight. He watched the same ultrasound I did. He heard Dr. Mehta say the baby was fine and the hematoma had disappeared.

None of it has erased what happened at the house, though, and every so often I catch him looking at me as if he needs another visual confirmation that I am still here.

And it's nothing compared to me watching everything happen from the security monitors inside the safe room. Seeing Diego come to our rescue was a relief, but watching him move through the house while people shot at him was the most terrifying experience of my life.

So I guess I can give him the benefit of the doubt now.

Across from us, Mario looks even less like a man who belongs in a maternity waiting room.

I study the rest of them and have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing because we must be an incredible sight to anyone walking past.

Mario still has his sleeves rolled up from earlier, and there is dried blood on one cuff that I know is not his. Ricardo has dirt on his shirt and a dark smear along his cheek.

Dante looks like someone dragged him through a hedge, which looks even stranger with Cecilia asleep against his chest. Matteo has a scrape along his jaw and debris in the shoulder of his coat. Tomasso has a smattering of blood on his shirt. Edoardo and Alessio both look like they've been rolling around in gravel.

Even Diego has blood dried on one sleeve and dust across his trousers.

The only people who look remotely presentable are Victoria, Julia, and the children, and that is mostly because they spent the fight sealed underground instead of moving through the property with guns.

A nurse walks past us for the third time and gives the group another discreet look.

I lean closer to Diego. “We look completely insane.”

He glances around as though he has only just noticed everyone’s condition. “A little.”

“A little?”

His lips twitch. “Maybe people need to mind their own business.”

Leonardo is asleep across Victoria’s lap with his head tucked against her stomach. She has one hand resting on his back while Mario sits beside her. Every few minutes, his hand touches her knee or her shoulder as if he is doing the same thing Diego keeps doing with me.