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Her experienced, knowing eyes raked over Mariella’s face. “Are you okay, Mrs. Santiago-Marshall?”
“I’m fine,” Mariella stated, her tone suggesting that the nurse not argue with her. “Is there anything you can tell me?”
The nurse shook her head. “Time will tell. But talking to him couldn’t hurt. Tell him you’re here, let him know that he’s not alone.”
Mariella nodded, and when she heard the snick of the door closing, she looked at her husband—who looked nothing like her husband—and sighed. “I told you not to buy that stupid car, Harrison. I said that it was too powerful, that any car designed for a track shouldn’t be on public roads.”
Jeez, not even a coma gets me a break from your nagging.
Mariella almost smiled as Harrison’s sarcastic reply popped into her head.
“I’ll nag you until you come out of this coma, Harrison.”
God help me.
Mariella placed her elbow on the bed next to his chest and touched his bare chest, his chest hair flecked with gray. He looked old, Mariella thought. When did that happen? “We’ve spent a lifetime together, Harrison, and it can’t end like this. I won’t let it end like this.”
Not up to you, sweetheart.
His voice in her head was so loud that Mariella thought that Harrison had spoken aloud. But imaginary voice or not, the words were a powerful—and annoying—reminder that there were some situations, and people, she could not control. That had been the case with Harrison and, she admitted, had been, and still was, so damn attractive. When you were Mariella Santiago, a direct descendant of Don Juan Santiago, men tended to bow and scrape.
Harrison, big and brash, did the exact opposite, and his indifference to her history and status had intrigued her. It was only after they’d married that she’d realized how much influence her family’s social connections and her lineage played in his success. Harrison wanted to prove to her, to her family and to himself that he was worthy of her, and he’d done that. He’d worked his ass off, and he was seen as a rags-to-riches success. They’d met when he was a hotshot chef, poor but talented, and through grit, determination and sheer bullheadedness, he made the transition from innovative chef to restaurant owner to billionaire entrepreneur. His drive and relentless effort resulted in a company that began with his restaurants and expanded into specialty gourmet products, a television network, vineyards and a chain of hotels, cocktail bars and nightclubs.
Mariella filled her lungs with air, exhaled and did it again. Feeling calmer, she spoke again. “I refuse to accept that you might die, that you’ll leave me here alone. We have our children’s weddings to attend, grandchildren to spoil. Yeah, we scream and fight and bitch and growl, and there have been times that I’ve wanted to smother you in your sleep, but we’re a team. I need you. I can’t be Mariella Santiago-Marshall without you.”
An alarm beeped, and Mariella jumped, her head whipping around to look at the bank of machines keeping her husband alive. God, he would hate this; he would loathe the idea of being connected to this technology, to being kept alive by ventilators and brain shunts. Harrison was an I’ll-do-it-myself-or-move-on type of guy. If Harrison could talk, he’d be telling her to get him the hell off this crap and let him take his chances; it wouldn’t matter that his chance at survival without the machines was less than zero. It wouldn’t be the first roll of the dice he’d made against the odds. But that was business and this was his life...
A life that he’d come so very close to losing.
Chapter Three
They allowed Mariella to stay with Harrison for a scant fifteen minutes, the nursing staff telling her they’d given her five minutes more than they usually did. Mariella would never admit it, but she was grateful—she didn’t know if she could sit next to Harrison’s unresponsive body for much longer, the noise of the machines her only company.
God, how long would he remain like that? Mariella pushed her fingers into her long, lustrous hair and pulled it off her face. Her phone was still buzzing, and habit had her looking down at her screen. Jonas Halstead was both a friend and a client, but she wasn’t up to talking to him in either capacity right now. Friends and business could wait. For now.
Mariella, seeing that the waiting room was empty, frowned. She knew that Luc wasn’t particularly happy with her—nothing new—but she’d expected him to wait for her, along with Rafe and Joe. Where were they? Mariella looked around and saw a group of nurses standing at the window, their faces alight with curiosity. Instantly suspicious, she walked over to them, and her imperial command to move out of her way had an instant effect. The nurses moved aside, and Mariella looked down into the large parking lot, the one directly outside the main entrance to the hospital. The area was full of news vans and reporters waving microphones in front of her two sons.
Mariella muttered a curse under her breath and spun around, knocking the patient file from a young nurse’s hand. Too angry to apologize, she stormed toward the bank of elevators, silently cursing the inquisitive press. She could’ve anticipated this, she thought as she stepped inside the empty stainless steel cube. The Santiago and Marshall families, on an individual basis, were two of the wealthiest and most recognized clans in the world, and as a couple, every move she and Harrison made, their children made, garnered attention. They didn’t live in a fishbowl—they lived in the biggest tank in the busiest, most visited aquarium in the world. And what did Luc and Rafe think they were doing, dealing with the press on their own? They’d grown up in the eye of the cameras; they knew that you never held impromptu press conferences, that you didn’t step into the school of piranhas when they smelled blood in the water.
Dios mío!
Mariella slammed her hand against the emergency button of the elevator, and when it stopped, she pulled her bag off her shoulder. It was a long-ingrained habit to run a brush through her hair, to inspect her face. She wiped away a minuscule fleck of mascara from her underneath her left eye and slicked another layer of her trademark deep-red lipstick across her full lips. There, her armor was on. The cameras would flash when she left the elevator, and then the pack would converge on her. She wouldn’t flinch. She would take control of the situation, since her sons obviously couldn’t.
And where the hell was Joe and why hadn’t he stopped them? Mariella slammed the side of her fist against the emergency-stop button to set the elevator in motion again. Two seconds later it stopped again, and Mariella stared straight ahead as the doors opened. They mob was still outside, and no one had noticed her yet. Good.
“Mariella!”
Busted! Mariella did an internal eye roll as faces and cameras turned to look at her through the glass door. The men and women pushed their way through the automated doorway and formed a tight group around her, blocking the elevators in the process.
Mariella narrowed her eyes against the insistent, constant flashes of high-tech cameras. Needing to get to Rafe and Luc, she walked across the lobby, her expression daring any reporter to get in her way.
“How badly is Harrison injured?”
“Is he going to live?”
“What was the cause of the accident?”
“Was there anyone else in the car with him?”
