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“You can touch her,” the nurse murmured softly beside me. “Put your hand through this hole here, and you can hold her hand or stroke her leg.”
“I’m scared,” I confessed, my voice barely a whisper, but she still somehow heard me.
“I know you are, dear. Every mommy and daddy who comes in here is scared out of their minds. But your little one is tougher than you think.” She guided me closer, and taking my hand that wasn’t bandaged, she placed it at one of the holes into the incubator. “Your touch will soothe her, give her the courage to keep fighting. Because, Mommy, she needs that more than anything I can do for her.”
My tears fell faster, but I nodded and slid my hand inside. I stroked my index finger over her leg before reaching for her hand. She grabbed me, her strength surprising me so much that a half laugh, half sob escaped my throat.
“See,” said the nurse with a smile when I looked at her in amazement. “You’re already giving your baby the will to fight the biggest war of her new life. The power of a loving touch is an incredible thing.”
I turned my gaze back to Justice. “I’m here, little angel,” I told her, hoping she could hear me. “No matter what happens, or who comes and goes from our lives, I swear to you, Justice, I won’t ever leave you. So please…” My voice cracked, and I pressed my forehead to the incubator. “Please, sweetheart, don’t leave me. You…you are all I have left.”
Garret
By the time the plane landed at the private airstrip close to the Ramirez estate, Nova’s foot was the size of a watermelon. Even her toes were swollen. Her ankle was so purple it looked black. It had to have been painful, but she didn’t complain once. She’d mentioned hurting it jumping from the building adjacent to my apartment but hadn’t gone into detail. It had only taken the flight from NYC for me to realize there was a lot I didn’t know about my baby sister.
Once the pilot gave the all clear that we could get off the plane, she stood and grimaced. After thinking I’d lost my sister forever—having seen what I’d thought was her bashed-in face and dismembered body—I couldn’t handle the thought of her in even the slightest pain.
Lifting her into my arms, I carried her off the plane and to the car that was waiting for us. As we neared, the driver stepped out, and I stopped in my tracks, recognizing the man. He’d been the one who was in charge when we’d come for Ramirez’s head, and he’d told me Lis was dead.
My anger began to boil through my veins, and I started to shake with the effort it took to control myself.
“Hey Guzman,” my sister greeted the man in Spanish. “Looks like I didn’t manage to come home without incident this time.”
He saw her foot and shook his head. “That’s a first, Miss Nova.”
Carefully, I sat my sister on the hood of the car. “Guzman?” I repeated the man’s name, staring at Nova for confirmation.
“Yes, he’s our head of security,” she explained.
“Guzman,” I muttered to myself as I turned and punched the man in the face.
“Garret!” Nova shouted, watching as Guzman stumbled back from the force of my hit. “What the fuck are you doing?”
I didn’t answer her. Stepping into the other man’s personal space, I grabbed him by the shirt and jerked him closer. He didn’t flinch. Other than the rapidly swelling bottom lip from my first punch, he appeared completely unaffected by me—and that only pissed me off even more.
“You lied to me,” I seethed. “For months, I’ve been living in hell, thinking Lis was dead. My woman and child needed me, and you kept them both from me.”
His eyes scanned my face dispassionately. “She never once mentioned you to me. When your name is mentioned, she goes quiet and withdraws into herself. You hurt her. If you’re waiting for me to apologize for keeping you away from her when she’s been trying to heal from whatever you did to her, then you will be waiting for the rest of your life. Her well-being is all that I care about.”
“That’s enough, Garret.” Nova hopped down and limped over to us. Grasping one of my wrists, she tried to get me to release my hold. But I was too pissed to let him go. I wanted to pound my fist into his face until he felt half the pain I’d been put through, thinking Lis was dead.
Heaving a sigh, my little sister shifted, and somehow I ended up on my knees—right along with Guzman. Even at this level, the two of us were nearly as tall as Nova, but there was something about my sister that exuded power, making us both watch her like mice watching a cat about to pounce.
“I said that was enough,” she said in a tone that reminded me of… Ah fuck, why did it remind me of Anya? And more importantly, how the hell had she gotten me on my knees to begin with? Not just me, but Guzman as well. Both of us outweighed her by more than a hundred pounds. She shouldn’t have had those kinds of skills.
Unless someone had taught her.
Someone who’d been trained as an assassin from childhood.
“Nova,” I spoke cautiously, almost afraid of her answer. “Did Anya—”
“We need to hurry and get to the hospital,” she cut me off. “I don’t like being away from Cali and Justice for this long.”
Guzman got calmly to his feet, dusting off his pant legs. “She has been emotional while you were away,” he reported. “She guessed where you’d gone and kicked your mother out of her hospital room. Felicity has been in the waiting room since last night, too afraid to upset Cali more if she went back in without you.”
Shaking off my daze at Nova’s ability to incapacitate me so effortlessly, I jumped to my feet and jogged over to where my sister was getting into the back of the car. “She’s going to give me hell, isn’t she?”
“Like you don’t deserve it?” She huffed and climbed inside. “Ride in the front with Guzman. I’m going to prop my foot up.”
