Chapter 7 - The Iron Fortress
The private trauma wing of Northwestern Memorial Hospital had been completely cordoned off.
Two dozen heavily armed Bellini soldiers occupied the corridors, checking every doctor, nurse, and orderly through metal detectors. Outside, the rain continued to fall, washing away the blood that stained the tires of the convoy.
Inside Suite 402, the only sound was the rhythmic, hypnotic *beep... beep... beep* of a fetal heart monitor.
Emily lay in the adjustable hospital bed, an IV line taped to the back of her left hand. The doctors had administered magnesium sulfate to stop the premature contractions. The crisis had passed; the baby’s heartbeat was steady, strong, and defiant.
She turned her head toward the corner of the room.
Alessandro sat in a vinyl armchair.
He had refused to let the medical staff take him to an operating room to sew up his shoulder. A doctor had patched the graze wound with butterflies and gauze right there in the corner, under Alessandro’s terrifying, silent glare, because the Don refused to leave the room for even five seconds.
He looked ruined.
The ruthless mafia king of Chicago was slumped in the cheap hospital chair, his shirt torn, dried blood caked beneath his fingernails, his head resting in his hands. He was weeping.
He didn't make a sound—his broad shoulders simply shook in silent, devastating rhythm.
Emily watched him for a long time.
The monitor beeped steadily. *Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump.*
"Alessandro."
Her voice was weak, dry from the trauma.
Alessandro froze. He lifted his head slowly, hastily wiping the moisture from his face with the back of a bruised hand, terrified that he had disturbed her. He stood up, hesitating by the edge of the chair, not daring to step across the linoleum floor toward the bed.
"I’m here," he whispered. "I’m right here, Emily."
"Come here."
He walked forward like a man approaching the gallows. He stopped two feet from the bed, his head bowed, unable to meet her eyes.
"The doctors said the baby is safe," he choked out, his throat tight. "The contractions have stopped. You’re going to be alright. I... I had Vance prepare the deeds to the Lake Forest house. Everything has been transferred to your name alone. The offshore trusts, the legitimate real estate, the foundations. You can have it all. You can take the baby and go to Europe, to New Zealand, anywhere on earth where my name cannot reach you."
Emily stared at him. "You think I want your deeds, Alessandro?"
"I don't know what else to give you!" he cried, the agony finally ripping out of his chest in a ragged sob. He dropped to his knees beside the hospital bed, burying his face into the edge of the mattress, his large hands gripping the metal guardrails.
"I doubted you," he wept, his voice muffled by the sheets. "I looked at you—the only pure, holy thing that has ever entered my filthy life—and I let my sister’s poison make me question you. I let you walk out into a storm. I almost got you killed. I almost killed our child."
He looked up at her, his dark eyes bloodshot, shattered, stripped entirely of pride, power, and authority.
"There is no punishment in hell that can atone for what I did to you," he whispered. "I don't ask for your forgiveness, Emily. I only ask that you let me keep you safe until the baby is born. Then... if you tell me to walk into the lake, I will do it."
Emily looked down at the man who held a city in an iron fist, currently kneeling on the linoleum floor like a broken beggar.
She reached her right hand out—the hand that bore only the simple white-gold wedding band—and gently rested her fingers against his stubbled, blood-stained cheek.
Alessandro shuddered at her touch, letting out a ragged breath as though he had been underwater for hours.
"Why did you doubt me, Alessandro?" she asked softly. Her voice carried no anger, only an infinite, sorrowful gravity. "After everything... why did you believe I wanted your money?"
Alessandro leaned his face into her palm, kissing the inside of her wrist with desperate reverence.
"Because I couldn't understand why else you would stay," he whispered, speaking the raw, terrifying truth that had haunted him since the day they met. "Look at me, Emily. I am a monster. My hands are covered in blood. My father was an assassin; my grandfather was a butcher. I have spent my whole life surrounded by people who only smile at me because they want my power or fear my gun."
He looked into her clear gray eyes.
"When you looked at me with love... it terrified me. It was too pure. I felt like an imposter in my own home. And when Isabella showed me those papers... the devil in my head told me that the nightmare had finally come true. That you didn't love me. That you were just like all the rest."
A single tear rolled down Emily’s cheek, dropping onto Alessandro’s wrist.
"I never loved the Don, Alessandro," she whispered. "I loved the man who drank instant coffee in my drafty kitchen. I loved the man who read Dante to me while I ironed our clothes. If you had lost every dollar, if we had been forced to live in that three-room walk-up on Kedzie Avenue for the rest of our lives... I would have been happy. Because I loved *you*."
Alessandro let out a choked sound and pressed his forehead against her pregnant belly, weeping openly as the baby kicked gently against his temple.
"I am sorry," he wept over and over again, like a litany. "I am so sorry. Forgive me... God forgive me, Emily..."
Emily stroked his dark hair, looking out the hospital window as the first light of dawn began to break over the gray horizon of Lake Michigan.
"Get up, Alessandro," she said softly.
He lifted his head, his eyes questioning.
May you like
"The Morettis tried to kill our child tonight," Emily said, a steel entering her voice that Alessandro had never heard before—the fierce, unyielding protectiveness of a mother. "You can beg for my forgiveness later. Right now... you have an empire to clean."
---
