“His heart rate is dropping.”
Everyone moved.
Someone adjusted the oxygen.
Someone else called for anesthesia.
Leo kissed my forehead.
“I’ll be right here.”
Then they began wheeling me away.
I reached backward.
“Leo!”
He ran alongside the stretcher.
“I love you,” I told him.
His expression broke.
“I love you more.”
The operating-room doors closed between us.
When I opened my eyes again, the room was quiet.
Too quiet.
A clock above the doorway showed 3:17.
My mouth was dry.
My stomach hurt.
And there was no familiar flutter beneath my ribs.
I moved my hand toward my belly.
It was flat.
“Leo?”
He was sitting beside my bed.
His shirt was wrinkled.
There was dried blood near one cuff.
And his silver watch was lying on the nightstand.
He’d never removed it before.
“Where’s our baby?” I whispered.
Leo stood immediately.
“Sera.”
I stared at him.
“Where is he?”
His eyes filled with tears.
I knew.
Before he spoke, I knew.
“The doctors tried everything.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
“He was born, sweetheart.”
“No.”
“He was so small.”
I pressed both hands against my mouth.
Leo sat beside me, crying openly.
“They worked on him. They did everything they could.”
“How long?”
His lips trembled.
“Eleven minutes.”
I made a sound I didn’t recognize.
Eleven minutes.
My son had been alive in the world for eleven minutes.
And I hadn’t been there to hold him.
Leo reached into his jacket and took out a tiny knitted blue hat.
A nurse had placed it in a clear keepsake envelope.
“He had your nose,” he whispered.
I touched the little hat.
Then I broke.
Much later, when the first terrible wave of grief had left me exhausted, Leo told me the doctors had preserved our baby’s footprints.
They’d asked whether I wanted to see him.
I said yes.
Of course I did.
He was my son.
No matter how briefly he’d lived.
A nurse brought him wrapped in the blanket we’d packed weeks earlier.
He was beautiful.
So impossibly small.
Leo sat beside me as I held him.
“His name,” I whispered.
We had agreed not to tell anyone until he was born.
“Gabriel,” Leo answered.
“Gabriel James Sorentini.”
Leo kissed his tiny forehead.
“Hello, Gabriel.”
For a few minutes, there was no inheritance.
No Vincent.
No Lena.
No family empire.
Only a mother, a father, and the little boy who should have grown up between them.
Then a hospital administrator appeared at the doorway.
“Mr. Sorentini? I’m sorry to interrupt.”
Leo carefully adjusted Gabriel’s blanket.
“What is it?”
“Your security team found something in the family archives you requested.”
Leo frowned.
“This can wait.”
“Sir, they believe it concerns the incident.”
The administrator handed him a sealed envelope.
Inside was a photograph.
I could see it clearly from the bed.
It showed Vincent and Lena standing outside the Sorentini family attorney’s office.
The photograph was dated three days before Vincent abandoned me at the altar.
En la parte de atrás, alguien había escrito:
SI VINCENT SE CASA CON SERAPHINA, LO PIERDE TODO.
Leo leyó las palabras.
Entonces me miró.
