Then her eyes shifted past his shoulder, fixing on the doorway.
The leather case sat on the top step of the landing where he had dropped it. A single corner of the thick, cream-colored stationery protruded from the leather clasp. She knew that paper. She knew the firm whose crest was embossed at the top.
“You brought papers,” she whispered, her voice a ragged thread.
Luciano didn’t answer. He couldn’t.
“You came here… to finish it,” she panted, her knuckles white as she gripped the iron headboard.
“Kate—” he began, stepping forward.
“Don’t!” she gasped, shrinking back into the mattress as another contraction seized her body, forcing a strangled cry from her throat. The heart monitor beside the bed began to beep erratically, its sharp, metallic rhythm echoing the panic in the room.
The midwife looked up, her expression grim. “Her blood pressure is spiking. The placenta is abrupting. If we don’t get her to Saint Jude’s immediately, neither she nor the baby will survive the hour.”
Kate forced her head up, meeting Luciano’s dark, unreadable eyes with a defiance born of sheer desperation. “Whatever you came here to do… please,” she sobbed, struggling for air. “Just leave.”
Chapter 2 – The Crimson Snow
The ambulance did not come.
A jackknifed semi-truck three miles down the mountain pass had locked the main arterial road in an ice-bound gridlock. The midwife, Mrs. Gable, swore softly under her breath as she dropped the landline receiver back onto its cradle.
“They’re stalled,” Mrs. Gable said, turning to Luciano. Her voice was steady, but her eyes betrayed the grim reality. “The storm is rolling in fast. Emergency services won’t clear the pass for at least two hours.”
“She doesn’t have two hours,” Luciano said.
He moved before anyone could protest. Dropping his coat to the floor, he walked to the bed, bent down, and slid his arms beneath Kate’s knees and shoulders.
She flinched, a sharp gasp escaping her lips as she tried to push his chest away with her trembling hands. “Luciano… no… don’t touch me…”
“Save your breath, Kate,” he gritted out, lifting her effortlessly against his chest. She felt dangerously light, her body burning with fever while her hands were ice-cold. “You can hate me all you want when we aren’t standing in a pool of your own blood.”
He carried her down the wooden staircase, his footsteps heavy and measured. Mrs. Gable followed close behind, carrying two bags of medical supplies and towels.
Outside, the wind howled through the pines, driving needle-like sheets of sleet across the gravel. Luciano opened the rear door of his heavy-duty SUV, laying Kate gently onto the heated leather bench seat. Mrs. Gable climbed into the back beside her, immediately placing her hands on Kate’s abdomen to feel the violent tightening of another contraction.
Luciano slammed the door, marched to the driver’s seat, and fired the engine.
The heavy vehicle roared to life, its four-wheel drive digging into the slick mud and gathering snow as he swung the truck around and slammed the accelerator toward the treacherous mountain road.
“Keep her awake,” Luciano barked over his shoulder, his eyes fixed on the whiteout conditions beyond the windshield. The wipers beat a rhythmic, useless tempo against the accumulating ice.
In the rearview mirror, he watched her.
Kate’s head rolled back against the leather headrest. Her skin was translucent, her blue eyes glazed with exhaustion. Yet, even through the blinding pain, she kept her hand pressed firmly against the bulge beneath her sweater, a protective, instinctual shield.
Twenty-nine weeks.
The number burned behind Luciano’s eyelids like a brand.
If the child was his, it meant that night—the night before he left for Europe—had borne fruit. That frantic, silent, desperate night when they had sought comfort in each other’s arms one last time, knowing their marriage was crumbling beneath the weight of his dangerous world.
If the child was not his…
His hands tightened on the leather steering wheel until his knuckles turned ivory. In his line of work, infidelity was not merely an insult; it was a vulnerability. A weakness enemies could exploit. But as he looked at her pale face in the mirror, watching a tear trace a path through the dust and sweat on her cheek, the rage in his chest didn’t feel like anger. It felt like an open wound.
“Luciano…” her voice was barely audible over the roar of the heater.
“I’m here,” he said, his voice flat, stripped of emotion.
“If… if something happens…” She choked back a sob as another sharp spasm racked her small frame. “Save… save the baby. Promise me.”
“Shut up, Kate,” he growled, swerving the SUV around a fallen pine branch blocking the lane. “Nobody is dying today. Not you. Not anyone.”
