Chapter 85

Drew’s POV

The car was moving too slow.

I didn’t care that the driver was already tearing through red lights, horns blaring as we cut across lanes, or that New York’s night traffic made every second feel like quicksand. It wasn’t fast enough.

Not with Lila unconscious in my arms.

Her head rested against my chest, her hair spilling over my suit, the strands damp with sweat. Her face, God her face was too pale, lips parted as though even breathing had become a battle. I pressed two fingers to the side of her neck again, desperate for what I had felt the first time, that faint, fragile beat of life beneath her skin.

It was there. Weak, but there. She looked weightless in my arms. Weightless, and yet she looked like she was carrying every ounce of my world in her fragile body. I had no idea how much she meant to me until now, it felt like my world was being ripped into two.

My chest tightened. “Stay with me, Lila,” I muttered, the words breaking past clenched teeth. “Don’t you dare leave me.”

I wasn’t sure if she could hear me, but it didn’t matter. The silence was unbearable, and if talking to her kept me from unraveling, then I would keep talking.

My driver glanced at me through the rearview mirror, his knuckles white on the wheel.

“Drive faster,” I bit out, though the speedometer was already climbing well past safe. The driver didn’t answer. He knew better than to.

He pressed harder on the accelerator.

I looked back down at her, brushing strands of hair from her forehead with fingers that trembled more than I wanted to admit. She had fought Max. I could see it, the scrape along her palm, the faint bruise already blooming near her temple. The thought of what he had done to her, of how close he came to…

I shut my eyes. The rage was clawing at me, demanding release, but I couldn’t give it room. Not now. Not while she needed me steady.

For the first time in years, I felt utterly powerless.

When the hospital’s white lights finally appeared in the distance, I nearly ripped the door open before the car had stopped. The driver braked hard, the tires shrieking, and I pushed the door wide, gathering Lila against me.

“I will carry her,” I barked at the security detail as they rushed forward.

“Sir, let the staff…”

“I said I will carry her!”

The weight of her in my arms was nothing. What crushed me was the fragility, the way her body sagged against mine as though she had been stripped of all strength. I moved fast, storming through the sliding doors of the ER. Heads turned. Nurses rushed forward.

“She’s unconscious,” I said, my voice clipped, harsher than I intended. “Exposed to some kind of chemical. She needs immediate care.”

One of the nurses reached for her, but I tightened my hold instinctively, unwilling to let her go. Not until the lead nurse, a woman with kind but firm eyes, met my gaze. “Sir, you need to let us do our job. Please, we need to examine her.”

I forced myself to nod and laid her gently on the stretcher they rolled in, my hand brushing hers one last time before they wheeled her toward double doors marked Emergency.

I followed, only for another nurse to block my way. “You can’t come in.”

“I’m not leaving her.”

Her eyes softened, but her tone didn’t waver. “We’ll take care of her. Please wait outside.”

My fists clenched at my sides. Every instinct screamed at me to tear through that door and stay by her side. But I wasn’t the one who could save her.

So I let them take her.

The doors slammed shut, and the silence of the waiting area swallowed me whole.

I paced. Back and forth, my footsteps sharp against the sterile floor. Every tick of the clock grated against my nerves.

I couldn’t sit. Sitting felt like surrender.

My assistant called thirty minutes later, I had even forgotten I had an event going on. “Mr. Sinclair…”

“How is everything going?” I cut her off.

“Everything is moving according to the plan. The guests are being entertained, the unveiling wrapped up smoothly. No one suspects anything unusual.”

Good. That was the only thing I could control right now. But it didn’t feel like victory. Not when the one person that planned everything with me from start to finish wasn’t there to see it.

She hesitated. “Do you need me to do anything else for you?”

“No.” My tone was sharp, final. “Just keep everything running smoothly until I return.”

“Okay sir.” And immediately I ended the call.

The moment the call ended, the mask cracked. I dragged a hand through my hair, the rage boiling beneath the surface until it hurt to keep it in.

Max.

He had dared. He had laid his hands on Lila, had taken her from under my nose, on my night, in my hotel.

I could still see his smug reflection in the glass panel from the security footage, the way he carried her like she was some prize he had won.

A low, animalistic sound tore from my throat before I realized it. My fist connected with the wall, the sting of impact doing nothing to cool the inferno inside me.

When I got him no, when I'm done hunting him down he wouldn’t get the chance to smirk again. I would strip away everything he thought made him powerful. Brick by brick. Breath by breath.

Minutes dragged into an hour.

Every time the doors to the emergency ward swung open, my head snapped up. Every time, it was someone else.

I replayed the night over and over. If I hadn’t been distracted by the launch, if I had kept her by my side, if I had noticed sooner.

I sank into one of the chairs, elbows on my knees, hands clasped so tightly the veins in my arms bulged.

For a man who built empires out of steel and vision, I had never felt so damn helpless.

Finally, the doors opened again and this time it was a doctor.

“Mr. Sinclair?”

I was on my feet instantly. “How is she?”

He removed his mask, his expression serious but calm. “She’s stable. The chemical inhalation caused temporary respiratory distress, but we’ve flushed most of it from her system. She’ll need rest, observation for the next twenty four hours.”

Relief crashed over me, sharp enough to make my knees weak. I exhaled slowly, but the tension didn’t ease completely.

“There’s something else.”

The doctor hesitated, glancing at his clipboard before meeting my eyes again.

“Did you know she was pregnant?”

The words detonated in my chest.

For a moment, I thought I had misheard him. Pregnant.

The sterile hallway seemed to tilt, sounds muting into a distant hum. Pregnant.

“She is stable,” the doctor continued carefully, as though each word might shatter me. “But the stress and chemical exposure could have affected the pregnancy. So we will need to monitor both closely to be sure no damage has been done.”

Both.

Mother and child.

I swallowed hard, my throat dry as sand. A thousand thoughts crashed at once, Lila’s pale face, her hand instinctively pressed to her stomach days ago, the way she avoided my gaze when I caught her looking too long.

She hadn’t told me.

Could this be the secret Max was talking about?

The air in my lungs burned as I nodded stiffly. “Take care of her. Everything she needs, she gets.”

“Yes, sir.”

When the doctor walked away, I sank back into the chair, elbows on my knees once more. But this time, it wasn’t just fury that consumed me.

It was betrayal. It was fear.

And it was the terrifying realization that somewhere along the line, Lila had become more than just an event planner, more than just someone caught in the crossfire of my world.

I couldn't help but think if this child was mine from our one night stand or if it belonged to someone else.