جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 210

[THE HIGHWAY - FEW HOURS AFTER GRAYSON'S DINNER]Wendy's hands were tight on the steering wheel and her eyes were on the road ahead and the tears were coming down her face in a way she had stopped trying to manage twenty minutes ago because managing them required energy she did not currently have access to.She had driven this road hundreds of times. She knew every curve of it, every exit, every stretch where the lighting thinned and you had to trust the headlights more than the road markings. She had driven it in rain and in fog and in the specific kind of exhaustion that came from double shifts at the hospital. She had never driven it like this, with her vision blurring every thirty seconds and her chest doing something that made breathing feel like an effort she had to consciously make."I should have told her."She hit the steering wheel with the flat of her palm. The impact sent a sting up through her wrist and into her arm, she pressed harder into the wheel and hit it again."I

Shayla stood at the observation window for twenty minutes.That was as long as they allowed in any single visit and she used all of it. She stood with her hand pressed flat against the glass and she looked at her son lying in the bed surrounded by the machinery that was doing the work his body was not yet ready to do for itself, and she looked at the rise and fall of his chest and she counted the seconds between each breath and she talked to him inside her head because talking out loud through the glass felt like the wrong kind of desperation.Nine years old.He had turned nine years old in that bed and he did not know it and she could not tell him, she stood there and she looked at him and she did everything she could to keep herself from breaking down there.The doctor came by while she was at the window. Stopped beside her. Told her what he always told her, vitals strong, responding to treatment, healing progressing, no change in consciousness, no timeline. She thanked him and he m

Angel changed into her pajamas. Brushed her teeth and got ready for bed.Shayla lay down beside her on the bed. Angel curled up close. Rested her head on Shayla's shoulder.Grayson sat in the chair beside the bed. Picked up a storybook from the nightstand.He started reading. A fairy tale. About a princess and a knight and a dragon.His voice was soft. Soothing. Perfect for bedtime.Angel's eyes started getting heavy. Drooping. Closing.Within fifteen minutes, she was asleep. Breathing slow and steady. Peaceful.Grayson set down the book and stood up quietly.Shayla lifted herself carefully from the pillow they had both been sharing, moving in increments, watching Angel's face for any sign of waking. Angel did not wake. Her breathing was slow and even and her hands were loose on the blanket and she looked younger than ten in the way that sleeping made children look younger, all the effort of being awake gone from her face.They both leaned down at the same time. Both pressed their lip

[THE DON’S MOB(VOLKOV)- NIGHT] The drive was connected to Ivan's laptop and he had been going through it for three hours. He worked the way he worked everything, methodically, moving from folder to folder with his eyes tracking the screen and his hand on the mouse and his mind already several steps ahead of what he was currently reading, pulling out the files that were useful and tagging the ones that needed more attention and discarding the ones that were noise. Monica had been thorough. He would give her that. The woman was infuriating in almost every possible way but she was thorough and the drive reflected it, financial records going back four years, internal communications, acquisition strategies, security protocols, contractor details, supplier contracts. Everything a person needed to dismantle a company from the outside if they knew what they were doing with it. He knew what he was doing with it. Behind him, Jake poured another glass. "That is your fourth," Ivan said. "I

[MASTER BEDROOM - 1:47 AM] Grayson had been in the deepest sleep he had found in months. The kind that came from his body finally believing, after everything, that the people who mattered were close enough that he did not need to stay half-conscious watching for threats. Shayla's warmth beside him. The sound of the house settling. His mind had gone all the way under for the first time in longer than he could properly calculate. Then he heard crying. He was sitting up before his eyes had fully opened, his hand already reaching across the bed toward her, his heart already doing the thing it did when something was wrong with someone he loved, that immediate physical contraction that had nothing to do with thought and everything to do with her. Shayla was sitting up beside him with tears running down her face and her whole body shaking with the kind of sobs that came from somewhere genuine, deep and involuntary, and he reached for her face and tried to find the source of whatever thi