Chapter 9 - The Vow Rekindled
By three in the morning, Lucian was back at Hudson Valley Regional.
He had scrubbed the city grime from his skin, changed into clean surgical scrubs, and walked through the airlocked doors of the NICU.
Kate was already there. She sat in a recliner beside Leo’s incubator, her hand slipped through one of the portholes, her index finger resting gently in the palm of her son. The infant’s entire hand barely wrapped halfway around her finger.
She looked up as Lucian approached. The tension that had defined her posture for months had begun to fray, leaving behind only the pure, exhausted devotion of a mother.
“How is he?” Lucian asked, pulling a stool beside her.
“Stable,” Kate whispered, a faint smile touching her lips. “The doctor said his oxygen saturation improved after they gave him surfactant for his lungs. He’s fighting, Lucian. Look at him.”
Lucian looked into the incubator. Leo was asleep, his chest rising in tiny, rhythmic beats under the warm glow of the phototherapy lamps.
Slowly, hesitatingly, Lucian reached through the secondary porthole. His hand—calloused from years of handling weapons and signed contracts—looked monstrously large beside the infant. He gently placed his pinky against Leo’s foot.
The baby gave a tiny kick, curling his toes against Lucian’s skin.
A lump lodged in Lucian’s throat. A single tear escaped his eye, tracking silently down his cheek. He didn't wipe it away.
“Vincent is dealt with,” Lucian murmured, keeping his eyes on their son. “He will never touch you again. None of them will.”
Kate watched the man before her. The ruthless king of the underworld, weeping silently over a two-pound child. The walls she had built around her heart began to crack, piece by painful piece.
“I heard you tore the papers,” she whispered.
“I never should have had them drafted,” Lucian said, finally looking up to meet her eyes. “When you disappeared, Kate, I felt an agony I didn't know I was capable of feeling. I thought you saw the monster I was and couldn't bear to look at me. I drafted those papers to protect my pride. It was cowardice.”
“You’re not a coward, Lucian,” Kate said softly. “You’re just terrifying when you’re afraid.”
Lucian reached across the gap between their chairs, taking her free hand in his, pressing it against his heart so she could feel the fierce, unbroken rhythm inside.
“I won't let you run again,” he swore. “Not because I’ll lock you up, but because I’ll spend every day proving that you and Leo are my life. Let me bring you both home. Real home.”
Kate looked down at their joined hands, then at their son sleeping between them. For the first time in seven months, the suffocating terror in her chest began to ease.
“He needs weeks here before he can come home, Lucian,” she whispered.
“Then I stay here for weeks,” Lucian replied without a heartbeat of hesitation. “Boardrooms can burn. The city can wait.”
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For a brief, shining moment, the nightmare seemed to fade. Kate leaned toward him, resting her forehead against his shoulder, letting the warmth of his presence wash over her exhausted soul.
***
