Chapter 3 - The Fortress of Glass and Steel
The private wing of Boston General was entirely shut down.
Dante Russo owned the hospital, and tonight, no one entered the fourth floor without his explicit permission.
Armed guards stood at the elevator banks. Nico paced the hallway, fetching warm milk and plates of spaghetti for three terrified but starving little girls.
Dante stood by the glass window of the ICU.
Elena was hooked up to IV drips. Antibiotics. Nutrients. Hydration.
Dr. Evans, a man who had pulled bullets out of Dante’s chest without blinking, looked visibly shaken.
“She has severe pneumonia, Mr. Russo,” the doctor said quietly. “Severe malnutrition. Her body has been running on pure adrenaline and maternal instinct for years. If you had found her a week later... she wouldn’t have made it.”
Dante’s jaw tightened until his teeth ached. “Will she recover?”
“Yes. She’s strong. But she needs time. And absolute peace.”
“She’ll have it,” Dante vowed.
He walked back out to the private waiting room.
Mia, Bella, and Lily were sitting on the plush leather sofa. They had been bathed by the nurses and dressed in clean, oversized hospital scrubs.
They were eating the spaghetti as if they hadn’t seen food in a month. It broke his heart into a million irreparable pieces.
Dante sat in the armchair opposite them.
Three pairs of green eyes stared at him, chewing silently.
“Are you a bad man?” Mia asked suddenly, her fork pausing in mid-air. “Mommy told us stories about a prince, but she also said monsters are real.”
Dante leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He couldn’t lie to them. They had Elena’s eyes, and Elena’s soul, but they had his blood.
“I am a bad man to a lot of people, Mia,” Dante said softly. “I do things that are dark. I fight monsters because sometimes, you have to be a bigger monster to beat them.”
Lily, the quiet one, slid off the sofa.
She walked over to Dante with slow, hesitant steps. She held a half-eaten breadstick in her small hand.
She stood in front of him, assessing him with a gravity no six-year-old should possess.
Then, she climbed onto his lap, curled against his chest, and offered him the breadstick.
“You don’t look like a monster,” Lily whispered. “You look sad.”
Dante wrapped his arms around the tiny girl, burying his face in her clean, damp hair.
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For the first time since the car explosion seven years ago, Dante Russo cried.
He wept silently, the tears soaking into Lily’s hospital gown, while Mia and Bella came over to join the embrace, wrapping their little arms around the father they never knew they had.
