I stayed in the rain until dawn. When the sky finally turned grey enough to see by, I walked into the nearest hospital, soaked through, shaking, looking like something the tide had refused.
"Doctor. I need the procedure."
The physician studied me over the rim of his glasses. "Miss Bellandi. Are you certain?"
His caution cut into me like a blade between my ribs. What mother would choose this willingly? What woman walks into a sterile room and asks them to take the only piece of him she has left?
But the him I had been mourning did not exist.
Since the day they told me Julian Moretti was dead, the compound had been wrapped in grief so thick no one looked twice at me. I had told no one about the pregnancy. Not Don Hale, not the household, not the Family doctor. The secret had belonged only to me and to the ghost I thought I was carrying it for.
He did not know. While he had been living under his dead brother's name, standing at my sister's side, sitting across from her at Sunday dinner and watching her laugh, a child had been growing inside me. His blood. His heir.
If he wanted to chase the woman he loved badly enough to erase his own name from the world, then this child was mine alone. He would never hear of it.
"I'm certain. Schedule the procedure."
Three hours later they wheeled me out. My face held no color at all. I made it to the corridor bench under my own power, barely, one hand against the wall, the other pressed to my abdomen where a low, steady pain pulsed like a second heartbeat that had nowhere left to go.
Then a commotion erupted at the far end of the hallway.
A familiar figure swept past, carrying someone in his arms, moving fast, two soldiers flanking him. He disappeared around the corner toward the emergency ward. Minutes later he came back, alone, scanning the corridor. His eyes found me.
"Get up. Come with me. Now."
He didn't wait for an answer. He seized my arm and pulled me after him at a half-run. I had come out of surgery less than an hour ago. Every step sent pain rolling through me in waves. My vision blurred at the edges. My face went from pale to white.
He did not notice.
He didn't stop until we reached the transfusion room. He pushed the door open with his shoulder and spoke to the nurse on duty without letting go of my arm.
"Her blood type matches. Draw from her."