Page 116 of Possessive Mafia Vows

Lucky.

This isn’t the kind of luck I’m accustomed to, but if everything else from this moment forward goes well, I’ll be eternally grateful that the universe chose to keep her alive tonight.

But there’s one more thing.

“She’s pregnant,” I say. “Will the baby survive?”

“Gestational period?” The round-faced man raises his eyebrows questioningly. “How far is she?”

“I-I don’t know.” I’ve been back from Ireland for less than a month, so it isn’t hard to calculate. “A few weeks.”

He nods. “We’ll do everything that we can. She’s in safe hands.”

Safe hands.

He probably says this to everyone who accompanies a loved one to the hospital. Comforting words. It’s all part of the job.

But no one’s hands are safer than mine when it comes to Sienna. I make a silent vow to the God I’m not entirely sure I believe in, to protect her for the rest of my life, or he can strike me down any way he sees fit.

When we reach the emergency room, they make me stay in the waiting room while the doctors treat Sienna. My mom and Patrick arrive shortly after Sienna is admitted. They get me coffee in a flimsy plastic cup that I don’t drink. They sit on uncomfortable plastic seats in silence, surrounded by people with worried eyes and thin lips, while I pace back and forth, my clothes drying in the cloying heat and sticking to my skin.

It feels like I’ve been waiting for an eternity.

Time drags. People come and go. Faces light up as patients emerge from the bowels of the hospital and announce that they can go home.

I want to believe that Sienna will survive. I know exactly what she would say if our roles were reversed: stay positive and manifest the outcome that you want.

But it isn’t that simple when you’ve recently witnessed the love of your life falling from a cliff in the middle of a raging storm.

“Kyle, why don’t you sit down, love?” My mom’s voice is tender.

I haven’t even asked how she came to be at the property, carrying a loaded pistol. I’m grateful that she was. If she hadn’t shot Nick when she did…

A medic in green scrubs approaches me then. She’s young, surprisingly fresh-faced considering her profession, dark hair cropped into a short, blunt bob.

She smiles. “Mr. Murray? You can come through and see Sienna now.”

“I can?”

Mom and Patrick are both on their feet. Mom squeezes my hand before I follow the young woman along the busy hallway to the room where Sienna is being treated.

She pulls back a green curtain, winks at me, and says, “I’ll give you some time alone.”

I step inside. My palms are sweating, and my eyes start twitching when I see Sienna in the raised bed, a drip inserted into the back of her left hand, her right arm strapped onto and supported by raised blocks. She’s still deathly pale, there’s a Band-aid covering her left cheek, but she smiles when I enter, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that she will always be the most beautiful woman in the world to me.

“Hey.” I feel like an inexperienced teenager all over again, mentally tripping over what I want to say while my cheeks grow hot. I lean over Sienna and kiss her forehead, smoothing her hair away from her face. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I got hit by a truck.” She pauses. “Again.”

A small smile appears on her lips, and my chest floods with relief.

“They need to operate on my arm.” She flexes her fingers which tap lightly on the thermal blanket. Her voice is hoarse. “It’s broken in two places.”

“Have they given you something for the pain?”

“Uh-huh. I have a concussion.”

“From the fall?”

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