Chapter 244 Recognise Him
ADRIANA
I slept that night. Properly, deeply, for the first time since the trial began.
It wasn’t until I woke up the next morning that I understood how much I’d been carrying in my body — the kind of tension that becomes invisible because it’s been there so long it starts to feel like your natural state. The moment the verdict had landed and I’d watched Nancy cross that courtroom floor, something in me had finally released its grip.
I ran a bath that evening and stayed in it until the water went cold and my fingers pruned. I didn’t care about either of those things. I’d asked one of the staff to book a massage for the following day because my shoulders felt like concrete and I had earned it.
Dinner was the quietest it had been in weeks. No files spread across the table, no Hazel and I eating with one hand and pointing at documents with the other, no half-finished plates pushed aside because someone had a sudden thought that couldn’t wait. Just the kids and the food and the normal comfortable noise of a family at the end of the day.
Elijah junior and Liam argued about something that had happened during the day that I only caught the tail end of. Lorain ate with the serious focus she always brought to mealtimes, occasionally offering unsolicited opinions on what her brothers were doing wrong. Leo had his phone out under the table until I gave him a look and he put it away without being told twice. It was ordinary and it was good. Having Elijah there would have made things perfect.
I was asleep before ten.
Lana woke me at six fifty-three the following morning.
I could hear her before she arrived — the escalating cry moving down the corridor toward my room, the maid’s low soothing sounds doing absolutely nothing to help. The door opened and I was already sitting up by the time they came through it.
I took her without a word and the maid retreated gratefully.
“Lana.” I walked her in slow circles around the room, her face pressed against my neck. “It is not yet seven in the morning. Whatever the problem is, I promise it is not as serious as you think.” She inhaled, preparing for another round. “Don’t,” I said.
She did anyway.
I walked her for forty minutes. It wasn’t working. Then I had an idea.
I gathered her things, tucked her against my chest, and went upstairs.
The room was quiet when I pushed the door open. Two of the day staff were in the process of finishing the morning routine — straightening the bedding around Elijah, checking the equipment, making the space feel like somewhere a living person existed rather than somewhere someone simply lay. I let them finish, standing in the doorway with Lana still fussing quietly against me.
When they were done and the room was ours, I walked to the bed and stood beside it.
“Elijah.” I looked at his face — still, peaceful in that wrong way, the same as every day. “Your daughter has decided that sleep is optional and that seven in the morning is a reasonable time to be furious about something I cannot identify. I have been up for nearly an hour. I have tried everything.” I sat carefully on the edge of the bed. “So I’m going to need you to step in.”
I eased Lana down beside him and lifted his arm and arranged it around her, and she shifted and squirmed and then… went still.
I stared at her.
Within two minutes she was asleep.
“That,” I said quietly, “is genuinely unfair.”
I sat there for a long moment looking at the two of them — Elijah’s face, unchanging, and Lana curled against his side with her small fist pressed to her cheek, completely at peace for the first time all morning. She was so new to this world that she’d barely had time to know him before the incident. But something in her recognized him anyway.
She was going to be such a daddy’s girl. I could already see it.
I had nowhere to go without risking waking her, and Elijah certainly wasn’t going to manage her if she did wake up, so I lay down on the other side of him and closed my eyes.
I woke up to a single knock at the door.
Lana was still asleep. I extracted myself carefully and went to the door and found Hazel on the other side of it.
“I went to your room first,” she said. “The staff said you’d come up here.”
I stepped aside and let her in, and she came around the bed and looked at the two of them and her expression did something complicated.
“She finally went down,” I said.
“I can see that.” She was quiet for a moment, still looking at Elijah. “How are you holding up? Actually.”
“I’m fine today.” I meant it. “Ask me again in a week.”
“The doctor—”
“Says the same thing he said last month and the month before that.” I sat in the chair by the window. “Fine, no signs of illness, brain activity unchanged, no indication of when or if. I know the script.” I looked at Hazel. “You had an idea. You mentioned it a few weeks ago — getting additional opinions.”
“I’ve been thinking about it too,” she said. “We’ve been working with one doctor for seven months. That’s one perspective, one methodology. There are specialists—”
“Find them.” I straightened. “I don’t care where they are or what it costs to bring them here. Find as many as you think are credible and send them in one at a time. If they all say the same thing, at least I’ll know we’ve exhausted every option.” I looked at Elijah. “I’m not willing to accept that we’ve done everything we can when we’ve only done one thing.”
Hazel nodded. “I’ll start today.”
Lana made a small sound from the bed and we both went completely still, watching her. She resettled without waking. We exhaled at the same moment and Hazel put her hand over her mouth to cover the laugh.
“What did you come to tell me?” I asked.
She glanced at the bed, then at me. “It can wait. Genuinely — there’s nothing urgent. Stay up here for a while.” She moved toward the door. “I’ll have food sent up. You need to eat a real meal.”
“Hazel—”
“A real meal, Adriana. Not tea and biscuits over files.” She pulled the door open. “I’ll handle downstairs. Take the morning.”
She left, and the room was quiet again.