Chapter 238 Happy Forever After 🤍
Chapter 238 Happy Forever After 🤍
~10 Months Later~
Rico didn’t bother parking the car properly. He was out of it before it had fully stopped, the door left swinging behind him as he pushed through the hospital entrance with heavy strides.
His heart was beating too fast and too loud. His fingers were curled into tight fists at his sides, his jaw set hard with the impatience of a man who was not used to being anywhere other than in control... and who was currently very far from it.
He moved through the hallway without slowing down, bumping into staff and visitors as he went. He didn't register any of it, as there was no room in him right now for apologies.
He had to get to Calla.
When his mother called, her voice was high and hurried in a way Donna Marta’s voice rarely was. Rico had been seated at the head of a table full of territory heads, in the middle of a meeting that had taken three weeks to arrange. He listened to four words and stood up. Without any explanation or handover, he simply walked out, and whatever the men around that table thought about it was their business entirely.
The due date wasn’t for another two weeks. He had planned around those two weeks, cleared his schedule, arranged everything so that when the time came he could be present and nowhere else.
And then their child had decided to come now, apparently unbothered by anyone’s plans.
He found the labor ward and spotted Donna Marta immediately, her shawl clutched in both hands, her face carrying the expression of a woman relieved to no longer be the most stable person in the hallway.
“Where is she? Is my wife okay? Is the baby out yet?” He asked, the words almost jumbled up.
Donna Marta pressed her lips together. “She’s refusing to push until you get here.”
Rico closed his eyes for exactly one second. Then he pressed his hand into his hair and muttered something low under his breath.
Until the very last moment, in the middle of labor, she had decided to wait for him. He didn’t know whether to be overwhelmed or annoyed by that.
He was both.
The moment he pushed through the door, he heard her. “Rico—”
His name, in her voice, cracked at the edges and was full of relief. “I’m here.” He was already crossing the room. “I’m here, Lyra.”
He reached her side and she grabbed his hand with both of hers, squeezing hard. Her hair was stuck to her forehead, her eyes wet, tired, and bright all at once.
She was the most important thing he had ever seen in his life.
“You’re here,” she breathed, and her whole body seemed to release, shoulders dropping, face softening, like a knot loosening.
“I’m here,” he said again, quieter this time. Just for her.
The doctor appeared at the foot of the bed. “She’s fully dilated, so the baby is ready. We need to move now.”
Rico nodded, his eyes staying on Calla.
They moved her quickly. Rico walked beside her the entire way, her hand locked around his. She squeezed it every few seconds, sometimes gently, sometimes with a force that suggested she had forgotten his hand was made of bones.
He didn’t mention it.
“Do you want a boy or a girl?” she asked suddenly, between ragged breaths.
“What?”
“Boy or girl.” She turned to him, completely serious. “Which do you want?”
He looked at the woman who was sweating, exhausted, and in active labor, asking him about gender preferences like this was the most reasonable conversation in the world.
“What I want,” he said slowly, “is for you to be alright.”
She made a face. Then another contraction hit and she grabbed his hand so hard he was certain she’d leave a mark.
He let her.
What followed was the longest stretch of time Rico had ever lived through. He stayed at her side through all of it. Through the pushing, the breathing, and the moments where Calla said things she’d probably not remember saying. Through the times she looked at him with eyes so raw and open he felt like he was seeing straight through to the center of her.
He didn’t leave, not for a single second.
And then, cutting through the noise, the effort, and the breathless waiting... a cry. Small, sharp, furious, and alive.
Rico exhaled, like something that had been held far too long, his whole chest falling with it. Every muscle he had simply released.
Calla was crying, laughing between sobs the way people do when the relief is too big for just one emotion.
Rico laughed too, a little shakily.
The doctor looked up with a warm smile. “Congratulations. You have a baby girl.”
Rico looked at Calla, and she was already looking at him. He leaned down and pressed his lips to her forehead, holding them there, eyes closed. “I love you,” he whispered.
She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
“Thank you,” he said softly. “Thank you.”
“You’re going to make me cry more," she said, slightly weak.
“You’re already crying.”
“Rico—”
He kissed her forehead again.
Over an hour later, the world was quieter. Calla had been moved to a private room with clean sheets, dim warm light, and the hush that settles when the urgent part is over.
Her color had returned. She looked tired in the deep, satisfied way of someone who had just done the hardest thing they’d ever done and come out the other side.
Donna Marta sat composed by the window. Eli stood near the door, practically vibrating, having been told three times to stop pacing with very little success.
Sophia couldn’t be there as she was in another state now with her husband. But a long, warm message full of exclamation marks had already come through, promising a visit soon.
Then the nurse walked in carrying a small bundle in white, and the room changed the moment she crossed the threshold. Everyone leaned in without meaning to.
She placed the baby in Calla’s arms, and the room went still.
Calla looked down at the tiny face, the small scrunched nose, the miniature fingers curled loosely at the edge of the blanket. She didn’t say anything, she just looked.
Rico sat beside her, his hand moving slowly through her hair.
“She looks so…” Calla started, shaking her head. “Perfect,” Calla said quietly.
“Tiny,” Rico said at the same moment.
They looked at each other and then everyone laughed. Eli loudest of all, Donna Marta pressing her fingers to her lips, Calla’s shoulders shaking even as fresh tears slipped down her face.
“When is it my turn?” Eli craned his neck dramatically. “I’m very ready to be an uncle," he said and they laughed again.
Donna Marta looked at the baby, and something moved across her face, the way grandmothers look when they see something that quietly repairs a part of something old. “Have you chosen a name?” she asked softly.
Rico glanced at Calla. “That’s her choice to make,” he said simply.
Calla looked down at her daughter for a moment longer. Then she lifted her eyes to Rico and held his gaze. “How about Lucia?”
The room went quiet. Rico’s hand stilled in her hair. His brows drew together slowly, not in confusion, but in the way they did when something landed somewhere deep and unexpected.
He searched her face and found exactly what he thought he’d find. She looked back at him with that particular softness she saved for moments she knew mattered.
Lucia. For Luciano.
A namesake. A small thread tied between the man he had lost and the life just beginning, sewn together quietly by the woman beside him, who hadn’t needed to do it, and had done it anyway.
He didn’t have words. For once in his life, nothing felt sufficient.
So he leaned down and pressed his lips to her hair and held them there, longer than he normally allowed himself. “It’s perfect,” he whispered.
Calla smiled. Then she looked back down at her daughter, her voice soft and sure. “Meet Baby Lucia Rose Romano. The newest member of the Romano family.”
Eli grinned. Donna Marta exhaled something that was almost a laugh, almost a prayer.
Rico looked at his daughter. At the tiny face, the fingers curling and uncurling against the blanket without knowing they were doing it. He saw Calla in the shape of her chin. And in the slight furrow of her brow, even now, in the very first hour of her life, he recognized something of himself.
A little of him. A little of Calla. The most perfect combination anything had ever managed to be.
He let her fingers wrap around his, all of them barely reaching past his first knuckle, and something in his chest settled in a way it never quite had before. Not the cold careful stillness he had spent years building. Something warmer, that didn’t need walls around it.
He had spent his whole life protecting things. But this—she—was something he would spend the rest of it simply loving.
And he couldn’t wait.