Chapter 201
Elena: POV
I stared at the glowing screen of my phone, Alexander's name burning into my retinas like an accusation.
My thumb hovered over the answer button, trembling so violently I nearly dropped the device.
Behind me, the operating room doors remained shut, their harsh red light casting everything in a hellish glow that made the sterile white walls look like they were bleeding.
Lila shifted in my lap, her small hand clutching the fabric of my shirt. She'd finally stopped crying, her breathing evening out into the shallow rhythm of exhausted sleep, but her fingers remained tight, as if some part of her knew that letting go meant losing her grip on safety itself.
My finger slid across the screen.
"Alexander," I said, my voice flat, emotionless. "I'm in New York. I've remembered everything."
I didn't wait for his response. I ended the call before he could speak.
The phone slipped from my hand onto the plastic chair beside me, and I turned my gaze back to the operating room doors, to that unforgiving red light that seemed to pulse in time with my racing heartbeat.
Please, I thought, the prayer formless and desperate. Please don't let him die.
The irony was bitter. Three years ago, I would have welcomed his death—fantasized about it during those dark hours when his rejection felt crushing, when Victoria's mocking smile haunted me, when I'd stared at divorce papers wondering if I'd ever meant anything to him at all.
But now—
Now the thought of losing him felt like someone had reached into my chest and was slowly squeezing my heart until it burst.
I pressed my lips to Lila's hair, breathing in the familiar scent of her strawberry shampoo mixed with the antiseptic smell of the hospital. The weight of her in my arms was the only thing keeping me tethered to reality, the only proof that I hadn't completely shattered into a thousand irreparable pieces.
He threw himself in front of a knife for me.
The image played on repeat in my mind: Julian's body moving before his brain could catch up, the way he'd positioned himself between me and Victoria like a human shield, the sick thud of the blade piercing flesh.
The way his eyes had found mine even as he fell, wide with shock and something that looked suspiciously like relief—as if dying to protect me was somehow easier than living without me.
God, what did that say about us? About the twisted, broken thing we'd become?
My chest felt tight, like someone had wrapped steel bands around my ribs and was pulling them tighter with each breath. Every minute that ticked by without news felt like an eternity, each second stretching out until I thought I'd go mad from the waiting, from the not knowing, from the terrible, suffocating fear that the last words I'd said to him had been I can't lose you twice.
Had he heard me? Had he understood what I was really saying—that despite everything, despite the pain and the betrayal and the years of being treated like I was worthless, some part of me still needed him alive?
The guilt was a living thing inside me, clawing at my throat, making it hard to swallow. I should have said more. Should have told him—
What?
That I forgave him? That I understood? That some broken, battered part of my heart still beat for him even after everything he'd put me through?
I didn't know. I didn't know anything anymore except that if he died, if that red light stayed on forever, if those doors never opened again—
I won't survive it.
The realization hit me like a freight train. I'd survived his cruelty, survived Victoria's machinations, survived losing our baby and jumping off a bridge and four years of manufactured memories. But I wouldn't survive losing him.
Stop, I told myself viciously. Stop hoping. Hope is what gets you killed.
But I couldn't stop. Couldn't turn off the part of my brain that kept replaying every moment from the past few days: the way he'd looked at Lila like she was the most precious thing in the world, the desperate apologies he'd whispered in hospital rooms, the fierce protectiveness in his eyes when he'd kicked down that warehouse door.
I love you, he'd mouthed through the oxygen mask.
Or maybe it had been I'm sorry.
Or maybe both.
Maybe it didn't matter anymore.
"Mommy?" Lila's voice was small, muffled against my chest. "Is Daddy going to be okay?"
Daddy. She'd called him that so naturally.
"I don't know, baby," I whispered, my voice cracking despite my best efforts. "I don't know."
The operating room doors burst open.
I was on my feet before I realized I'd moved, Lila clutched against my chest as Dr. Morrison emerged. His scrubs were soaked with blood—so much blood that for a moment I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but stare at the dark red stains that covered him from chest to knees.
His face was drawn, exhausted, and when his eyes met mine, I saw something in them that made my knees buckle.
No.
"Ms. Vance," he said, and his voice was gentle, so fucking gentle that I wanted to scream. "I'm so sorry. We did everything we could, but—"
The rest of his words dissolved into white noise. I heard them—heard him explaining about the knife piercing the pericardium, about massive internal bleeding, about how Julian's heart had stopped on the table and they'd worked for over an hour to bring him back—but none of it penetrated the roaring in my ears.
We did everything we could.
That's what doctors said when someone died. When there was nothing left to do but plan a funeral and pick out a casket and figure out how to explain to a four-year-old that her daddy was never coming home.
"No," I heard myself say. The word came out strangled, broken. "No, that's not—he can't be—"
"The blade missed his heart by 2.3 centimeters," Dr. Morrison continued, his voice taking on that clinical detachment doctors used when delivering devastating news. "But it pierced the pericardium—the sac around the heart. The internal bleeding was catastrophic. By the time we opened him up, there was over 800 milliliters of blood in the pericardial space."
Numbers. He was giving me numbers like they meant something, like they could explain why Julian Sterling was dead.
"We performed an emergency pericardiocentesis—drained the blood—but he'd already gone into hypovolemic shock. His blood pressure was undetectable. His heart..." Dr. Morrison's voice caught. "The monitor showed asystole. We worked on him for seventy-three minutes, Ms. Vance. We tried everything—chest compressions, defibrillation, epinephrine, blood transfusions—but his heart wouldn't restart. I'm so sorry. I'm going to give you and your family some time to say goodbye before we—"
"Where is he?" The question came out flat, dead. "I want to see him."