Chapter 88 Do or die
RORY POV
I was shaking violently as they carried
Alexander's limp body toward the medical wing of the house.
I couldn’t help it. The moment they lifted him I was already moving, already running toward them, my bare feet slapping the cold floor and my hands reaching for him before I’d made any conscious decision to reach at all.
I followed them through the corridor, through the doors, all the way to the theatre room the doctors had converted inside the house — and then the door swung shut directly in my face.
“LET ME IN!” I slammed both palms against it. “LET ME IN RIGHT NOW!”
I kept banging. I couldn’t stop. As long as my hands were hitting the door it felt like I was doing something, like I was still part of what was happening on the other side of it.
“Rory.” Vivianne’s hands came around my arms from behind, pulling me back gently but firmly. “Stop. Let the doctors do their job.”
“What if they don’t save him?” My eyes kept moving between her face and the door, unable to settle on either. “What if he doesn’t wake up? Vivianne — what if —” I could still see the image of his blood gushing out, soaking into my clothes.
“Alexander is stronger than you think.” She held my gaze steady. “He’ll be fine. We have the best doctors you could think of under this roof. Trust that.”
I couldn't take it. My legs gave out, and I slumped to the floor right there in the hallway.
I sat with my head between my hands, my mind racing through the terrifying odds.
"Rory, come on. Stand up. Let's get you cleaned up. We'll come back to check on him later."
I could hear the hidden sadness in Vivianne's voice. Despite her trying to stay strong for me, she was wrecked.
Alexander has to be fine. He has to. He can't die. I realized then, with a crushing weight, that I didn't think I could live without him. He had me wrapped around his fingers, and I hadn't even realized it until he was slipping away.
None of this made sense. I was supposed to want him gone.
I was supposed to hate him. By every reasonable measurement I should be sitting here relieved, or indifferent, or calculating what this means for the contract. Why was I so broken he got shot? Anyone in their right mind would feel something like relief if their captor got shot. But here I am, shaking so hard my teeth are chattering, tears streaming down my face because I cannot stand the thought of losing him. I cannot stand it. And I don’t know when that happened. I don’t know at what point hating him and loving him became the same feeling wearing different clothes.
I had no idea how long I sat there.
At some point I realized I was alone in the hallway.
Luke and Vivianne were gone, busy investigating how the attackers had breached the perimeter and cut the feeds.
Finally, the ICU door slid open. I shot up instantly, rushing toward the lead doctor. His face was a mask of professional exhaustion.
"Please... tell me he's fine," | breathed.
The doctor slowly nodded. “The bullet didn’t penetrate as deep as we feared,” he said. “It missed the major organs. There was significant blood loss but we’ve managed it. He’s stable, Mrs. Miller. He’s going to be okay.”
For the first time in hours I exhaled properly. The breath came out of me shaky and long and I felt my whole body sag with it.
“Can I see him? When will he wake up?”
"You can go in. We've stitched him up and given him a heavy sedative to help his body recover. He should wake up sometime tomorrow."
I didn't even bother responding, I pushed past him and headed straight inside.
The room was dim and quiet.
He was in the bed at the center of it, hooked to monitors that beeped soft and steady, an IV line running from his arm, his chest rising and falling in slow, even increments that I watched for a full five seconds before I could make myself believe they were real.
My heart sank looking at him. I never thought l'd see the day where Alexander Miller looked this helpless. Usually, there wasn't a single soft feature about him-he was all sharp edges and cold steel, built for a world that required him to be exactly that. But lying there, almost lifeless, he looked... soft. Tired. He looked like something that had been running at full capacity for years and had finally, forcibly, been made to stop.
His powerful torso was wrapped in heavy white bandages, and several IV lines were taped to his scarred skin.
More lines of bruising across his ribs and collarbone from the night’s fighting, a cut above his left brow they’d cleaned and closed.
His large hands lay open at his sides, palms up, completely still.
I wiped my tears and took the seat beside him.
I reached out, taking his large, calloused hand in mine and rubbing it gently.
“You better wake up, asshole,” I said quietly. My voice was rough from crying and barely above a whisper. “You’re so annoying and you make me miserable. You make everything harder than it needs to be and you’re infuriating ninety percent of the time and half the things you do make me want to scream.” I pressed his hand between both of mine a little tighter. “But you are not allowed to die. Do you hear me? Not ever. Not from this. Not from anything.” My voice cracked on the last word and I let it.
I heard a soft sound at the door. Vivianne was leaning against the frame, watching us. I quickly wiped my eyes.
"The doctor said he'll be fine," I told her.
Vivianne nodded, a small, tired smile on her face. "I told you so. My brother isn't the type of man who dies from a single bullet. He’s too stubborn for that."
I chuckled through a fresh wave of tears. "Do you know where they came from? The attackers?"
Vivianne's expression darkened. "We can't say for sure yet. Some of the gear belonged to the Brotherhood, but we still have no idea how
they got past the external sensors. Some of the CCTV feeds were cut manually from the inside."
I sighed, a new fear settling in. "What if they attack again? I never expected... I didn't know it would be like this."
The reality of Alexander's world was finally crashing down on me. It wasn't just expensive suits and endless wealth.
I knew it was there, I’d seen pieces of it — the weapons, the brotherhood, the men who sat across dinner tables and talked about death like weather. But it had always felt like something happening around me rather than to me.
Tonight it happened to me.
Tonight I watched men die in the courtyard of my home and ran across open ground toward a gun and held a bleeding man on the cold floor while he signed words to me with a shaking hand. Tonight the world Alexander lived in reached inside the walls and took him right out of my arms.
As if she could hear my thoughts, Vivianne stepped closer. "You don't have to worry.
We've doubled the guards, and Alexander's right-hand man is sending a tactical team to the house. We'll be fine, Rory."
I nodded. "Thank you."
"Rory," Vivianne said, her voice dropping to a serious tone. "I hope you know that in the future, things like this will happen again. There is a lot of danger attached to the Miller name.
It's part of the life."
I looked down at Alexander's hand in mine.
"I know that now," I said softly.
"Will you be okay with it?" she asked. "I promise you, as long as a Miller is standing, nothing will harm you."
I looked at Alexander's pale face and tightened my grip on his hand.
I thought about the courtyard. The bodies. The cold ground and his blood and his hands finding my face in the middle of all of it asking if I was okay before he let himself go down.
I thought about his hands signing in the dark.
He cared. That was enough for me.
"I'm okay with it." I said.
And I meant it. I knew from this moment it’s do or die.