Chapter 5 — He Bled in Her Arms

“Adrian.”

Lily dropped with him, still trapped inside his jacket.

Security flooded the stage. Guests screamed and crawled beneath tables while Gabriel’s men formed a wall around them.

Adrian’s hand found Lily’s face.

“Are you hit?”

Blood darkened his side, but his eyes searched her body with terrifying concentration.

“No.” Her voice broke. “You are.”

“Leo?”

“Secure,” Gabriel said. “Elena has him.”

Only then did Adrian let himself sag.

Paramedics forced Lily back. She watched them cut through his shirt, watched oxygen cover the mouth that had defended her before an entire city, and watched a man who seemed larger than fear disappear behind ambulance doors.

At St. Catherine’s, the Moretti name sealed an entire surgical floor.

Lily sat outside the operating room with dried blood on her hands and Adrian’s jacket around her ruined gown.

Leo arrived in Elena’s arms.

He did not cry at first. He stared at the red stains on Lily and went completely still.

“Papa promised he always comes home.”

Lily pulled him close. “Then we’ll wait for him.”

The words were not certainty. They were all she had.

Leo began to shake against her.

Lily carried him into a quiet consultation room and washed Adrian’s blood from her hands one finger at a time. Leo stood beside the sink, refusing to release the edge of her jacket.

“Was the bad man trying to take you too?” he asked.

Lily knelt despite the stiffness in her wine-soaked dress.

“Your father made sure he didn’t.”

“He always gets hurt when people leave.”

The sentence made her look at him. Leo had not said when my mother left. He had said gets hurt, as though loss were an injury his father kept surviving.

Lily wrapped Adrian’s jacket around both of them.

“Then tonight, neither of us leaves him alone.”

Vivienne approached with three board members and a family attorney. She had changed out of her evening gown. Her face was composed, but her eyes were swollen.

“Take Leo to the family suite,” she ordered Elena.

Leo clung to Lily.

“No.”

“He needs family.”

“She is my family,” Leo shouted.

The corridor fell silent.

Vivienne looked at Lily as though the bullet had proved her right.

“This is what follows you now. Cameras. Gunfire. A terrified child.”

Lily held Leo tighter.

“I didn’t bring the gun.”

“But Adrian stood in front of it because of you.” Vivienne’s voice trembled. “If you care for either of them, leave before he wakes.”

The cruelest part was that Lily understood.

She looked down at Leo. She imagined Adrian opening his eyes to find his son alive, his enemies contained, and the dangerous stranger gone from their lives.

Perhaps leaving was the only gift she could give them.

The surgical doors opened.

The physician removed his mask. “The bullet passed through soft tissue below the ribs. There was significant bleeding, but no major organ was damaged. Mr. Moretti is stable.”

Lily’s knees nearly gave way.

Leo buried his face against her neck and sobbed.

Two hours later, Adrian woke in a private recovery room.

His first word was rough and barely audible.

“Lily?”

Gabriel stood beside the bed. “She’s outside with Leo.”

Adrian closed his eyes for one brief second.

“Bring her in.”

“The board is requesting—”

“Lily. Now.”

Vivienne entered before Gabriel could reach the door.

“You nearly died.”

Adrian looked past her. “Did you tell Lily to leave?”

His aunt said nothing.

“Did you?”

“I told her the truth. She is a vulnerability Damian Cross will continue to exploit.”

It was the first time Lily heard the enemy’s name. She stood in the doorway with Leo’s sleeping weight in her arms.

Adrian saw her.

The machines beside him accelerated.

“Come here.”

Vivienne stepped between them. “Adrian, the trustees are prepared to invoke the foundation’s emergency governance clause if you continue making emotional decisions.”

He looked at the family attorney.

“Effective immediately, Vivienne is removed as chair of the Moretti Foundation. Suspend every access credential and notify the trustees.”

“You cannot do that from a hospital bed.”

“I just did.”

Vivienne stared at him.

Adrian’s voice lowered. “You taught me that family protects its own. Lily saved Leo. Tonight she kept him from breaking while I was under a surgeon’s knife. If you force me to choose who belongs here, do not assume I will choose you.”

His aunt left without another word.

Adrian’s attorney remained.

“Issue a statement,” Adrian said. “Lily Bennett has full family-level visitation and security authorization. No employee, trustee, or relative removes her from my property or my son’s presence without her consent or mine.”

Lily’s eyes burned.

“Adrian, you don’t have to give me a title because I stayed with Leo.”

“I am not rewarding you.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“Because every person in my world has always demanded proof that they belong.” Adrian’s gaze moved to Leo, then back to her. “You gave mine your breath before you knew his last name. I will not make you audition for a place you have already earned.”

He shifted and pain tightened his face.

She immediately moved closer.

Leo woke at the sound of Adrian’s voice. Lily lowered him carefully beside his father.

“Papa.”

Adrian touched his son’s cheek. “I came home.”

“Not home yet,” Leo whispered.

“Close enough.”

Leo fell asleep with one hand on Adrian’s arm and the other around Lily’s fingers.

For a while, the three of them remained connected across the hospital bed.

Near dawn, Lily found Adrian awake.

“Vivienne was right about one thing,” she said. “You were shot because someone wanted to reach me.”

“I was shot because a man aimed at you.”

“That is not better.”

“To me, it is.”

She looked at the bandage beneath his hospital gown. “You could have died.”

Adrian reached for her. He stopped before touching her cheek, giving her time to pull away.

Lily leaned into his palm.

“The bullet frightened me less,” he said, “than the thought of waking up and finding you gone.”

Her breath caught.

He drew her closer and kissed her.

The kiss was careful because Leo slept beside them and Adrian could barely move. Yet beneath that restraint was something fierce and hungry, a promise made by a man who had already placed his body between hers and death.

When he released her, Lily rested her forehead against his.

“I don’t know what this makes us,” she whispered.

“Neither do I.” His thumb traced the edge of her cheek. “But no one else gets to decide it.”

His phone began to ring.

Neither of them saw Ethan Cole’s name on the screen.