Chapter 3 - Harbor Children's Hospital & The Blood Mystery
The pediatric intensive care unit was a world of cold blues, sterile white tile, and the rhythmic, terrifying beeps of life support monitors.
They had stripped Sam out of his little navy-blue wedding suit—the cheap one I had bought off the discount rack at Target—and put him into a pale green gown patterned with smiling yellow bears. Tubes snaked out from his paper-thin arms, connecting him to IV bags of saline, broad-spectrum antibiotics, and cooling fluids.
A cold compress covered his forehead. His face was waxen, his lips slightly blue.
I sat in the vinyl armchair next to the bed, holding his left hand between both of mine, pressing it against my cheek. I hadn’t stopped shivering since we left the church.
Lucas and Noah were curled up on the small observation sofa against the far wall, wrapped in a single fleece blanket. Marco had bought them apple juice boxes and chocolate chip cookies from the cafeteria, but they had barely touched them. Every time a monitor beeped too loudly, Lucas’s head would snap up, his dark eyes—so eerily identical to Dominic’s—darting to his sick brother.
The door swung open, and Dominic walked back into the room.
He had removed his ruined tuxedo shirt. In its place, he wore a plain gray medical scrub top that clung tightly to his broad shoulders and chest. His right forearm was covered by a white pressure bandage where they had just taken six vials of his blood.
He walked with silent, measured steps, stopping at the edge of the bed opposite me.
He looked down at Sam. His hands, usually so steady, were clenched into fists at his sides.
“They took my blood,” Dominic said quietly. “They’re running the HLA typing and the full genetic panel now. Dr. Al-Mansoor said it will take two hours to confirm the cross-match.”
“Did you tell him about your mother?” I asked without looking up.
Dominic flinched. The reaction was subtle, but I caught it. For all his ruthless reputation, Dominic Russo had one vulnerability he never spoke of: the woman who had died when he was seven years old.
“I told him,” Dominic said. “I told him she died of an autoimmune hemolytic condition when she was twenty-eight. Victor always told everyone it was leukemia.”
I looked up at him, my eyes burning. “Leukemia doesn’t carry an X-linked recessive genetic anomaly, Dominic. Victor lied to you. He lied to protect the family’s public image. He didn’t want the Board of Directors or the Five Families to know that the Russo bloodline carried a lethal genetic defect.”
Dominic walked around the bed and pulled a second chair directly beside mine. He sat down, his knees brushing against mine. The scent of him—expensive cedarwood, cold rain, and the faint, bitter metallic tang of blood—flooded my senses, dragging me backward in time to the nights we spent tangled in the sheets of his penthouse before his world consumed mine.
“Maya,” he said, reaching out.
His hand hovered in the air between us, hesitant, before he slowly rested his fingers over mine where they held Sam’s small hand.
His skin was burning hot compared to mine, pulsing with an intense, raw energy.
“Don’t touch me, Dominic,” I whispered, though I didn't pull away. I didn't have the strength.
“You have every right to despise me,” he said, his voice dropping into a register meant only for me. “You have every right to take a knife and bury it in my chest. But please... tell me what happened. From the beginning. I need to know what you went through.”
A bitter, dry laugh escaped my throat.
“You want the highlights? Or the daily survival log?” I looked at him, letting him see the dark hollows under my eyes, the lines of exhaustion etched around my mouth. “I found out I was having triplets six weeks after I left Boston. Do you know what high-risk triplet pregnancy looks like without private insurance, Dominic? It looks like free clinic waiting rooms with twenty other women who have nowhere else to go. It looks like bed rest in a room that smelled like damp drywall because I was terrified of spending a single dollar of your father’s blood money.”
Dominic closed his eyes. His throat convulsed as he swallowed down a wave of nausea.
“When they were born,” I continued, my voice steadying with a cold, unrelenting anger, “they were six weeks premature. Sam was the smallest. One pound, fourteen ounces. He spent two months in the NICU fighting for every breath. I sat next to his incubator every night, watching his heart monitor dip, praying that whoever was up there would let me keep him.”
“Maya... stop,” Dominic breathed, his head bowing low. “Please.”
“No,” I said, leaning closer, refusing to let him look away. “You wanted to know. When they finally let me take them home, I had to carry three car seats up three flights of stairs. I fed them in shifts. When one stopped crying, the next one started. And every time I looked at their little faces, I saw you. I saw the man who swore he would burn the city down before he ever let anyone hurt me. And where were you? You were in the society pages, dining at the Somerset Club, expanding your family’s territory, preparing to marry the daughter of a real estate tycoon.”
Dominic looked up. His eyes were completely red, filled with tears he refused to let fall.
“I looked for you,” he said, his voice trembling with an intensity that terrified me. “Maya, listen to me. I tore this coast apart for four months. I tore through hotel registries, airport logs, train stations. I raided three separate properties owned by the Moretti family because I thought they had taken you to leverage me. I almost started a war that would have burned Massachusetts to the ground.”
“Then why didn't you find me?” I demanded. “Providence is fifty miles away!”
“Because Victor showed me a death certificate,” Dominic whispered.
The air inside the room froze.
I stopped breathing. Across the room, Noah let out a soft snore, his little head lolling against Lucas’s shoulder.
“What did you say?” I breathed.
“Three months after you disappeared,” Dominic said, his voice hollow, like a dead man speaking from a crypt, “Victor called me into his library. He had a file from the coroner’s office in Marseilles, France. It included dental records, a report of a woman matching your description found drowned in the Mediterranean, and a suicide note written in your handwriting.”
A cold shiver crawled down my spine. “A suicide note?”
“It said you couldn't live with the guilt of leaving me,” Dominic said, his hands clenching so hard the knuckles turned white as chalk. “It said you were sick, that you couldn't bear the thought of being a burden to a family like mine, and that you had taken an overdose before walking into the sea. My father had an urn full of ashes buried in the family plot at Mount Auburn. I went to that grave every Sunday for two years, Maya. Every goddamn Sunday.”
I stared at him, my heart hammering against my ribs until it felt like it would crack the bone.
Victor Russo hadn’t just threatened me into leaving. He had murdered me in the mind of his son. He had staged an entire funeral, bought forged forensic records from halfway across the world, and planted an empty urn in the ground just to ensure Dominic would never look back.
“He is a monster,” I whispered, horrified.
“He is worse than that,” Dominic said, his voice dropping into a tone that was terrifyingly calm. “He is a man who thinks he can write destiny with other people’s blood. But he forgot one thing.”
Dominic stood up, his towering silhouette blocking out the bright fluorescent lights of the room. He reached down and gently touched Sam’s tiny, cool foot.
“He forgot that my blood is stronger than his lies.”
The door opened with a sudden, sharp click, and Dr. Al-Mansoor walked in. The pediatric hematologist looked exhausted, his wire-rimmed glasses resting halfway down his nose as he reviewed a thick stack of printed lab results.
“Mr. Russo, Ms. Vance,” the doctor said, closing the door firmly behind him.
I jumped to my feet, my heart in my throat. “Doctor? What is it? Do you have the results?”
Dr. Al-Mansoor looked between Dominic and me. There was a look of deep, clinical bewilderment on his face.
“The good news,” the doctor said slowly, “is that Mr. Russo is indeed a hundred percent biological match for the boys. There is zero question of paternity.”
Dominic let out a breath he seemed to have held for three years, his shoulders dropping an inch.
“And the bad news?” I asked, bracing myself.
“The bad news,” Dr. Al-Mansoor said, tapping the paper, “is that Samuel does not have a standard autoimmune hemolytic anemia. What he has is a vanishingly rare genetic enzyme mutation—specifically, an extreme variant of pyruvate kinase deficiency compounded by an atypical HLH factor. It destroys his red blood cells faster than his marrow can produce them.”
“Can you treat it?” Dominic demanded, stepping forward with an authority that brooked no hesitation. “Name the cost. Name the specialist. I don’t care if we have to fly a surgical team from Zurich tonight. What does he need?”
“He needs an immediate plasma exchange and a targeted stem cell transfusion,” Dr. Al-Mansoor said gravely. “And he needs it within forty-eight hours, or his organs will begin shutting down from the severe hypoxia.”
“Take my bone marrow,” Dominic said instantly, pulling up the sleeve of his scrub top. “Take whatever you need. Strip me clean.”
“It’s not that simple, Mr. Russo,” the doctor said, shaking his head regretfully. “While you carry the compatible HLA antigens, you are also the carrier of the defective genetic marker. If we use your stem cells in their current state, your son’s body will simply replicate the same self-destructive cycle. We need a secondary matching donor to create a hybrid cellular bridge—or we need access to the complete proprietary genetic sequencing records of your maternal line. Specifically, your mother’s experimental medical records from the Swiss clinic she attended before her death.”
Dominic’s face went rigid. “Those records were sealed by my father thirty years ago. He keeps them in the private vault at the estate.”
“Then we have a problem,” Dr. Al-Mansoor said quietly. “Because without those baseline sequencing files to guide our synthetic antibody therapy, or an identical donor match without the active mutation, we are shooting in the dark. And Samuel does not have enough time for us to miss.”
Before Dominic could speak, a sharp commotion erupted outside in the hallway.
The sound of heavy, polished leather shoes clicking on linoleum was followed by the loud, authoritative voice of a hospital security guard trying to protest.
“Sir! You cannot enter the PICU wing without clearance! Sir!”
The frosted glass door was thrown open with violent force.
May you like
Victor Russo stepped into the room, leaning on his silver-headed cane, surrounded by four armed bodyguards who immediately positioned themselves in the doorway, blocking the exit.
***
