It would have been much longer if he’d had to perform trauma repair and reconstruction on both patients. But by the time he had them on his table, he’d known one of them would not make it. Ivan’s friend. The sister was critical but could survive with a liver transplant. Her brother was a tissue match for her and Antonio could harvest his liver, which had been one of the few things remaining intact in him. Ivan, who’d been watching everything in the gallery, had told him to do anything to save her. Which he had.
Letting his team take her to the ICU now, he tore his bloody scrubs off and stepped out of the OR. Ivan was right at the door, looking like he’d go on a rampage at any moment.
“Sorry about your...friend.” Antonio wouldn’t ask for details. Ivan would tell him if he wanted him to know. “I trust you know who did this to them?”
Ivan’s usually forbidding face turned positively demonic. “They’re already dead.”
That was quick, even for Ivan. But then, no one could hide from him. Ivan had always traced the untraceable. But being the lord of the cyber world wasn’t where his talents ended. His business rivals called him Ivan the Terrible, unsuspecting that Ivan was literally lethal. He was as accomplished an assassin as any of their other brothers.
“She will be fine, won’t she?”
Antonio exhaled, rubbing his stiff neck. Ten hours of operating on Ivan’s mystery woman had been extra grueling, mostly because of Ivan’s volcanic agitation. Antonio did everything he could for all his patients, but when one of his brothers was involved, the stakes were almost unmanageable. Something he didn’t relish while having a human life under his scalpel.
“She will be. But even after I discharge her, it’ll be a long road to recovery. Does she have anyone to take care of her?”
“She has me.”
Antonio went still. Coming from Ivan, this was major.
It could be duty driving him, or a debt he owed his dead friend. But Antonio felt this went far beyond that. Though Ivan had never intimated that he’d ever cared for a woman, Antonio felt this one was important to him. Very important. In a way no woman had ever been.
This was either a relationship Ivan had chosen not to tell him about, or it was a new development, as intense and life-changing as his situation with Liliana.
And if this weren’t such a grim occasion, Antonio would have told him about her, would have joked about the brothers falling like dominoes one after the other.
But if Ivan felt about this woman like Antonio did for Liliana, what had happened to her, what was still ahead of her, must be killing him. While he had so much joy to look forward to with Liliana starting tonight, Ivan could only watch the woman he cared about struggle for her life.
Feeling guilty that he was the happiest he’d ever been while Ivan suffered his worst pain, Antonio grabbed him by the shoulders. “She will be fine, Ivan. She’s strong, and you brought her to me in the best condition possible. I believe her brother was lost at the scene, and it was only your efforts that kept his systems going till you got him here. It’s the only reason his organs were viable, making the transplant possible. It was you who saved her.”
Ivan avoided his eye, kept his downcast under the blackest frown Antonio had ever seen as he turned away. But not before Antonio saw what felt like a blow to the solar plexus. His iceberg of a friend’s eyes filling with tears.
Knowing Ivan wouldn’t want him to acknowledge his upheaval, he followed him in silence to the ICU’s observation area.
He stood behind him, felt agony radiating off him as he watched his mystery woman being hooked to monitors and drips.
“I’m a phone call away, Ivan.”
Back rigid, breathing strident, Ivan only nodded.
Knowing he could do no more for now, Antonio exhaled at the unaccustomed feeling of helplessness and walked away.
* * *
An hour later, Antonio entered his mansion. It was dim and quiet. But he knew Liliana was there. She’d texted him, and so had Paolo the moment she’d gone inside safely.
He walked through the foyer into the great room and found her there on the couch, her hair streaming off its edge in a cascade of curls. She was sound asleep.
He approached her soundlessly and looked down at her. With his best friend’s ordeal reverberating in his being, seeing her there, whole and irreplaceable, had a storm of emotions raging inside him. He wanted to wake her up, lose himself inside her, hide her within himself. And none of it was about lust. It was about passion and protection. Tenderness and togetherness. And everything he’d never shared with or offered another human being.
Unable to keep away anymore, he bent to pick her up. The moment he touched her, she opened her eyes. They penetrated him to his very recesses with their instant welcome. As she tried to sit up, he scooped her up and pressed her head to his shoulder.