Chapter 235: Chapter 236: At The Hospital
His team was thorough. The space looked abandoned in the way it had looked abandoned before Harold had started using it, dust and old concrete and the particular silence of a building that had stopped being useful to anyone.
He pulled out his phone and called his best tracker. A woman named Sadie who had found three people in five years who had specifically and professionally not wanted to be found.
"I have a job," he said when she answered.
"Details?"
"Man named Harold Ashford. Former CEO, currently a fugitive. Phone went dark at 9:51 tonight, last ping in outer Brooklyn. Had a vehicle staged — partial plate, I’m sending it to you now. He’s desperate and he’s been planning this for weeks which means he has contingencies." Marcus paused. "He hurt someone important."
A brief silence. "How important?"
Marcus thought about Aria in the chair. Aria’s face in the footage Damien had watched in the car. Aria’s hand in Damien’s on that stretcher.
"Very," he said.
"I’ll find him," Sadie said.
"Alive if possible," Marcus said. Then paused. "But the Boss said dead or alive. So...use your judgment."
He ended the call and walked toward the southeast door. Pushed through it into the cold night air. Stood for a moment looking at the space where the medical team had been, the ground still marked with the specific debris of emergency response, scattered equipment wrappers, the tire tracks of the ambulance.
He thought about the look on Damien’s face when he’d carried Aria out of that building.
Not again, Marcus thought. Never again.
He raised his phone and sent a message to his full team: All resources on Harold Ashford. Everything else is secondary until further notice.
Then he got in his car and drove to Mont Senai.
His Boss needed him. And there was nothing else, right now, that mattered more than that.
****
The hospital received Aria with the specific organized urgency of a trauma team who knew one of their own was coming in. Someone had called ahead, Alexander, probably, using connections that Marcus hadn’t even needed to deploy, and by the time the ambulance pulled into the bay there were people waiting.
Damien stood back and let them work.
This was the hardest thing. Harder than the warehouse, harder than the ambulance ride, harder than any of it, standing in a hospital corridor watching medical professionals do their jobs around the person he loved and having absolutely nothing to do. No action available to him. No resource he could deploy. No amount of money or power or ruthless capability that was relevant to the next thirty minutes of imaging and assessment and treatment.
He stood against the wall with his hands in his pockets and his face controlled and let them work.
Alexander arrived eight minutes after the ambulance. Came through the emergency bay entrance with the directed purpose of someone who knew exactly where he was going, flanked by Liang who was already on his phone coordinating something.
He found Damien against the wall and came to stand beside him.
They stood there together, watching through the window of the treatment bay as the team worked around Aria.
"She’s strong," Alexander said finally. "Whatever they find in those scans, she’s strong."
"I know she is." Damien’s eyes didn’t leave the window. "She held on for two hours alone in that warehouse. She broke her zip tie." A pause. I know exactly how strong she is."
Alexander was quiet for a moment. "You watched all of the footage."
"Every second."
Another silence.
"I watched it too," Alexander said quietly. "In the car on the way here.
Damien looked at him. At the man standing beside him who was navigating something almost incomprehensibly complicated, the first weeks of knowing a daughter he’d missed for twenty-five years, and now this. Now standing in a hospital corridor looking through a window at her being treated for injuries she’d sustained because someone from Damien’s world had targeted her.
"This isn’t your fault," Alexander said, without looking at him. As though he’d heard the thought.
Damien said nothing.
"It isn’t," Alexander said again. His voice was firm this time "Harold Ashford made his choices. You made yours, you put security on her, you responded the moment she was taken, you mobilized everything available to you within minutes. You got to her." He paused. "What happened tonight is Harold’s fault. Not yours."
"She was in that chair for two hours."
"Yes. She was." Alexander’s jaw tightened. "And Harold is going to answer for every minute of it." He turned and looked at Damien directly. "But you don’t get to carry this as your failure. She wouldn’t want that. And frankly...." Something moved in his expression. "....I need you functional. She’s going to need both of us functional in the coming weeks. You don’t get to collapse into guilt."
Damien looked at him for a long moment.
"You sound like my grandfather," he said.
Something shifted in Alexander’s expression. Not quite a smile....the situation was too raw for anything that clean....but something adjacent.
"I’ll take that as a compliment," he said.
Damien looked back through the window.
His phone buzzed. Marcus.
Vehicle confirmed. Harold ditched it in Queens. We have a secondary sighting — possible. Following up now. He’s running scared, Boss. Scared men make mistakes. We’ll have him.
He showed the message to Alexander without speaking.
Alexander read it. Nodded once.
"Good," he said simply.
They stood there together, the billionaire CEO and the international businessman, the man who loved her and the man who’d spent twenty-five years searching for her, and watched through the glass as the doctors took care of Aria.
Neither of them spoke for a long time.
****
FORTY MINUTES LATER
The doctor, a woman named Patel who had the specific calm authority of someone who had delivered both good and bad news many times and understood the weight of both, came out of the treatment bay and found them where she’d left them. Against the wall. Waiting.
"The imaging is back," Dr. Patel said. "No skull fracture. The concussion is moderate, she’s going to need monitoring for the next twenty-four hours, and there will be headaches and some cognitive fog for a week possibly two. The orbital swelling is significant but no fracture there either. The lacerations are minor, cleaned and dressed." She looked between them. "She’s going to be fine. She’s awake and she’s asking for...." A brief pause as she consulted her notes, clearly uncertain about the dynamics of the two men in front of her. "She asked for Damien first. And then she asked for her mother."
Something released in Damien’s chest.
Something he hadn’t known was still clenched.
"Her mother is on her way," he said. His voice came out rougher than he intended. "Can I....."
"Room four," Dr. Patel said, stepping aside. "She’s been asking for you for the last ten minutes. Quite insistently, actually." A small, professionally restrained smile. "She also told me to tell whoever was outside to stop hovering because she could feel the anxiety through the wall."
Despite everything, despite Harold and the warehouse and the forty minutes of standing against that wall, Damien felt something that was almost, almost a real smile.
That was her. That was completely, entirely her.
He pushed off the wall.
Looked at Alexander.
"Come," he said simply.
Alexander blinked. "She asked for you...."
"She asked for me first," Damien said. "That doesn’t mean she doesn’t want you there." He held Alexander’s gaze. "She almost died tonight. She gets everyone who loves her in that room. All of us. Together."
Alexander looked at him for a moment that stretched long enough to carry the full weight of everything complicated and unresolved between them.
Then he nodded.
They walked toward room four together.
