Chapter Three: The Vigil

Dante didn’t wake up for three days.

Elena didn’t leave the hospital for three days.

She slept in on-call rooms. Ate vending machine sandwiches. Ignored the texts from her chief of staff demanding to know why she hadn’t called the police.

She told herself she was staying for professional reasons.

He was her patient. She had a duty of care.

But every night, when the ICU was quiet and the monitors beeped their steady rhythm, she sat beside his bed and watched him breathe.

She studied his face.

The lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there before. The gray at his temples. The way his hand—the one without the IV—kept twitching like he was reaching for something.

Or someone.

On the third night, his eyes opened.

Dante blinked slowly, confused. His gaze found the ceiling, the machines, the tubes.

Then it found her.

“You’re alive,” he whispered. His voice was ruined. Raw.

“So are you,” Elena said. “Unfortunately for both of us.”

He almost smiled. “Still angry.”

“Still angry,” she agreed.

They looked at each other across seven years of silence.

“I watched the video,” she said.

Dante’s expression didn’t change. “Then you know.”

“I know you lied. I know you left. I know you let me believe the worst possible things about you so I wouldn’t come looking for answers.”

She leaned forward.

“What I don’t know is why you came back.”

Dante closed his eyes.

“Because they found out about you anyway,” he said. “Someone talked. Someone told them about the surgeon I used to love. The one I’d kill to protect.”

His hand moved. Weakly. Slowly.

It found hers.

“They were coming for you, Elena. So I came first. To warn you. To give you the evidence. To—”

He coughed. Blood dotted his lips.

“To say goodbye properly this time.”

Elena didn’t pull her hand away.

She should have.

But she didn’t.

“You’re not dying,” she said. “Not on my watch. I spent seven years becoming the best trauma surgeon in this city. I’m not letting you ruin my perfect record.”

Dante’s fingers tightened around hers.

“Still saving me,” he murmured.

“Always,” she said. And immediately regretted it.

Because it was true.

And because he knew it was true.

And because now he knew she’d never stopped caring.

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