Dani Collins - The Marriage He Must Keep

Funny how she’d thought marriage would offer her a chance at a real family, but she felt more alone than ever, despite having a child with him.

“A friend over the tablet would be better than none at all,” Octavia assured her.

* * *

Alessandro was used to results. If they weren’t provided promptly, he got them himself, which was what he was doing right now.

He stationed one of his bodyguards at the nursery door and the other accompanied him and the administrator through the green corridors to meet the hospital’s head of security, Gareth Underwood. Underwood was burly with a fringe of closely cropped hair that left the top of his head bald. He wore wire-rim glasses and a shirt in the particular shade of beige that marked a man as uniformly practical. An access card was clipped to his chest pocket and a radio hung off his hip.

He cocked his head as he shook Alessandro’s hand. “Mrs. Ferrante’s husband,” he repeated. “You’re aware that your cousin identified himself as her husband last night?”

That news was not as surprising as it should be and more than a little irritating. After several escapades in their teens, including one that had even left him making explanations to the law, Alessandro had given Primo strict instructions never to take his identity for any reason. Today, however, he wound up making excuses.

“An effort to ensure her safety, I’m sure. Without going into detail, we’ve had some security concerns at home in Italy.” The possibility had been dancing in Alessandro’s subconscious that this baby switch could be an open attack from the faceless threat he’d been trying to identify for months. He refused to man panic stations until he had all the facts, though. For now, “Octavia was supposed to deliver at a private clinic where her security was already arranged. Primo was only looking out for her, I’m sure.”

“And she didn’t go to the private clinic because...?” Gareth prompted.

“The ambulance failed to arrive and her labor progressed very quickly.” That still infuriated him, but he kept a firm cap on himself. “They had to bring her here.”

“I looked into that.” The administrator held up his cell phone. “Dispatch confirms no other ambulance was called to that address, just the one that brought her here. She made that call herself.”

“Obviously dispatch didn’t log Primo’s request,” Alessandro stated tightly, deeply disturbed that his wife had suffered needlessly. “I’ll follow up with them. None of us would be here if the ambulance had come when ordered and taken her to the correct hospital.”

“Sir?” A wiry technician invited them into a control room. It was small and hot, as these types of stations usually were, and a tight fit for all of them. They were quickly shown an image of Primo trying to accompany Octavia’s stretcher into a locked-down area. The nurse shook her head, pointed at her cap and scrubs, then indicated something down the hall.

“She’s telling him to wait in the lounge,” the administrator provided.

Seconds later, the staff was clearly under pressure, moving quickly as the emergency deliveries were stacked up. People came and went through electronically controlled doors, leaving the doors hovering open again and again. Primo took advantage and stepped into the restricted area directly outside the theaters.

Everyone looked to Alessandro.

He shrugged jerkily, wanting to explain his cousin’s trespass as concern for Octavia, but finding himself holding his tongue and watching, waiting to see what Primo did next.

The technician flicked screens and a moment later they could see the interior of the restricted area. An administration desk was set up with a computer and printer. The surgeon walked out of one theater, peeling scrubs as she went. She threw them into a bin and quickly began to wash her hands. There was no sound, but the way she pointed toward the door with her elbow suggested she was ordering Primo to leave, but she was being urged into the other theater and hurried to put on fresh scrubs and comply.

When a nurse came bustling from the first theater, she halted with surprise, but Primo pointed to the room labeled Theater Two. Whatever he said seemed to alleviate the nurse’s concern. She was in a hurry. She grabbed a tiny striped cap from a cupboard, then quickly began preparing two trays with papers and pens and...

“Name tags?” Alessandro guessed as he saw a printed strip go onto each tray.

“With the mother’s name and the bar code that matches her file,” the administrator clarified. “They print them ahead when they can and add the time of birth in the theater.”

Another nurse came out of Theater Two. She examined both trays, drew one closer to herself, then was pulled into a hunt for something with the other nurse.

That was when Primo glanced at the closed-circuit camera eye, shifted his back to block the line of sight to the trays and made a furtive movement.

“Stop it right there,” Underwood ordered.

Alessandro was aware that they were all looking at him, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the frozen image. He shook his head, unwilling to believe what they were suspecting. What he suspected.

“He wouldn’t,” he told them, but doubt had arrived as irrevocably as the stork.

Knowledge, really. Cold recognition that all the small steps he’d taken to keep the Ferrante family cohesive and successful had snapped at its weakest link: his determination to believe in his cousin’s unwavering loyalty.

The tape was restarted and each nurse briskly took her tray into the separate theaters.

“You said it was procedure to check them against the mother’s in the delivery room,” Alessandro recalled, trying to remain rational while adrenaline ballooned in his system, pressing him to go on the attack.

The hospital administrator flattened his lips into a grim line. “Normally, I’d guarantee it would be read aloud and checked by two nurses, but there was a lot of pressure on the staff last night. Those are the sorts of conditions when corners are cut and oversights happen.”

“He couldn’t have known they’d both be boys, though,” Underwood said. “If one had been born a girl...”

“He knew Octavia was having a boy,” Alessandro said tightly. Deep in his subconscious, Primo’s assurance that he would look after Octavia while she was in London took on a malevolent undertone. Alessandro had spent a lifetime trying to be understanding, elevating Primo to the highest position beneath him as recompense for not holding this one, but Primo’s consistent acts of competition now rose with snaking heads of acrimony and envy and treachery.

“The Kelly baby was already born. The first nurse took out a cap for him,” he heard the administrator say through the pounding in his ears.

The truth was pummeling like stones against Alessandro’s chest and shoulders and between his eyes. Primo had betrayed him.

While deep down, a part of him wondered if Primo’s treachery was justified. The guilt of causing his own father’s death had never left Alessandro. He’d always taken Primo’s challenges as his due. His punishment. He believed he should be constantly tested to prove his worth.

He had tried to make up for the terrible actions that had cost his father’s life, though. The patriarch would still have been running things if not for Sandro’s burst of temper. As reparation, he always set the family’s needs above his own. He would lay down his life for the Ferrantes.

To be attacked so gravely from within, through his wife and child, was a greater penalty than he was willing to pay, however.

“I’d like to talk to your cousin,” Underwood said.

In a deadly tone, Alessandro said, “So would I.”