I don’t know how long I cry like this, but eventually the worst of the pain ebbs, and I become cognizant of Julian’s touch, of his enormous strength. His embrace, once my prison, is now my salvation, keeping me from drowning in despair.
As my tears ease, I become aware that I’m holding him just as tightly as he’s gripping me, and that he also seems to derive comfort from my touch. He’s consoling me, but I’m consoling him in return—and somehow that fact lessens my agony, lifting some of the dark fog pressing down on me.
He’s held me while I cried before, but never like this. Directly or indirectly, he’s always been the cause of my tears. We haven’t been united in our pain before, have never gone through joint agony. The closest we’ve come to experiencing loss together was Beth’s gruesome death, but even then, we didn’t have a chance to mourn together. After the warehouse explosion, I mourned Beth and Julian on my own, and by the time he came back for me, there was more anger than grief within me.
This time, it’s different. My loss is his loss. More his loss, in fact, since he wanted this child from the very beginning. The tiny life that was growing within me—the one he guarded so fiercely—is gone, and I can’t even imagine how Julian must feel.
How much he must hate me for what I’ve done.
The thought shatters me again, but this time, I manage to hold the agony in. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but for now, he’s comforting me, and I’m selfish enough to accept it, to rely on his strength to get me through this.
Letting out a shuddering sigh, I burrow closer to my husband, listening to the strong, steady beating of his heart.
Even if Julian hates me now, I need him.
I need him too much to ever let him go.
Chapter 38
Julian
As Nora’s breathing slows and evens out, her body relaxes against mine. An occasional shudder still ripples through her, but even that stops as she sinks deeper into sleep.
I should sleep too. I haven’t closed my eyes since the night before Nora’s birthday—which means I’ve been awake for over forty-eight hours.
Forty-eight hours that count among the worst of my life.
We survived. Everything will be all right. We’ll soon go back to normal. My reassurances to Nora ring hollow in my ears. I want to believe my own words, but the loss is too fresh, the agony too sharp.
A child. A baby that was part me and part Nora. It should’ve been nothing, just a bundle of cells with potential, but even at ten weeks, the tiny creature had made my chest overflow with emotion, twisting me around its minuscule, barely formed finger.
I would’ve done anything for it, and it hadn’t even been born.
It died before it had a chance to live.
Dark, bitter fury chokes me again, this time directed solely at myself. There are so many things I could’ve—should’ve—done to prevent this outcome. I know it’s pointless to dwell on it, but my exhausted brain refuses to let it go. The useless what-ifs keep spinning round and round, until I feel like a hamster in a wheel, running in place and getting nowhere. What if I’d kept Nora on the estate? What if I’d gotten to the bathroom faster? What if, what if . . . My mind spins faster, the void looming underneath me once more, and I know if I didn’t have Nora with me, I’d tumble into madness, the emptiness swallowing me whole.
Tightening my grip on her small, warm body, I stare into the darkness, desperately wishing for something unattainable, for an absolution I don’t deserve and will never find.
Nora sighs in her sleep and rubs her cheek on my chest, her soft lips pressing against my skin. On a different night, the unconscious gesture would’ve turned me on, awakening the lust that always torments me in her presence. Tonight, however, the tender touch only intensifies the pressure building in my chest.
My child is dead.
The stark finality of it hits me, smashing through the shields numbing me since childhood. There’s nothing I can do, nothing anyone can do. I could annihilate all of Chicago, and it wouldn’t change a thing.
My child is dead.
The pain rushes up uncontrollably, like a river cresting over a dam. I try to fight it, to hold it back, but it just makes it worse. The memories come at me in a tidal wave, the faces of everyone I’ve lost swimming through my mind. The baby, Maria, Beth, my mother, my father as he had been during those rare moments when I loved him . . . The surge of grief is overwhelming, crowding out everything but awareness of this new loss.
My child is dead.
The anguish sears through me, excruciating but somehow purifying too.
My child is dead.
Shaking, I hold on to Nora as I stop fighting and let the pain in.
Part IV: The Aftermath
Chapter 39
Nora
Two weeks after our arrival home, Julian deems it safe for my parents to return to Oak Lawn.
“I’ll have extra security around them for a few months,” he explains as we walk toward the training area. “They’ll need to put up with some restrictions when it comes to malls and other crowded places, but they should be able to return to work and resume most of their usual activities.”
I nod, not particularly surprised to hear that. Julian has been keeping me informed of his efforts in this area, and I know the Sullivans are no longer a threat. Utilizing the same ruthless tactics he employed with Al-Quadar, my husband accomplished what the authorities have been unsuccessfully trying to do for decades: he rid Chicago of its most prominent crime family.
“What about Frank?” I ask as we pass two guards wrestling on the grass. “I thought the CIA didn’t want any of us coming back to the country.”