Chapter 3 - The Midnight Watch
By 2:00 AM, the hospital room was wrapped in a deep, medicinal quiet, broken only by the steady, rhythmic beep of the heart monitor and the soft hum of the air conditioning unit.
Emma had finally fallen asleep curled up on a small cot the nurses had hastily rolled into the corner of the room, her small chest rising and falling in deep, untroubled slumber. Her hand still clutched the edge of the blanket.
Aleandro sat in the straight-backed chair beside Marisol’s bed. He had refused to leave. When Marcus had gently suggested heading back to the estate to review the evening’s financial ledgers, Aleandro had simply raised a single hand, silencing him. The mafia boss had not sat by a bedside since his own father had passed away in this very hospital twelve years ago.
He watched Marisol’s face in the dim amber glow of the bedside lamp. Without the constant tension of exhaustion, her features looked softer, younger. She was perhaps twenty-eight, maybe thirty. Life had carved harsh lines into her skin, but beneath the wear and tear was a resilience that commanded a strange, unexpected respect.
A weak groan escaped Marisol’s lips. Her eyelids fluttered open, her cloudy, fever-dimmed eyes struggling to focus in the dark room.
"Water..." she rasped, her voice barely audible.
Aleandro moved instantly. He poured a small cup of ice water from the pitcher on the table, slipped his arm behind her shoulders, and gently raised her head, holding the cup to her cracked lips.
Marisol drank greedily, coughing slightly before sinking back against the pillows. She blinked several times, her gaze finally locking onto the man sitting beside her in the darkness.
"Mr. Romano...?" she whispered, her eyes widening in confusion. "Why... why are you still here?"
"Go back to sleep, Marisol," he said, setting the cup down.
"I have to... I have to get back to the estate. The laundry... the south gallery..."
"The estate isn't going anywhere," Aleandro interrupted, his voice surprisingly gentle. "And neither are you until Vance clears you."
Tears welled up in Marisol’s eyes, spilling over her lashes and disappearing into the white hospital sheets. "You don't understand. If I lose this job... we have nothing. The Salvatores... they took everything. When they burned my place down, I lost my savings, my identification, my past. This house was the only place safe enough to hide Emma."
"The Salvatores won't be bothering you anymore," Aleandro said flatly.
Marisol stared at him, catching the chilling finality in his tone. "What... what did you do?"
"I took care of it," Aleandro replied, not elaborating. He reached out, his large hand resting momentarily over her cold fingers on top of the blanket. "You don't need to run anymore, Marisol. While you are under my roof, and under my protection, no one touches you. And no one touches your daughter."
She looked at him, searching his face for deceit, for manipulation, for the cruel transactional nature she had come to expect from the men who ran the underworld. But she found only an immovable, quiet strength.
"Why?" she whispered, her voice breaking. "Why help a maid you didn't even know existed?"
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Aleandro pulled his hand back, leaning back in his chair as shadows played across his sharp cheekbones.
"Because," he said quietly, "in my house, people don't bleed over my clothes without me knowing why."
