Page 62 of King of Obsession (Kings of the Underworld #1)

Everything was fine, and now I look at my wife’s lifeless body. Clutching my baby boy, I try to soothe him while knowing there’s no alleviating the crater in my chest.

The doctors try to resuscitate her. Her heart stopped. Simply fucking stopped while giving birth. Deprived of my main purpose to live, mine threatens to give up, the beats irregular and messy.

A black fog engulfs my head, poisoning my sanity.

Sounds, colors, and everything else vanish.

I can’t think straight, refusing to process the dreadful image in front of me.

Paralyzed in place, I don’t even blink, afraid that if I do, I won’t ever see my wife again.

The breath lodges in my throat, terrified to manifest that thought into reality.

That she will slip somewhere out of reach.

Her pregnancy went well. We found out she was expecting three months after we married because her periods stopped. Our baby boy developed perfectly. Calla didn’t even suffer from morning sickness and glowed throughout her pregnancy.

I look at the clock, the unforgiven time passing while my life stopped at once, then back to the doctor who prepares the defibrillator.

“Save her,” I shout, ready to raze this world if I lose her. I need my wife. My boy needs his mother.

My son hasn’t stopped crying, letting out the most heartbreaking and piercing sound, completely shattering my heart. I don’t know what to do. Calla would know. She knows everything. She makes everything better.

I am in fucking denial, thinking this is a nightmare. I’ll wake up any moment now with her next to me and her round belly growing between us. When we returned from our honeymoon, we traveled with a third, even though we didn’t know at the time.

Her water broke this morning and we were overjoyed to finally meet him, but then everything turned into a fucking nightmare. They had to perform a C-section, and the anesthetic provoked a cardiopulmonary arrest.

A shock arches her body, trying to revive her. I don’t dare breathe or move, praying for the first time in my life.

The heart monitor beeps a crazy beat, bringing back to life not only my wife but myself, and I have an out-of-body experience.

Her eyes pop open, blinking in disorientation while the doctor dabs at his forehead, the relief clear on his face. The breath I refused to expel rings of pure gratitude and sheer ease––unfiltered fulfillment.

Through blurry eyes, I see her mouthing my name. My ears still ring, but my body listens to her plea, and I erase the distance that separates us.

She takes me in and her brows furrow. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, please… just keep talking to me…. Just…” keep breathing . She died right in front of my eyes and I am a fucking mess, trying to erase that horrible image stuck in my brain. She’s alive. No one took her from me. I repeat it like a mantra.

I am a fucking wreck. Holding my boy in my arms fills me with a love I didn’t even know existed and still recovering from the horror of seeing my wife stop breathing, in cardiac arrest and not being able to help her, splits me apart.

No bullet, no old age, but something I never took into consideration.

“She needs to rest,” the doctor tells me while I offer her our son.

It feels wrong to have held him first after he was nine months in his mommy’s belly, protected and cherished.

I know our family waits outside for the joyful news, and slowly I realize it is.

I am a father, and we’ll leave the hospital as a trio. I doubt I will forget this ordeal when minutes felt like a hellish forever, trapping me in limbo. No nightmare could come even close to what I went through.

My wife looks so pale and weak after she did such a fabulous job of pushing for the last few hours. Then it all went to shit, and they had to cut her open to save at least one of them.

I could have lost both of them and it would have ruined me.

I could have lost my wife, and that would have destroyed me.

Either way, the only acceptable situation for me would have been to bring them both home.

As soon as I place our boy in her arms, he instantly calms down.

She sobs softly, placing her trembling lips on his head and cheeks.

“He’s perfect,” she murmurs, completely enraptured by him while I gaze at my little family—my world with so much love in my heart it spills over, flooding my chest. It’s my turn now to keep our son safe.

I’ll keep them both safe, no matter what.

Slowly agony switches to determination.

A deep gratitude washes over me. “He is. Thank you,” I say, choking on my words. As the panic dims, sheer bliss erases anything else.

But she understands all the things I am incapable of saying.

A little while later, my wife is out of danger and recovering well from the C-section. A nurse takes our baby from her, and I watch her with hawk eyes while she cleans him up and takes him to the nursery temporarily.

The nurses shoo me out of the room soon after, telling me they’re going to get Calla cleaned up and comfortable.

I make my way to the waiting room where my mother, sister, and brother are anxious for news. When I enter the room, Mika stops pacing around and from my face alone, he must know something is wrong. He instantly stiffens.

“She’s okay now. Both are,” I say, extending my arm to support myself on my palm on the wall still weak on my feet. My sister and mother rush to me, embracing me tightly, and Mika claps my shoulder in silent support.

When the doctor appears, telling me about her being at risk for another pregnancy, I don’t have to think about my decision.

“I’ll schedule a vasectomy,” I tell him.

I am not risking losing my wife. If I knew there was even the slightest chance that this could happen, I would have never gotten her pregnant. But I could never regret my baby boy. He will simply be an only child.

This scare will never fucking happen again. I refuse to even think that thought.

He nods and tells me it’s okay for me to return to her private room. Calla is asleep and I watch between her heart monitor and pale face.

Dropping into the chair by her side, my head hangs forward and I hold my head between my palms, exhaustion pulling me under.

I tell myself to calm down, that she’s all right, but processing what I experienced today will leave scars while strengthening my love for her, if it’s possible.

Undisturbed, I let it all out, crying. Only thinking I wouldn’t be with her anymore breaks me, cutting at my strength and will to live until I am hollow inside.

Just an empty vessel with no life in it.

I’ve never sobbed, but the thought of losing her makes me a damn wreck.

I don’t know how much time passes, and I couldn’t care less. As long as her heart beats, she’s here with me. I won’t let her go. I will hold on to her. She can’t leave me. I forbid her that.

“I knew we’d only have one child. I had a dream of my mother handing me my boy while she smiled but cried at the same time, and it felt so real,” she says in a groggy voice, ringing with apology.

My chin jerks up, glancing into her silver eyes, which captured my attention and stole my heart the first moment she looked at me. She brushes my wet cheeks, eyeing me with so much softness. Her love stitches me back together. I grip her hand, placing kisses all over her palm.

“What is my life’s biggest gift?” I ask her in a serious tone. If my wife needs a reminder, so be it.

She chews on her bottom lip. “Me.”

“Exactly. You would have been enough for me. Will be enough for me. Our son is a very cherished and loved present. Without you, I wouldn’t be a husband or a father.”

She cries softly. I lean over her bed, my hands spanning her neck and cheeks, needing to feel her and her pulse to keep my sanity.

“I love you. Thank you for fighting, amore mio. I wouldn’t have managed without you.”

“You’re never getting rid of me. When I have to leave this world because of old age, I’m taking you with me.”

I chuckle. “You do that.”

A radiant smile paints her beautiful face. “I have a name for him.”

No name has been good enough for our boy in my woman’s eyes until now.

“Aris.”

“It’s a derivation of the Greek god of war. I like it. Aris Ferrara.”

“He’ll be cocky, won’t he?”

I arch a brow, not even hoping for something different. “With us as parents, that is a prerequisite.”

She giggles, and those sounds are enough to rev up everything that sputtered with uncertainty back to life.

Cupping her face, I caress with my thumbs along her cheeks. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine, not so fine, happy, terrified…”

Just then, the door opens and the nurse wheels in our little miracle.

Approaching the bassinet, I bend over and, with utter care, I pick up my baby boy.

“Hello, Aris. Welcome to our family.” I kiss his forehead before I bring him to his mommy.

Instinctively, he latches as my wife watches him with eyes filled with wonder, smiling down at him.

“I love him so much, Enzo. It’s different, a completely new love that is stronger than anything else.” Then she looks up at me and smiles softly. “My two men I love with everything in me. I love you, and I’ll never stop.”

Putting a protective hand on her shoulder and the other on my son, I say, “I vow to protect you with everything in me. I’ll love you even when I’ll be nothing but dust. If souls truly live longer than bodies, I’ll love you for the entirety of my existence.”

Love fills every crevice in my body, pumping my blood with renewed strength as I look at my little family.

There’s nothing stronger than family. It can raise you up or push you down.

You live and die for it. There’s no middle ground.

I became a man when I was entrusted with them—to safeguard the blessings of my life.

They will never know hardship because I’ll walk freely through hell and back for them. This is my vow.