Page 87 of The Cruel Heir

That finally got them moving.

They wheeled me onto a gurney. Sterling staggered beside it, holding my hand, even as his own legs gave out beneath him. Blood puddled beneath his shoes, and I could feel him swaying.

“You’re losing too much blood,” someone said. “You need to sit down-”

“I said, she’s not going alone.”

He was pale. Gray. Still standing. Still shouting.

And then, just as they turned the corner with my bed, just as the operating room came into view, I heard the sickening sound of something heavy hitting the floor.

Sterling.

He crumpled to his knees beside me, blood smearing down the sterile white wall as his legs gave out. His lips still moved, hoarse and cracked: “Save her... Save my girls…”

Nurses shouting. Doctors hesitating, including Laz. The smell of antiseptic, sharp in my nose. Sterling lying limp on the ground.

“She’s coding-” someone shouted.

At the commotion, Sterling’s eyes opened. He snapped up and started barking orders, ignoring that he was on the ground giving them.

“I don’t give a fuck,” he growled. “You save her. You save my daughter. You lose either, and I burn this building to the ground.”

I tried to speak. Tried to tell them not to listen to him. That I was fading. That I didn’t want to die.

But the words never came.

I slipped under.

Not into dreams, but into weightless dark. Into silence. I floated between planes, between time and breath. But I didn’t go all the way under.

Because I heard him.

“Stay with me, Zara.”

His voice was ragged. Not a command. A prayer.

I felt his lips brush my hand, felt his fingers grip mine, like he could will me back. Like he was daring me to die.

“You’re not done yet,” he whispered. “You hear me, my little hummingbird? You haven’t finished ruining me.”

And something in me clawed back to life.

The first thing I felt was heat, everywhere. Then the cold rush of oxygen against my lips. Then pain. Then the ache of life.

I gasped, the sound ripping through my chest like a sob. My eyes opened to blinding white light, and Sterling’s bloodshot gaze staring down at me.

He looked wrecked. Bruised knuckles. Torn suit. Stitches peeking through the bandage on his ribs. But he was alive. And he was here.

I tried to speak.

“The baby-?”

He stepped aside, slowly, as if revealing the universe.

A nurse was standing beside a clear bassinet, swaddling the smallest, most perfect human I had ever seen, wrapped in a pink blanket.

Our daughter.