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The ambulances and police officers finally arrived, and Brax, the only one of the three downed people still with a pulse, was rushed to the hospital. But Roni wasn’t allowed to leave until she answered every single question her former employer asked of her. It took several hours. And then she was allowed to leave.

By the time she made it to the hospital, Brax was in surgery. She called his family, and they all flew out immediately, but once they arrived it felt as if they were holding a vigil for Brax in that private waiting room. It was just that morbid.

She didn’t realize how much Lady Millicent and Mr. McCrae loved their son until she saw them that day. They were beyond devastation. It got so bad that Lady Millicent passed out, had to be sedated and checked into the hospital herself. Her husband stayed by her side.

JJ sat on one side of Roni and Fredrick sat on the other side of Roni as if they were holding her up. Because she was beyond devastation too. She was barely holding on.

And then the surgeon came into the waiting room and informed the brothers and Roni that Brax was out of surgery and was in recovery. They started to celebrate. He got through surgery. That was a big deal.

But when the surgeon said, in answer to Fredrick’s question, that given the trajectory of that bullet Brax had less than a five percent chance of pulling through, that did it for Roni. She was done.

The last thing she remembered was screaming out, and falling to her knees. She felt hands trying to lift her up. Big, strong hands like JJ’s and Fredrick’s. She heard conversations, as if they were all in her ear, but it was as if everybody was talking all at once and nobody was making any sense. She could not make sense of any of it.

But then she felt lifelessness in her body, as if everything was fading away, and she was hanging there like a dangling doll. Like an object rather than a person. Until her entire world as she knew it became total darkness. Until her entire world as she knew it faded too.

She was later placed in the same room as Lady Millicent, on the insistence of the brothers and Mr. McCrae, so that they could attend to both of them together. As if Veronica Ross, the daughter of the maid and nanny and nothing more than a cop herself, was her equal.

And she was her equal, as Lady Millicent and the entire family would come to realize, in her love for Brax.

They waited on Roni hand and foot with the same zeal as they waited on their matriarch. Not because they were suddenly humble men. But because they knew their beloved son and brother, who despite the enormous odds stacked against him, would still somehow pull through. Because that was what Brax did. And he would be extremely vexed with them had they treated her with any less reverence and respect.

Roni remembered very little of it as she, like Lady Millicent, was heavily sedated.