A Ring for Vincenzo's Heir

She whispered, “I think I’m in labor.”

“You—” His hard voice abruptly changed in tone. “What?”

“My water just broke.”

Scarlett felt scared. Really scared. She looked at her husband. Vin stared at her, his dark eyes shocked.

Then his jaw tightened. “Don’t worry, Scarlett.” He grimly changed the gears of the Ferrari. “I’ll get you to the hospital.”

He stomped on the gas, and they thrust forward on the highway as if shot by a cannon. If she’d thought the car was going a little too fast before, now it went on wings, flying past the other cars like a bullet.

She braced herself, gripping her seat belt with one hand and her tightening belly with the other. Yet strangely, in this moment, her fear was gone.

Scarlett looked at her husband’s silhouette. Through the opposite window, she saw the darkening shadows of the Italian countryside flying past in smears of purple and red. And though she had been so terrified a moment before, she suddenly knew Vin, so capable and strong, would never let anything bad happen to her or their baby. He would protect them from any harm. Even death itself...

She glanced behind them. “We lost the bodyguards.”

“They’ll catch up.”

Scarlett held her belly as she gasped out with the pain of a bigger contraction. She felt Vin automatically tense beside her. Then she made the mistake of looking behind them again. “Oh, no—”

Vin glanced in the rearview mirror and saw flashing police lights. Scarlett saw him hesitate. She knew he was tempted to keep driving, even if every single policeman in Italy chased them.

But with a rough curse, he pulled abruptly off the autostrada.

The police car parked behind them. As Vin rolled down his window, the young policeman came forward, speaking in good-natured Italian. Vin interrupted, pointing at Scarlett in a desperate gesture. The man’s eyes widened when he saw her sticky wedding dress, as she gripped her belly and nearly sobbed with the pain.

Five minutes later, a police car was clearing their path with siren and flashing lights as their car roared south to the nearest hospital.

* * *

Standing in the bright morning light of their private room in the new, modern hospital, Vin cradled his newborn son in his arms, staring down at him in wonder.

“I’ll keep you safe,” he whispered to the baby, who was gently swaddled in a soft blue baby blanket. “You’ll always know I’m watching out for you.”

Vin looked up tenderly at his wife, who was also sleeping. Labor hadn’t been easy. She’d been too far along in her contractions to get any kind of epidural.

So her only option had been to just get through it, to breathe through each wave of agony that brought her closer to their baby being born. With each contraction, Scarlett had held Vin’s hand tight enough to bruise, looking up at him pleadingly from the bed. He’d tried to stay strong for her, to hide his own anguish at seeing her pain. All he could do was hold her hand and uselessly repeat, “Breathe!”

Now Vin looked at Scarlett in wonder. She’d been so strong. He’d never seen that kind of courage. As she slept, he saw the smudged hollows beneath her eyes, dark eyelashes resting against her pale cheeks, subdued red hair spilling on the pillow around her.

He looked back down at their baby’s tiny hand wrapped around his finger, and another wave of gratitude and love washed over him.

“Happy birthday,” he said to his son, smiling as he touched his small cheek with his fingertips. “I’m your papà.”

The baby kept sleeping.

Outside the hospital room window, Vin saw a beautiful October morning, a bright blue sky. He blinked, then yawned, stretching his shoulders as much as he could without disturbing the baby. What a night it had been.

Sitting down in a chair beside the hospital bed where his wife slept, Vin held the baby for an hour, watching over them. He brushed back his baby’s dark, downy hair, marveling at the tiny size of his head, his fragility. Vin could never let anything happen to his wife. Or his child.

His son would have a different childhood than he’d had. Vin’s own earliest memory in life was of crying himself to sleep after his nanny locked him in his bedroom when he started crying loudly for his mother. His mother hired servants based on their cheapness, not their reliability or kindness, and he was often left to their care for weeks while she enjoyed time with her latest boyfriend in St. Barts or Bora Bora.