Chapter 4 Cute baby

River Calloway, leader of the Red Vipers, had driven to the hospital at a speed that would have gotten any other man pulled over and arrested.

The moment Samuel called to tell him his sister Vera had gone into labor right in front of Marco Reyes, River had been out the door before the sentence was finished.

Of all the reckless, dangerous, inexplicable things Vera had ever done in her life, this one took the prize. He did not even know what she had been doing in that man's office to begin with, but that conversation was coming, one way or another.

His wife Ellie grabbed his hand across the center console and squeezed firmly, pulling him back from the edge of his own thoughts. He glanced at her. Her eyes were wide with worry, but her grip was steady, the way it always was when everything else around him was falling apart.

"Vera is going to be fine, River," she said quietly.

"Just breathe."

He nodded but said nothing, jaw tight, eyes back on the road.

The drive felt twice as long as it was. He could not stop picturing it, Vera in pain, vulnerable, with Marco Reyes standing over her like he had any right to be there. The image made something hot and violent stir in his chest.

Marco was not just dangerous. He was River's enemy, and his sister had somehow ended up in labor in the man's private office.

They had a great deal to talk about. Assuming she survived him finding out.

River barely waited for the car to stop before he was out and moving. Ellie followed close behind, her hand finding his again as they pushed through the sliding doors and crossed to the front desk.

"Vera Calloway," River said to the nurse, his voice clipped and low.

"Brought in a short while ago. She was in labor."

The nurse typed quickly.

"Room 304. Follow the signs for maternity."

They moved fast down the corridor, River's heart hammering the entire way. Ellie stayed right beside him, a quiet and steady presence the way she always was.

She had been that way since the very beginning, a fixed point when everything else shifted. She was an extraordinary wife and an even more extraordinary mother, and he did not say either of those things nearly enough.

When they reached Room 304 and pushed the door open, River stopped dead.

There stood Marco Reyes, the most feared Capo in the city, cradling a small bundle wrapped in a pale blue blanket. His posture was careful, almost rigid, with the slightly terrified focus of a man holding something irreplaceable for the very first time and acutely aware of it.

River stared.

Why on earth was Marco Reyes holding his nephew?

"Marco!" River's voice came out louder than he intended.

Marco's head snapped up, dark eyes locking onto River's immediately.

"Keep your voice down, Calloway," he said, his tone surprisingly firm given that he was standing there holding an infant in a hospital gown.

"You will wake the baby."

River blinked.

The adrenaline that had carried him through the drive and down the corridor seemed to stall completely. His eyes swept the room. Vera was nowhere in sight. A fresh bolt of panic cut through him.

"Where is my sister?" he demanded.

Ellie's hand tightened on his arm.

"River," she said under her breath, the single word carrying everything it needed to.

He exhaled slowly.

Marco gestured toward the side door with a small tilt of his head, his attention never fully leaving the baby.

"She is in there. The nurses are with her. She passed out from exhaustion and dehydration, but she is stable." His eyes flicked briefly to River.

"Did you not think to give her water while she was staying at your house?"

River opened his mouth and closed it again.

Ellie, to his considerable irritation, looked like she was trying very hard not to smile. She released his arm and stepped forward, her eyes already drawn to the small bundle in Marco's arms.

"May I?" she asked softly, holding her arms out.

Marco looked at her for a moment, something unreadable moving across his face. Then, with painstaking care, he transferred the baby into Ellie's waiting arms.

The shift in Ellie was immediate. Her whole expression softened, opening into something full of quiet wonder the way it always did when she held a newborn. She drew the baby close against her chest, and he stirred gently in response, tiny fingers uncurling before wrapping around her thumb with a grip that was far more determined than anything that small had any right to be.

"Oh," Ellie breathed, her voice barely above a whisper.

"He is absolutely perfect."

River stepped closer, the tight coil in his chest finally beginning to ease as he looked down at his nephew for the first time. The baby had a full head of dark hair and wide eyes that seemed caught somewhere between brown and green, still making up their mind.

He had Nikolai's brow and jaw, but Vera's nose and mouth were unmistakable, and River felt a sudden, fierce wave of love for this tiny person he had only just met.

"He really is beautiful," River said quietly.

"Hopefully he will not look too much like his father when he is older," Marco said from beside him, his voice carrying a note of genuine displeasure.

"I would rather my son not spend his whole life walking around with that man's face."

River turned slowly.

"I am sorry," he said, his voice very calm in the particular way it got right before it stopped being calm entirely.

"Did you say your son?"

Marco at least had the grace to look slightly sheepish, which on a man like him amounted to the faintest shift in expression.

"Si. I may have accidentally signed the birth certificate."

The silence that followed lasted exactly two seconds.

"What in the actual—"

"I would appreciate it if you did not curse in front of the baby," Marco said.

River looked at him. Then at the baby. Then back at Marco.

He had faced armed men without blinking. He had sat across from people who wanted him buried and shaken their hands on the way out. But standing here in this small hospital room, watching Marco Reyes speak about an accidental signature as though it were a minor clerical error, River felt the specific and crazy exhaustion of a man whose life had just lurched sideways with absolutely no warning.

Ellie caught his eye from across the room. Her expression said, plainly and without room for argument, do not make a scene.

River pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose and breathed.