LITMIR.BIZ

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noise of the machines her only company.

      God, how long would he remain like that? Mariella pushed her fingers into her long, lustrous hair and pulled it off her face. Her phone was still buzzing, and habit had her looking down at her screen. Jonas Halstead was both a friend and a client, but she wasn’t up to talking to him in either capacity right now. Friends and business could wait. For now.

      Mariella, seeing that the waiting room was empty, frowned. She knew that Luc wasn’t particularly happy with her—nothing new—but she’d expected him to wait for her, along with Rafe and Joe. Where were they? Mariella looked around and saw a group of nurses standing at the window, their faces alight with curiosity. Instantly suspicious, she walked over to them, and her imperial command to move out of her way had an instant effect. The nurses moved aside, and Mariella looked down into the large parking lot, the one directly outside the main entrance to the hospital. The area was full of news vans and reporters waving microphones in front of her two sons.

      Mariella muttered a curse under her breath and spun around, knocking the patient file from a young nurse’s hand. Too angry to apologize, she stormed toward the bank of elevators, silently cursing the inquisitive press. She could’ve anticipated this, she thought as she stepped inside the empty stainless steel cube. The Santiago and Marshall families, on an individual basis, were two of the wealthiest and most recognized clans in the world, and as a couple, every move she and Harrison made, their children made, garnered attention. They didn’t live in a fishbowl—they lived in the biggest tank in the busiest, most visited aquarium in the world. And what did Luc and Rafe think they were doing, dealing with the press on their own? They’d grown up in the eye of the cameras; they knew that you never held impromptu press conferences, that you didn’t step into the school of piranhas when they smelled blood in the water.

      Dios mío!

      Mariella slammed her hand against the emergency button of the elevator, and when it stopped, she pulled her bag off her shoulder. It was a long-ingrained habit to run a brush through her hair, to inspect her face. She wiped away a minuscule fleck of mascara from her underneath her left eye and slicked another layer of her trademark deep-red lipstick across her full lips. There, her armor was on. The cameras would flash when she left the elevator, and then the pack would converge on her. She wouldn’t flinch. She would take control of the situation, since her sons obviously couldn’t.

      And where the hell was Joe and why hadn’t he stopped them? Mariella slammed the side of her fist against the emergency-stop button to set the elevator in motion again. Two seconds later it stopped again, and Mariella stared straight ahead as the doors opened. They mob was still outside, and no one had noticed her yet. Good.

      “Mariella!”

      Busted! Mariella did an internal eye roll as faces and cameras turned to look at her through the glass door. The men and women pushed their way through the automated doorway and formed a tight group around her, blocking the elevators in the process.

      Mariella narrowed her eyes against the insistent, constant flashes of high-tech cameras. Needing to get to Rafe and Luc, she walked across the lobby, her expression daring any reporter to get in her way.

      “How badly is Harrison injured?”

      “Is he going to live?”

      “What was the cause of the accident?”

      “Was there anyone else in the car with him?”

      Bloody hell. Mariella made a conscious effort to hold on to her temper. There was only one way to gain back control, and it was a tactic both she and Harrison used to great effect. She planted her feet, lifted her chin and pulled the corners of her mouth into a shark smile. That particular smile, it was said, had the power to shrivel the sacks of presidents, dictators and serial killers. The questions stopped, feet shuffled and Mariella scanned the crowd standing in front of her. When her eyes connected with some of the junior journalists, more than one tried to step backward. The lobby was now packed with reporters, security was looking anxious and the reporters were impeding the foot traffic moving in and out of the hospital. Rafe and Luc still stood just outside the doors, looking miserable.

      Mariella lifted her hand. “I suggest that we move this outside, and if you stop shouting questions at me, I will give you a brief statement.”

      The reporters, helped by security, escorted her through the automatic doors, and she took her place next to Luc and Rafe. She placed a hand on each of their backs before turning to face the members of the fourth estate. God, what to say? How to say it? She had to walk the line between showing them that she was genuinely worried—she was—and optimism, which she didn’t, currently, possess. She had to give them enough to satisfy them but not enough to exacerbate the situation and provide more speculation than necessary. Mariella felt like her head was about to explode.

      “I can confirm that my husband was in a car accident earlier this morning. Harrison was flung from the car and sustained several serious injuries. I am not going to detail the extent of those, so do not ask. All I can say is that he has undergone emergency surgery and that he is in the ICU.

      “I’m asking the press for privacy as we deal with these horrible circumstances.” It was standard practice to ask to be left alone, but it wouldn’t happen. “That is all I have to say at this time. I will have our press liaison release an update when we have more news.” Like hell she would, but she had no problem lying to the press.

      “Where is Elana?”

      “Was he speeding?”

      “Where was he going at the time of the accident?”

      Mariella turned away from the questions, relieved when the security personnel started to herd the group away from her. Mariella jerked her head at her sons, who stepped closer to her. Putting her back to the press corps, strategically positioned so that no one could photograph her face, she skewered them with a hot look before herding them away from the press and out of the range of their keen hearing. “What the hell do you think you were doing, engaging with them? We have a rule—any news fed to the press is sanctioned and signed off by your father or myself. What did you tell them?”

      “Nothing more than you did,” Luc replied, sending Rafe an annoyed look.

      “Thank God for small mercies.” Mariella felt the burn of tears in the back of her throat and clenched her hands at her sides. God, she couldn’t afford to fall apart, not here. Sucking up her last reserves of strength, she raked her glance over her sons again and shook her head. “I’m going upstairs to wait. If you two know what’s good for you, you’ll leave me alone until my temper is under control. Are we clear?”

      “Crystal,” Luc muttered, his eyes blazing with fury.

      “Yes, Mom.” Rafe nodded, looking contrite. “Sorry.”

      Mariella, unable to stay angry when Rafe looked so very miserable, patted his cheek. “We will get through this,” she told him.

      “Yeah,” Luc said, his eyes still cool, “but the question remains as to whether we will be everything that we were when we do.”

      Mariella bit her bottom lip, bone-deep scared that he might be right.

      * * *

      Rafe watched his mother walk away and thought, as he frequently did, that his mother had the biggest set of balls in the world. Bigger, possibly, than his father’s, and that was a hell of a statement. Rafe turned his attention onto his still-simmering brother and wondered how long it would take for Mr. Perfect to blame this latest fiasco on him.

      Ten, nine, eight, seven, six...

      “You shouldn’t have answered that first question,” Luc told him in his oh-so-familiar patronizing tone. God, he was so sick of being in Luc’s firing line. “Once you answer one question, it opens the door to fifty more.”

      “I told them that we had no more information than they did,” Rafe argued.

      “They can smell bullshit from fifty paces, Rafe! Of course we know more than they do.”

      “Like

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