Serena woke to the sound of soft crying.
For a moment, she couldn't place where she was—white walls, beeping machines, the antiseptic smell of hospitals. Then memory crashed back: the arrest, the labor, the emergency surgery.
"The baby," she whispered, trying to sit up.
"She's perfect."
Dante's voice was rough, raw from hours of crying. He sat beside her bed, no longer in handcuffs, holding the tiniest baby she'd ever seen. Their daughter was barely bigger than his hands, hooked up to wires and tubes, but her little chest was rising and falling steadily.
"She's so small," Serena breathed.
"Four pounds, two ounces. The doctors say that's good for twenty-eight weeks." He carefully placed the baby in Serena's arms. "She's a fighter. Just like her mother."
Serena looked down at her daug
