Twenty-Four Hours

**Ace's POV:**

3:47 AM. The clock on the NICU wall mocked me with each passing second. Each tick another moment my son struggled to breathe. Another moment closer to the deadline the doctor had given us. Twenty-four hours. We'd made it nine so far.

Sofia had finally fallen asleep in the chair beside Jaxon's incubator, her hand still reaching through the porthole to touch our son's impossibly small fingers. Exhaustion had claimed her an hour ago, her body simply shutting down after everything it had been through.

I envied her that escape. I couldn't sleep. Couldn't close my eyes without seeing Jaxon's chest go still, those monitors screaming, the nurses swarming with barely-controlled panic in their movements. Couldn't stop hearing Sofia's broken sobs when she thought our son was dying.

My phone buzzed for the hundredth time. I'd turned the sound off but couldn't bring myself to power it down completely. Dante had been calling every hour with updates I didn't want to hear about problems I couldn't bring myself to care about.

I answered finally, keeping my voice low. "What?"

"Boss." Dante sounded exhausted. "Marcus talked before we ended him. Said there's more. A whole crew waiting for orders. They're planning to hit the mansion."

My jaw clenched. "When?"

"We don't know. Could be today. Could be next week. But they know about Sofia. About the baby." A pause. "They know where you are right now."

Ice appeared in the doorway as if summoned. His face was grim.

"How many?" I asked.

"At least twenty. Maybe more. Marcus wasn't exactly cooperative until the end, and by then—" Dante didn't finish. Didn't need to. "What do you want to do?"

I looked at Jaxon. At the tube breathing for him. The wires monitoring every struggling heartbeat. At Sofia sleeping in a chair because she refused to leave our son's side even for a moment.

What did I want to do? I wanted to burn the entire world down. Wanted to find every person who'd ever thought about threatening my family and make them beg for death. Wanted to be in two places at once—here with my son and out there eliminating threats.

But I could only be one person. In one place.

"Handle it," I told Dante. "You and Ice. I'm staying here."

"Boss, if they come to the clinic—"

"Then you stop them before they get that far. I don't care how. Just do it." My voice dropped to that deadly quiet register. "And Dante? Make it messy. Make sure everyone knows what happens when you come after a Hernandez."

"Understood."

I hung up. Ice was already moving toward the door.

"Ice." He turned back. "Keep her safe," I said, looking at Sofia. "If anything happens, if they get past you, if—" My throat closed up. "She and Jaxon are all that matters. You understand me?"

Ice's expression softened. "I know, Boss. We've got this. You just focus on your family."

After he left, I moved closer to the incubator. Jaxon's chest rose and fell with mechanical precision, the ventilator doing what his tiny lungs couldn't. His eyes were closed, his face relaxed by sedatives. He looked peaceful. He looked like he was dying by inches, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.

"You need to wake up, kid," I whispered, my finger gently stroking his impossibly soft cheek. "Your mom needs you. I need you. We've got a whole life planned out. First steps. First words. First day of school. I'm going to teach you how to ride a bike and throw a punch and—" My voice cracked. "And you can't do any of that if you give up now."

The monitor beeped steadily. No response. No sign he could hear me. The neonatologist had said babies could hear their parents even through sedation. That the sound of our voices helped them fight.

I'd never felt more powerless in my life.

---

**Sofia's POV:**

I woke to the sound of alarms. Not Jaxon's monitors—thank God, not his monitors—but someone else's in the NICU. Nurses running. Urgent voices. A mother's wail that would haunt me forever.

I jerked upright, my hand flying to Jaxon's incubator. Still there. Still breathing. The monitors still beeping their steady rhythm.

"Easy," Ace said from beside me. He looked like hell—dark circles under his eyes, his jaw shadowed with stubble, his clothes wrinkled. "He's okay. It's another baby."

I watched as they pulled a curtain around another incubator. The mother's cries grew muffled but no less heartbreaking. The father stood outside the curtain, hands clenched into fists, face blank with shock.

"What happened?" I whispered.

"I don't know." Ace's hand found mine. "But it's not Jaxon."

We sat in silence, listening to the controlled chaos behind that curtain. Listening to a family's world shatter. Ten minutes passed. Twenty. Then the crying stopped. Just... stopped.

The curtain pulled back. The neonatologist emerged, her face professionally neutral, but I saw her swallow hard. Saw the way her hands trembled slightly as she spoke to the parents.

The mother collapsed. The father caught her, both of them sinking to the floor in a tangle of grief.

Their baby's incubator was empty.

"Oh God," I breathed, tears instantly streaming down my face. "Oh God, Ace—"

"Don't." He pulled me against his chest, his arms tight around me. "Don't think about it. Don't go there."

But how could I not? That could be us. That could be our family in twelve hours, fifteen hours, whenever the clock ran out and Jaxon's tiny body decided it had fought enough.

"I can't lose him," I sobbed into Ace's shirt. "I can't. I can't do what they're doing right now. I can't—"

"You won't have to." His voice was fierce, almost angry. "Jaxon is stronger than that. He's going to make it."

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do." He pulled back, forcing me to look at him. His eyes were red-rimmed but blazing with intensity. "I know because I've seen how hard he's fighting. I know because he's part of you, and you're the strongest person I've ever known. I know because I won't accept any other outcome."

"Life doesn't care what you accept, Ace."

"Then I'll make it care."

The scary thing was, he meant it. Would fight God himself if it meant saving our son.

The grieving parents were led out by a social worker. The nurses cleaned out the empty incubator efficiently, professionally, preparing it for the next desperate family. Life in the NICU went on.

I turned back to Jaxon, studying every visible inch of him. Looking for signs. Anything that might tell me if he was getting better or worse. His skin still had that translucent quality. His chest still rose and fell only because a machine forced air into his lungs. The monitors still showed numbers I didn't fully understand but knew weren't good enough.

"Talk to me," I said to Ace, needing distraction from the darkness spiraling in my mind. "Tell me something. Anything."

He was quiet for a moment. Then: "I killed someone once for looking at my mother wrong."

I blinked, startled by the confession. "What?"

"I was fourteen. We were at some Hernandez family function. This guy—one of my father's associates—made a comment about her. About her body. Right in front of me." His jaw clenched. "I waited until the party was over. Followed him to his car. Beat him to death with a tire iron."

"Ace—"

"My father was proud. Said I was finally becoming a man." He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "I threw up afterwards. Couldn't stop shaking. Couldn't wash the blood off my hands even after a dozen showers. But I learned something that day."

"What?"

"That violence comes easy when you're protecting someone you love. That I'd do anything—become anyone—if it meant keeping the people I care about safe." He looked at me. "That's who I was before you. A killer who convinced himself it was all for family."

"And now?"

"Now I know the difference. What I did for them was obligation. Duty. Survival." His hand pressed against the plastic separating us from Jaxon. "What I'd do for you and him? That's love. Real love. The kind that doesn't require justification or redemption or anything except the fact that you're mine and I'm yours and nothing—nothing—in this world matters more than that."

Fresh tears spilled down my cheeks. "I'm scared."

"Me too." He kissed my forehead. "But we're scared together."

---

**11:23 AM.**

The neonatologist came for her morning evaluation, checking Jaxon's vitals, adjusting settings. Her expression remained carefully neutral.

"How is he?" I asked, though I dreaded the answer.

"Holding steady. His oxygen levels are stable. No more desaturation episodes overnight." She made notes on her tablet. "That's good. But we're not out of the woods yet. His lungs are still severely immature. The next twelve hours are still critical."

Twelve hours. Half the deadline gone.

"What happens after twenty-four hours?" Ace asked. "If he makes it?"

"Then we reassess. Start thinking about the next milestone—seventy-two hours, a week, two weeks. Premature babies recover in stages. Each day he survives, his chances improve. But—" She met our eyes. "I don't want to give you false hope. He's very sick. Anything could happen at any time."

After she left, I stared at the clock. Twelve hours. Just twelve more hours. We could do this. Jaxon could do this. He had to.

---

**2:47 PM.**

Dante called. Ace stepped into the hallway to take it, but I could hear raised voices. When he came back, his face was carved from stone.

"What happened?"

"They found Marcus's crew. Twenty-three men total. They were gathering weapons, planning to hit the clinic tonight." His voice was flat. Emotionless. "Ice and Dante intercepted them."

"Are they—"

"Dead. All of them." He sat down heavily. "It's over. Marcus's entire operation is finished."

I should have felt relieved. Instead, I felt nothing. Just... empty.

"Does it ever end?" I asked quietly. "The violence? The threats? The—"

"No." He didn't lie to me, didn't sugarcoat it. "Not as long as I'm who I am. Not as long as people see weakness they can exploit."

"And Jaxon?" My voice broke. "What kind of life is he going to have? Always looking over his shoulder? Always afraid someone will try to hurt him to get to you?"

Ace was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was heavy with something I'd rarely heard from him: doubt.

"I don't know. I've thought about it constantly since you told me you were pregnant. Wondered if I should walk away. Give you and him a chance at a normal life without me in it."

My heart stopped. "What?"

"I could set you up somewhere safe. Far from New York. New identities. Enough money to live comfortably for the rest of your lives. You could raise him in peace, without my darkness touching him—"

"No." The word came out fierce. Final. "Don't you dare. Don't you dare even think about leaving us."

"Sofia—"

"We're a family, Ace. For better or worse. In violence and in peace. I knew who you were when I fell in love with you. I knew what kind of life we'd have. And I chose it. I chose you." I gripped his hand hard. "Jaxon will know his father. He'll know he's loved. He'll grow up strong and protected and never, ever doubting that his daddy would burn the world down before letting anything hurt him. That's worth more than some fantasy normal life."

Ace pulled me against him, his face buried in my hair. I felt his shoulders shake. "I don't deserve you," he whispered.

"Probably not. But you're stuck with me anyway."

---

**6:15 PM.**

The dinner hour in the NICU was quiet. Families taking breaks, going to the cafeteria, stepping outside for air they didn't know they needed until they were drowning. Ace had gone to get food, forcing me to promise I'd eat something.

I sat alone with Jaxon, my hand through the porthole, my finger tracing gentle patterns on his tiny palm.

"Hey, baby boy," I whispered. "It's just you and me right now. Daddy went to get food, but he'll be back soon. He never leaves us for long. He loves us so much, Jaxon. More than I think he even knew he could love anyone."

The monitor beeped steadily. His chest rose and fell. But there was no other response. No sign he could hear me.

"You know what I think about when I look at you?" My vision blurred with tears. "I think about teaching you to read. About you bringing home your first A. About watching you discover the world and being amazed by every little thing. I think about you as a teenager, rolling your eyes at everything Daddy and I say. About you falling in love someday. About—"

The monitor's rhythm changed. Not alarms. Not yet. But different. Faster.

I looked up sharply. "Nurse? Something's—"

She was already there, checking the readouts. "His heart rate's elevated. Stay calm, Mom. Sometimes babies just have—"

The alarms started shrieking.

"What's happening?" I jerked back as more nurses rushed over. "What's wrong with him?"

"His oxygen saturation is dropping rapidly—"

"Pressure's falling—"

"Where's Dr. Raines? Get her in here now—"

No. No, not again. We were so close. Just six more hours—

"Sofia!" Ace was running into the room, eyes wild, probably having heard the alarms from the hallway.

"They're—" I couldn't get the words out. "Ace, he's—"

The neonatologist burst through the doors. "Report!"

"Sats at fifty and falling. BP seventy over forty. Heart rate one-eighty."

"He's crashing. Get me a chest X-ray now. I need to see what's happening in those lungs."

They wheeled in a portable machine. Took images while we stood frozen, watching our son deteriorate in real-time.

"Pneumothorax," Dr. Raines said grimly, pointing at the screen. "His lung collapsed. We need to place a chest tube. Now. Get me a—"

"Will he survive it?" Ace demanded.

Dr. Raines met his eyes. "I don't know. His body's already under extreme stress. This is—" She cut herself off. "We have to try. You need to leave. Both of you. We need room to work."

"No—" I reached for Jaxon but Ace pulled me back.

"We're leaving," he said, his voice dead. "Save our son."

He dragged me into the hallway as they swarmed Jaxon's incubator. I fought him, screaming, clawing, needing to get back to my baby.

"Sofia, stop!" Ace pinned me against the wall, his face in mine. "We have to let them work. We have to—"

A long, continuous beep echoed from inside.

The sound of a heart monitor flatlining.

My knees gave out. Ace caught me, but we both sank to the floor, holding each other as our world ended.

Our son's heart had stopped. Jaxon was dying.

And there was nothing—nothing—we could do but wait and pray it wouldn't be forever.