The Longest Night

**Sofia's POV:**

Time fractured into meaningless fragments. They stitched me up. I felt nothing. Cleaned me. I didn't care. Moved me to a recovery room. I didn't notice which floor, which hallway, which room. Nothing mattered except the baby—*my baby*—fighting for his life somewhere in this building while I lay useless in a bed.

Ace never left. His hand remained locked around mine, his thumb tracing absent circles on my palm. But I could see the violence coiled in every line of his body. The way his jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth. The way his free hand curled into a fist so tight his knuckles went bone white. He was one word away from burning the world down.

A knock preceded Ice into the room. He looked like he'd aged a decade in the last two hours. Shadows carved under his eyes. His usually styled hair stood in wild spikes where he'd been running his hands through it.

"Any news?" His voice was rough. Raw.

"Nothing." Ace's voice was hollow. Empty as a tomb.

Ice stepped fully inside. Closed the door with exaggerated care, like loud noises might shatter something irreparable. "There's something else you need to know."

Ace's entire body tensed. "What."

"Marcus attacked the base during—while you were here. Three of our guys are in the hospital. One's critical." Ice swallowed hard. "They're demanding you come back to—"

"No." The word was flat. Final as a coffin lid closing.

"Ace, they're threatening to—"

"I don't care." Ace's voice dropped to that deadly quiet register that made grown men take involuntary steps backward. "They could threaten to detonate a nuclear bomb in the city center. I'm not leaving Sofia. I'm not leaving Jaxon."

Ice nodded slowly. "Understood. Dante's already contained Marcus. What do you want us to do with him?"

"Kill him." No hesitation. No emotion. Like he was ordering coffee. "Make it hurt. Make it last. Make sure word spreads about what happens when someone threatens my family."

I should have felt something. Horror, maybe. Guilt. Moral conflict. Instead, I felt only cold, detached satisfaction. They'd threatened us. Threatened my baby. They deserved whatever darkness Ace unleashed on them.

Another knock. This one tentative. Afraid.

The neonatologist entered. She was older than Dr. Morrison—silver threading through her dark hair, deep lines framing her mouth. The kind of lines that came from delivering bad news too many times.

She pulled up a chair.

That's when I knew. Doctors don't sit down for good news.

"How is he?" My voice cracked on the question. "Please. *Please* tell me he's okay."

She folded her hands in her lap. Professional. Careful. "Jaxon is stable for the moment. But his condition is critical."

"What does that mean?" Ace demanded. "Stop using medical jargon and tell us what's wrong with our son."

"His lungs are severely underdeveloped—significantly more than we'd expect at thirty-four weeks. He's currently on a ventilator, which is breathing for him. His oxygen saturation keeps dropping below safe levels, which means his lungs aren't processing oxygen efficiently."

"Can you fix it?" I asked. "There has to be something you can do. Medicine, procedures, something—"

"We're doing everything we can. Surfactant to help his lungs, steroids to accelerate development, antibiotics to prevent infection." She paused. "But ultimately, his lungs need to mature on their own. We can support him, but we can't force the process."

"How long?" Ace's voice was strained. Tight.

"The next twenty-four hours are crucial. If he can maintain stable vitals through tonight, his prognosis improves dramatically. But if he continues to decompensate..." She didn't finish. Didn't need to.

The unspoken words hung in the air like smoke. *He might not make it.*

"Can I see him?" My voice came out small. Childlike.

"Soon. We're still getting him fully stabilized. The moment you can, I'll come get you personally. I promise."

After she left, I broke. Not crying. Not sobbing. Something deeper. Something that felt like my soul cracking down the middle.

Ace climbed onto the bed, gathering me into his arms. I buried my face in his chest and made sounds I didn't recognize. Animal sounds. The sound of a mother separated from her child.

"This is my fault," I choked out between gasps. "I went into labor too early. I should have been more careful, rested more, stressed less—"

"Stop." Ace grabbed my face in both hands, forcing me to look at him. His eyes blazed with fierce, almost violent intensity. "This is *not* your fault. Do you hear me? None of this is your fault."

"But he's so small. So sick. What if—" I couldn't say it. Couldn't voice the terror clawing at my throat. "What if we lose him?"

Ace's jaw clenched. "We won't."

"You can't know that."

"Yes. I can." But his voice cracked, betraying the lie. Showing me the fear beneath his certainty.

We clung to each other in that hospital bed. Two broken people holding the shattered pieces of each other, trying desperately to form something whole.

---

**Ace's POV:**

Hours crawled past like wounded animals. The neonatologist returned once to say Jaxon had stabilized slightly. Still critical. Still fighting. Still might not make it through the night.

Ice left to handle the Marcus situation. I didn't ask for details. Didn't care about the methods. Only cared that the threat was eliminated. Dante called. Confirmed Marcus and his entire crew were dead. Slowly. Painfully. Exactly as ordered.

I felt nothing. No satisfaction. No closure. Just a vast, yawning emptiness where my son should be.

Sofia lay curled against me, silent now. Cried out. But I could feel her trembling. Could feel the tension coiled in her body, ready to snap at any moment.

My phone buzzed constantly. Territory disputes. Business deals. Empire management. I ignored all of it. Let it burn. Let it all fucking burn.

Finally—after eternities compressed into hours—the neonatologist returned.

"You can see him now."

Sofia was out of bed before the woman finished speaking. A nurse materialized with a wheelchair, insisting she wasn't allowed to walk yet. Sofia sat. But I saw the frustration in every line of her body. The barely contained desperation.

I pushed her through corridors that all looked identical. Sterile white walls. Fluorescent lights that hummed like dying insects. The cloying smell of antiseptic trying and failing to mask fear.

The NICU waited behind locked doors. We had to buzz in. Scrub our hands until they were raw. Don surgical gowns and masks. Everything hushed. Reverent. Like entering a church where the prayers were for miracles that rarely came.

The nurse led us to an incubator in the corner. A clear plastic box connected to more machines than I could count. Monitors beeping. Ventilator hissing. IV pumps whirring.

And inside—

Jaxon. Our son.

Nothing could have prepared me. He was impossibly small. A doll. A dream. Something too fragile to be real. A tube snaked down his throat, connected to a machine that breathed for him. Wires sprouted from his chest like spider silk, feeding information to monitors. An IV in his arm, the needle nearly as thick as the vein it pierced.

He looked like something that might dissolve if you breathed on him wrong.

"Hi, baby." Sofia's voice fractured. "It's Mommy. I'm here. I'm finally here."

The nurse showed us the portholes. How we could reach through to touch him without disrupting the carefully controlled environment. Sofia slid her hand inside first. Trembling. Terrified. Like she was reaching into fire.

Her finger touched his palm. His tiny hand closed around it. Weak. Barely there. But *there*.

Sofia made a sound like dying.

"He knows you," the nurse said softly. "Babies recognize their parents' touch from the womb."

I reached in with my other hand. Stroked his head with one finger. His skin was thin as tissue paper, translucent enough to see the veins beneath. Soft as nothing I'd ever felt.

"You're a Hernandez," I told him. My voice rough, broken in ways I didn't know were possible. "We don't quit. We don't surrender. You hear me, son? You keep fighting."

We stood there—both of us touching him, talking to him, begging him to stay—until the words ran out and only silence remained.

Then the monitor's steady rhythm fractured.

*Beep... beep... beepbeepbeep—*

The alarm shrieked. Nurses materialized from nowhere. A coordinated swarm descending on the incubator with practiced urgency.

"What's happening?" Sofia demanded. She tried to pull her hand back but it was trapped, caught in the porthole. "What's wrong with him?"

"Oxygen saturation dropping rapidly." One nurse was already inside the incubator, hands moving with efficient speed. "We need you to step back. Now."

"No—" Sofia struggled against me as I pulled her away from the incubator.

"Let them work," I said. But my voice shook. My hands shook. Everything shook.

They swarmed him. Adjusting ventilator settings. Checking the breathing tube. Moving with choreographed precision born from too much practice.

"He's not responding."

"O2 at sixty-eight percent and dropping."

"Respiratory effort is almost nonexistent."

"Is he breathing?"

"Barely."

"Prepare for manual bagging. If this doesn't work, we're looking at intubation."

No. This couldn't be happening. Not after everything. Not after—

"Ace." Sofia's voice was barely a whisper. "He's not breathing. Our baby's not breathing."

I wrapped my arms around her. Held her upright as her legs gave out. "They're saving him. They have to. They—"

"Saturation at sixty-two."

"Still dropping."

"Come on, baby. Come on."

The seconds felt like drowning. Like suffocating. Like dying while still alive.

Then—

"He's responding."

"Saturation climbing. Seventy. Eighty. Eighty-five."

"He's stable."

The nurse who'd been working on him straightened, her movements suddenly less urgent. "This is common with premature babies. Their bodies haven't learned to regulate everything yet. He's okay."

*Common.* She'd said the word so casually. Like this happened every day. Maybe it did. But it didn't feel common. It felt like having my heart ripped out through my throat while I was still conscious.

Sofia collapsed against me. I was the only thing keeping her upright. She was sobbing—great, shuddering sobs that shook us both.

"Can we—" Her voice broke. "Can we stay?"

"Of course." The nurse's voice was kind. Practiced. "We encourage parents to spend as much time here as possible. It helps the babies fight."

So we stayed. I pulled up chairs. We sat with our hands inside the incubator, touching our son. Talking to him. Singing lullabies neither of us remembered learning. Making promises we desperately hoped we could keep.

Hours bled into each other. Day became night. Visiting hours came and went. We didn't leave. Couldn't leave. Because somewhere inside that tiny, fragile body—barely five pounds of skin and bone and hope—was a fighter. A Hernandez. Our son.

And he was fighting the biggest battle of his life.

All we could do was stay beside him. Touch him. Love him. And pray to whatever gods might be listening that it was enough. That *we* were enough. That this tiny, perfect, terrifying miracle would survive the night and see tomorrow.