Enraptured (21 page)

“
Where are you
?” I typed frantically. He didn’t answer, so I called Alex instead, who had already headed back to Los Angeles.

He immediately turned the car around to join in the search.

Sloane finally called around eight o’clock. “I figured we’d meet for brunch before you went back home. Let me give you the address,” she said and I scribbled it on the hotel notepad.

“We have to go,” I told Drew. “
It’ll give him a place to meet us.”

He nodded as he finished packing his suitcase. I texted the address to Alex as well, so he would know where we were. By ten o’clock we headed to the café with a lovely outdoor bistro, just an hour shy of when we were due to meet Troy and Sloane. The
maitre d showed us to our table outside. We were early enough that we had the patio to ourselves, and normally it would have been a very lovely way to usher in the first day of June amidst the mild ocean breeze.

“
June
,” I thought to myself with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. June was when I lost Jason. I couldn’t lose Jonathan, too. I couldn’t.

I was practically in tears as we ordered some juice. Drew read my thoughts exactly and placed his hand over mine. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. “I promise.”

I nodded but I was frazzled. I kept scanning the street for any sign of Jonathan or Alex. When I finally spotted my eleven-year-old stepson, I nearly wept with joy. Alex walked him toward our table and I breathed a deep sigh of relief. They were here, and they were okay. Both Drew and I jumped to our feet and he ran toward his son.

I will always remember how they all looked in that one moment.
Jonathan, with his happy smile to greet his dad. Alex, with his disheveled hair as he triumphantly brought Jonathan to his brother.

And Drew…

He was running with a smile on his face, so relieved that his son was okay.

I was so focused on them that I didn’t see the dark car idle up to the curb. Alex was the first to turn, and it all seemed in slow motion as he threw Jonathan to the ground to cover him with his body as pandemonium struck in a heartbeat.

The last thing I saw was Drew lunging toward them, before the loud rat-a-tat-tat of bullets sprayed the tiny outdoor café, sending me to the ground immediately. I landed with a heavy thud, which sent a bolt of pain right through my abdomen around my full womb. I cupped my belly as I bent as far in half as I could go. I peered out through the cloudy, flying debris for the people I loved most in this world. I wanted to call their names, but I choked on smoke filling the air.

As it rose, I saw dark headed figures lying in a heap together. The ebony hair of both
men was immediately recognizable, and a scream strangled in my throat.

They were so still.
Too still.

Loud male voices shouted in a language I didn’t understand
as tires squealed near the curb. My heartbeat thundered in my ears as I hid further under the table, praying that I might go undetected. I felt tiny kicks against my hand as I held my pregnant tummy tight.

I didn’t know much in that moment, but I knew one thing.

I would protect my children.

Or I’d die trying.

The car screeched down the street, and people from the restaurant rushed to the scene, frantic on their cell phones as they called 9-1-1. As I rose to my feet, pain whipped around my abdomen and I had to hold onto the chairs to keep upright. I pulled myself along until I reached my men where they lay.

“Mom!”
I heard Jonathan mumble from beneath them. “Dad!”

I crawled over to them and pulled him free from their unconscious bodies. He was hysterical as he saw the blood and the wounds on his father and on his uncle. “Are they dead?” he cried.

“I don’t know,” I said as I turned his head away.

Blood covered their clothes and I was afraid to move them. When Alex’s blue eyes opened, I let out a cry of relief. It took him a minute to get his bearings, and suddenly he remembered what happened. He glanced up at his brother, whose body covered him.
“Oh my God. Drew!”

He laid him over onto his back, where Drew’s head lolled unnaturally
, blood spilling from the wound in his head. I was sobbing as I tried to keep Jonathan from looking on.

Alex was frantic, white as a sheet as he realized the gravity of the situation. It got worse with every passing second that Drew lay unconscious on the sidewalk stained with his blood.

“Wake up, you son of a bitch!” Alex screamed. “Wake up! Somebody help us!
Oh my God.”

I rocked Jonathan as I held onto my stomach, which was contracting against my hand. I was afraid to move. All I could do was look on as Alex
floundered helplessly beside his brother, afraid to touch him and make it worse. “I don’t know what to do,” he kept repeating. “Jesus…”

Blood poured from the back of
Drew’s head and he wouldn’t open his eyes no matter how much Alex screamed at him. “Don’t you leave me, asshole!” Alex cried as tears poured from his face. “Don’t you leave me.”

I felt arms reach for me and pull me away from the scene. It was an EMT who had arrived via an ambulance I didn’t even hear. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Did you get hit?”

I shook my head. “I fell under a table. But I’m having contractions.”

“How far along are you?”

“Twenty-eight weeks,” I answered in a croak. “With twins.”

He nodded as he ushered both Jonathan and me to the ambulance. I glanced back over my shoulder where more EMTs surrounded Drew and Alex.
“Please, I can’t leave him. He’s my husband,” I tried to reason, but they had one priority: to get me to the hospital and stop labor.

“He’s being helped and he’ll follow shortly,” the young EMT said with a reassuring smile.

The door slammed on the back of the ambulance and I was whisked away to the hospital with my children, all of us uncertain whether their father was alive or dead.

I held Jonathan’s hand all the way to the hospital. He was sobbing as he tried to ask the EMTs if his father was going to be all right
. “He’s in good hands,” they would say in their noncommittal way. “Just like your Mom.”

He grabbed both my hands with his. He was every inch a terrified, traumatized little boy as he clung to me, and I did my best to stay strong for him, even as terrified as I was. The police greeted us when we got to the hospital, but the staff was insistent upon getting me registered and in a room as quickly as possible. The contractions were irregular, but they were much stronger than anyone would have liked.

One of the nurses suggested that Jonathan stay with one of the officers, to wait for his uncle, but I refused to be separated. “He just saw his father get shot,” I gritted between clenched teeth. “He’s coming with me.”

They got me in a labor room and attached the monitors to check on the babies, while Dr.
Rombach was paged. The doctor on duty stopped by, a young, handsome man whose name I didn’t even bother to catch. They started an IV and began a drug regimen to stop my contractions. Jonathan sat small and terrified in a chair, watching his world implode around him. As soon as I could, I opened up my arms and urged him to join me on the bed. I held him close.

“You think Dad will be okay?” he asked softly.

“I’m sure they’re doing everything they can,” I said as I stroked his dark hair.

“Alex will save him,” Jonathan decided in a tearful voice.
“Like he saved you. Right?”

I reached over and kissed his forehead.

“He saved me, too,” Jonathan whimpered, and I just hugged him tighter.

Labor mercifully stalled. The babies’ heartbeats were still strong and they had managed the stress of the contractions well. The doctor was pleased with my progress, but refused to answer any of my questions about Drew. The longer I went without hearing anything, the more worried I got that they were withholding stressful information until I was out of the woods
myself.

Finally Alex was ushered into the room. He was covered in blood and he looked ravaged. I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear anything he might tell me. He walked to the bed and collapsed in a chair next to me.

Jonathan was the first to speak. “Is he…?”

Alex shook his head and both Jonathan and I wilted in relief. But the news, even though it wasn’t fatal, was grim. “A bullet fractured in his brain,” he said with a hoarse voice choked with emotion. “He’s in a coma.
”

“Is he going to come out of it?” I squeaked.

His frightened eyes met mine. “They don’t know. They apparently don’t know anything. Or they won’t tell me.”

I reached for his hand. He automatically dissolved in tears. “It was all in slow motion. One minute he was walking towards us, smiling. The next thing I know there was a flash of gunfire and all hell breaking loose. He leapt in front of me. That crazy, stupid son of a bitch,” he said as he crumbled. He laid his head in my lap and sobbed.

Jonathan eased off the other side of the bed to go comfort his uncle. Tears blurred my vision as I watched them hold each other and cry unashamed.

In the midst of this painful scene, Elise burst through the doors of my private room. She was fit to be tied. “Jonathan!” she cried as she ran to where he stood and wrenched him away from his uncle to hold him clearly against his will.
“Oh my God. Thank God you’re all right.” She glared at us. “Are you happy now? Is this what you wanted? All your stupid games and your power, and you couldn’t protect my son from a fucking drive by.”

“Alex did protect your son,” I spat.
“And nearly lost his life because of it.”

“Do you want my sympathy?” she screeched. “Forget it! You all deserve what’s coming to you, but you’re not taking my son down with you. As God as my witness, you’ll never see Jonathan ever again.”

She dragged him from the room and he pulled back. “Dad needs me!” he cried.

“Your dad is dead,” she spat. Jonathan dissolved immediately into hysterics and Alex jumped to his feet.

“That’s a goddamn lie and you know it! Drew is not dead!”

“He’s as good as dead,” she shot back. “And without him, neither of you get access to my son. Stay away from us, or I’ll have you both arrested.” She glared at me. “You can have your bastards in jail for all I care.”

“Get the fuck out of here!” Alex screamed, drawing hospital personal and security to the room. I felt as though my heart was being wrenched from my body as Elise and Jonathan were escorted from the room. He was screaming, “Mom! Alex!” until Alex paced like a caged animal.

“He can’t go with her. Not now. He needs to be here. With his father,” he added before his voice cracked again.

“Alex, you can’t stop her. She has every legal right.”

He ran his hands through his hair with a primal growl.
Everything was falling to pieces. “He figured it out. That bastard De Havilland was onto us from the start. He did this. And I swear on my life that I will make him pay.”

He finally looked down at my swollen tummy. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. “We’re fine. They stopped labor with some medication. They’re just keeping me for observation.”

He sighed. “Thank God.”

He looked down at his hands that were stained with Drew’s blood. “I should clean up,” he muttered before heading into the bathroom.

By the time he returned, one of the neurosurgeons had arrived to give me information on Drew. His official diagno
sis was a traumatic brain injury caused by bullet fragments splintering into his brain. They had to act quickly to deal with the bleeding, but they still didn’t know the extent of the damage. It depended on the path of the bullet fragments. “There are many things to consider,” he said in a somber tone. “The severity of his coma, the trajectory of the bullet path through the brain. Brain stem function. And of course there is the matter of the patient’s own end-of-life care decisions.”

Alex stepped forward.
“As his next of kin I can tell you right now what he’d want. He’d want you to do everything you could to bring him back to his family. So do everything,” Alex commanded. “Cost is no object. We have more money than God; it might as well do some good for once.”

The doctor glanced between Alex and me. “We will do everything we can, of course.
But even if your brother does regain consciousness, there is no way to know at this point what kind of recovery we’re looking at. I think you should prepare yourself to consider all the options.”

“You don’t know my brother,” Alex said with a shake of his head. “He’s the strong one. He’s always been the strong one. If he wants it, he’ll make it happen. I promise you.”

The doctor patted Alex’s arm. “We’ll keep you updated.” He nodded at me before he left the room.

Alex’s eyes met mine. He instantly read the terror and the dread. “Don’t you listen to him,” he instructed as he walked back to the bed.
“We both know that Drew Fullerton is larger than life. No little bullet is going to stop him. And if these assholes can’t figure it out, we’ll take him back to L.A. He’s not going to stop fighting and neither are we.”

I nodded as I tried to keep my chin up, but inside I was paralyzed with grief.
I had been in this situation before, hanging on to a loved one locked in a coma, unable to break free, unable to regain brain function and live free of ventilators and feeding tubes. I closed my eyes as I remembered signing the paper that would end life support for my son.

I just knew there was no w
ay I could do it for Drew. I finally had a husband who loved me, one who was willing to lay down his life for his son and his brother.

How could I give up on him?

How could I let him go?

Alex refused to even talk about it.
He spent the night on his phone, checking the web, for any glimpse of hope he could find. “He’s still alive,” he pointed out on more than one occasion. “He’s beaten the odds right there. Most die before they even get to the hospital, and about half of the others won’t make it out of the ER. I told you. He’s a fighter.”

As it turned out, he had to be. They ended up performing a
craniectomy due to the pressure building up within the brain. This meant they removed a portion of his skull. I vomited into a trash can as they tried to explain the procedure.

The stress was unbearable. Every single time a medical professional came into the room, I thought it was to either tell me Drew was dead, or ask my consent to take him off of life support.

I ended up re-learning certain medical terms, like the stages of the coma and posturing that indicated severe brain injury. They wouldn’t let me see him, and in fact Dr. Rombach had switched my care from modified bed rest to strict bed rest upon my dismissal, to ensure I was doing everything in my power to keep my babies from being born pre-term.

I was sent home within a day, though my homecoming was far from happy. Without Drew, Jonathan, Max or Millicent, the monstrous estate echoed like a tomb. My cheery downstairs bedroom lost all its charm the minute I crawled into bed. I was being forced to fight all my battles lying down, in a room that seemed a whole lot smaller than it had a week before. The walls threatened to close in on me as I was forced to sit still and, for the first time in my life, accept my limitations. Though it drove me crazy,
Alex ended up being my proxy, standing in wherever I couldn’t.

This included an appearance before Judge Agnes Pemberton, who decided to award full custody of Jonathan to Elise
in light of Drew’s grim prognosis. She also indicated that due to the questionable circumstances surrounding Drew’s injury, which had put Jonathan right in harm’s way, that Elise was well within her rights to seek restraining orders if necessary to keep Jonathan safe.

Unfortunately for us, the situation in Mexico had blown apart as well. The very same day Drew was gunned down, a massive raid at Teton Tech connected the events in Santa Barbara to involvement with the drug cartel.

Even if Drew came out of his coma, he’d likely face federal charges as a result.

Now I understood how EAL and Troy De Havilland had kept their hands clean all these years. They let stooges take all the risks for them.

It was all closing in on us, and once again Alex and I struggled to pull it all out of the fire.

Alex used what he had learned about FEI to do damage control at the office. He even cut his hair and trimmed his beard, tailoring suits after Drew’s example, to show everyone that he meant business when he walked through those doors.

His first order of business was dropping every company that Drew had ever acquired at Troy’s behest. Not only did this bleed millions of dollars, but he was back at square one to connect what had happened in Mexico and in Santa Monica to Troy. But I knew that was how he spent most of his 18-hour days both at the office and in Drew’s study.

The sting had fallen apart, but Agent Delgado worked closely with Alex to unravel the intricate web surrounding Drew’s involvement with EAL. Many members had already gone on
TruNews to denounce Drew and Fullerton Enterprises International as King Pins for Mexican drug lords and corrupt governments across the globe. They used Drew’s past against him, all the affairs, the nasty divorce, the way he had manipulated the custody for his son, to shade him as a selfish, unethical man who would do whatever he needed to get what he wanted.

Alex and I were not immune. Alex’s affair with Elise was finally revealed, which aired a lot of the Fullerton family drama. Then there was me, the gold-digger who wanted to replace her dead child with the heir to a powerful fortune. They went after us with the same vengeance, though Alex tried his best to keep much of it from me to protect me.

It was clear they were determined to take us down before they were found out, so each and every day was like Beat the Clock in every area of our lives.

Drew lingered in
a stage 4 coma, even after we brought him back to Los Angeles to be with us at a local hospital. The new medical staff was a little more accommodating, given that a Fullerton historically sat on the board of directors there from the 1950s, up until Malcolm’s death. But even then, they could only do so much. The longer he stayed unconscious, the more uncertain the prognosis. The doctors were especially concerned about the trajectory of the bullet fragments, which had had ultimately crossed both hemispheres.

“It’s not the news you want to hear,” Dr. Vidal told me gently.

Alex was undeterred. “People wake up from comas all the time,” he insisted that night. “And if anyone is going to wake up just to prove those arrogant doctors wrong, it’d be Drew.”

Thanks to the constant stress, I was having more frequent contractions. Dr. Rombach ordered progesterone shots. I was barely allowed out of bed to go to the bathroom, much less the hospital to be near Drew.

My only consolation was that he would never allow me to endanger the children to wait by his bedside
, so I was right where Drew would have wanted me to be even if it wasn’t where I wanted to be.

He had his battle to fight and I had mine. All I could do was pray that we would find our way back to each other.