The compound was very quiet. The guards remained at their posts, watching Ravi stand in the centre of the courtyard without moving, without speaking, without giving anything away. He simply waited, the shirt and bracelet held at his side, and the stillness around him was the most frightening thing any of them had ever stood near.
Then Osmina appeared.
Cosmina came with her, and the moment the little girl cleared the doorway she broke free of her mother entirely and ran. She crossed the courtyard at full speed and threw herself into Ravi, arms locking around him with everything she had, her face pressed into him, her small body shaking.
"Brother," she said, her voice muffled and wet. "We missed you so much. Nobody believed you would never pull a trigger on Jokull. Nobody."
Ravi looked down at her. He said nothing. He lifted his hand and moved it slowly through her hair, steady and gentle, the way one comforts someone when there are no words available and words would not be enough anyway.
Osmina stopped a few feet away. Her eyes went to what he was holding at his side.
"Where is my son?"
Ravi looked at her for a long moment. Then he lifted his hand and placed the shirt and bracelet into her open palms.
Osmina stood very still. She looked down at what she was holding. Then slowly, with the careful movements of someone who already knows and is buying themselves one last moment before knowing becomes real, she removed the covering and took the shirt into her hands.
The scream that came out of her was not like any sound the courtyard had heard before. It came from somewhere beneath language, beneath composure, beneath every wall she had ever built inside herself, and it brought her straight to the ground, her knees hitting the stone without her feeling it, the shirt clutched to her chest as though she could press it back into something living.
Ravi stood over her for one long, still moment.
Then he turned and walked out of the mansion without looking back, his footsteps even and unhurried, and the gate closed behind him, and he was gone.
Hayland's voice came through the phone stripped of its usual steadiness. "Boss, there is a problem. Tesni is out of danger. But Aine is not in good shape."
Ravi stilled.
He was at the hospital within the hour.
The doctor met him in the consulting room,
"Mr Ozanne." He spoke carefully and without preamble. "Ms Ozanne has lost a significant amount of blood from the head wound. The bullet made contact with a crucial part of the brain. That she is still breathing at this point is, in the truest sense of the word, a miracle."
Ravi looked at him steadily. "What do we do?"
The doctor paused. When he continued his voice was measured and even, the way doctors are trained to deliver things that cannot be softened.
"We are at a middle point. But there is something else you need to know first." A beat. "She is pregnant. Three months."
The consulting room was very quiet.
"If we perform the procedure necessary to address the brain injury, she will lose the baby. If we do not perform it, the damage will progress and she will become brain dead. She will be alive in body only, with no possibility of return." He held Ravi's gaze without blinking. "The decision rests with you."
He rose and left the room.
Ravi rose from his seat and moved toward the door. His hand reached for the knob.
Then his knees gave out.
He went down onto the consulting room floor without a sound, and for a moment he simply stayed there, as though the ground were the only honest place left to be. And then it came, everything he had held back through the bridge and the river and the courtyard and the corridor, everything he had carried with that even, unhurried walk and that unreadable face, it came all at once and it was not quiet.
Tears streamed down his face. The cold was gone. Everything that had made him unreadable and untouchable and frightening to every armed man who had watched him walk through a gate was simply gone, replaced by grief in its rawest and most unguarded form, a man on the floor of a consulting room weeping without shame.
Hayland crossed the room and lowered himself beside him and pulled him in without a word.
Ravi wept against him and when the words came they came between sobs, broken and enormous.
"Devil, if this is because of my sins then why not take it out on me. Why not come for me directly. But to meddle with her life. With Aine's life."
Hayland held him tighter.
After a long while Ravi pulled back and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. His breathing was ragged and uneven but he was trying, visibly and desperately, to pull himself back into something that could function.
"Aine needs you right now," Hayland said quietly. "More than she has ever needed anyone. You have to be firm, Ravi.
"I know." Ravi's voice came out fractured. "I know that. If I choose Aine the baby is gone. If I choose the baby, Aine is brain dead." He looked at Hayland with eyes that had nothing left in them to hide. "I am completely lost, Hayland. I do not know what to do. I do not know how to make this decision."
The consulting room held them both in silence.
An hour later Ravi sat across from the doctor and picked up the pen. He held it over the document for a moment, looking at what he was being asked to sign, at what the signature would mean. Then he signed it.
"As per your decision we will proceed with the procedure," the doctor said. "As requested, the best neurosurgeons available in South Korea have been assembled here. The brain surgery will commence in one hour."
Ravi nodded once.
The nurse stepped forward, her voice gentle. "Would you like to see her before the surgery?"