Page 4 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

I’ve got an unregistered one here. Four months, maybe five. This could be the one he’s been looking for.

My sister’s voice was in one ear, and that woman’s was in the other, saying the same thing at me. Somebody had been hunting my nephew since before he could hold his own head up. My sister had known it, and I’d spent months thinking she was delusional.

I don’t remember much of what happened after that. I know I picked up Luca and walked out of that walk-in clinic. But before I left, I remember spotting the ledger on the unmanned counter. It hadn’t been hard to tear out the page with our information and just walk out.

I never took Luca to a hospital or a clinic after that. Never made that mistake again.

But now…I stare at the child shivering in bed. The medicine isn’t helping him. I have to take him. Running my fingers through my hair, I look for walk-in clinics in my area and find none that are open at this time. The only place left is an ER. I wouldn’t be able to conceal his identity there, though. More people, more eyes.

My eyes fall on my bag, and I hesitate. There is one thing I could try.

I pick up the bag, digging past the wallet, the school letters, and the wreck of receipts at the bottom until I find the zipper pocket. Inside it is a square of paper with a hastily written number on it. The ink has gone soft along the crease from being opened and pressed shut and opened again. I look down at the somewhat faded number.

If it ever gets bad, you call this. Not a hospital. This. But try not to.

Twice in six years I’ve called it, and nobody has ever picked up. The clock on the microwave turns over to half past ten while I’m standing there looking at it.

I finally dial it.

“Come on,” I whisper at it. “Come on, come on, pick up.”

It rings four times, then six, and somewhere past ten, I stop counting. No one answers. It has never been answered, not once in six years, and standing here at half past ten with my son burning through the sheets behind me, I finally understand that it never will.

“What’s the point of you?” My tone is hysterical. “What is the point of a stupid number that never picks up?”

I’m lowering the phone when Luca makes a sound.

I turn around, and he’s rigid, his back arched up off the mattress. The phone goes out of my hand onto the floorboards. My knees hit the side of the bed. My heart is racing as I reach for him, panic fueling every breath.

“Luca. Baby, look at me, please look at me. I’m right here.”

His fingers curl in toward his palms and stay curled, the nails thicker and darker than they were this morning, though there’s no room in my head to be frightened of that yet. Underneath his half-open lids, his eyes roll back, and for about a second, there’s a flash of gold that’s gone before I can be sure I saw it.

Then he makes a sound that isn’t a word in any language, and my breath goes out of me all at once. I turn him onto his side because he might choke, and past that I’m guessing at all of it. My fingers won’t grip properly, and they keep sliding on him, on sweat that’s soaked his hair to his scalp, and my whole body has started shaking so hard that holding his head off the mattress takes both arms.

The tears come somewhere in there. I don’t feel them start, and the only reason I know is that his pajama shirt has gone wet under my wrist and I haven’t put anything else there.

“Stop. Please stop. Please, baby, I’m begging you, stop.”

He doesn’t stop.

The phone is down on the floorboards where it fell. I get hold of it with one hand, keeping his head off the mattress with the other, and my thumb misses redial twice before it finds it.

“Pick up. Please, please, please.” My voice has gone somewhere I don’t recognize, half crying and half praying, and I can’t make it stop. “Whoever you are. He’s six years old. Please!”

My voice breaks.

It rings. Under my other hand, Luca is still going.

Then his breathing falls back into something slower, and the noise that comes out of me is not one I’ve heard myself make before.

“That’s it. That’s it, baby, you’re okay.”

My hand won’t come off his chest. It stays spread there, and I’m telling him he’s okay over and over, wiping my face on my shoulder because I won’t move either arm to do it. He’s the only one in the room who can’t hear a word of it.

The line clicks open. “Hello?”

“Hello?!” My breath hitches, and I clutch the phone with both hands.