He Didn’t Kidnap Me. Not Exactly novel Chapter 229

Chapter 229

(DeLuca’s POV)

Lillian.

The name remained splayed across Daisy’s phone.

I stared at it without expression while the ringtone continued vibrating softly against my palm.

Lillian.

Daisy’s roommate.

Under any other circumstance, I might have answered. Daisy would’ve wanted someone close to her to know where she was.

Not now.

I slipped the phone into my pocket and lifted my eyes toward the operating theatre again.

The red light above the doors remained on.

Still operating.

Good.

That meant they were still giving their best.

I resumed pacing.

The polished hospital floor reflected each measured step, though I hardly noticed it. My attention never drifted far from those doors.

My heartbeat did.

It pounded harder than I cared to admit.

That wasn’t common.

Fear had long ago become something I managed rather than something I experienced. Years in this life had taught me to make decisions under fire, to remain calm while others panicked, and to think clearly when bullets were flying.

But Daisy had always been the exception.

Anything involving her seemed capable of bypassing every defense I’d spent years building.

My phone rang.

Without looking, I answered.

“Boss.”

Fritzo.

“Yes.”

A brief silence followed.

Then-

“Which St. Barnabas hospital again?”

I frowned slightly.

“There are two.” He added.

Another pause.

“The one on-”

I ended the call.

There wasn’t enough room in my head to entertain his questions or anything of that sort.

The corridor settled into silence again.

My gaze remained fixed ahead, but my thoughts betrayed me.

The first time.

The first hospital.

The first bullet.

I remembered carrying Daisy then too.

I remembered the blood.

I remembered believing nothing could feel worse than watching her disappear behind operating room doors.

I had been wrong.

This was worse.

Much worse.

Not because I cared more now than I had then.

Because I understood exactly what she was facing.

I’d been shot before.

More than once.

I knew what bullets did.

The violence of the impact.

The blood loss. The pain that followed. The slow recovery.

The exhaustion.

The complications.

Healing from a gunshot wasn’t simply surviving it.

It was weeks. Sometimes months.

And Daisy hadn’t even fully recovered from the first one. Now she’d taken another.

She’d never belonged anywhere near this life.

She laughed too easily. Trusted too naturally. And found reasons to smile where most people found reasons to give up.

She wasn’t built for bloodshed.

Yet somehow, it kept finding her.

Because of me.

I stopped walking.

The realization landed with enough force to silence every other thought.

Because of me.

Not Aria.

Not Volkov.

Me.

I’d left her alone.

I’d convinced myself the apartment was secure. I’d believed no one could locate it.

I’d been wrong.

Every decision had been mine. Every calculation. Every assumption.

If Daisy…

I shut the thought down before it could finish.

No.

She would live.

She had to.

Because if she didn’t…

I wasn’t sure there would be anything left of me worth saving.

Time dissolved after that.

Minutes.

Maybe hours.

The clock mounted above the nurses’ station continued moving, but I stopped trying to follow it.

Eventually, I found myself sitting in one of the rigid plastic chairs opposite the ICU.

The hospital carried on around me.

Doctors hurried through the corridors.

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