Chapter 640: The Call Home The VIP room was quiet in that very specific hospital way, the kind of quiet that wasn’t peaceful so much as aggressively supervised. Machines beeped in soft, judgmental rhythms. Fluorescent lights were dimmed to a mercy setting. The air smelled like antiseptic with a faint undercurrent of lavender from a diffuser someone had clearly bought to make "trauma" feel more spa-adjacent. Private wing. Fourth floor. The kind of room celebrities recovered in after "exhaustion" and politicians used for "routine procedures" that definitely didn’t involve subpoenas. I lay in the bed, propped at a medically precise angle designed to keep pressure off my chest, wrapped in enough bandages to qualify as a mummy with a very specific gunshot-themed aesthetic. Which, technically, was accurate. Five entry wounds.Five exit wounds.Ten holes total that a living human body was not supposed to contain and still file complaints. Shoulder. Chest. Side. Thigh. Arm. The doctors had spent four hours in surgery playing reverse Jenga with my organs. Pulling bone fragments out like shrapnel-flavored Easter eggs. Repairing arterial damage. Reinflating my lung like it was a sad party balloon. Stabilizing my femur with pins that looked suspiciously like something you’d buy at a hardware store if Home Depot sold medical trauma kits. They’d pumped me full of blood. Eight units, they said. Like I’d rolled in on empty and they’d just topped off the tank and wiped the windshield. When it was over, the head surgeon had stood at the foot of the bed and stared at me with an expression hovering somewhere between professional concern and existential confusion. "You should be dead," he’d said, calm as a weather report. "Most people don’t survive one shot like the ones you took. You took five. Your body is... responding unusually well. We’ll monitor for complications, but Mr. Carter—you’re healing at a rate I’ve only ever seen in medical literature." Then he’d left, probably to go rewrite a textbook or quietly question his belief system. Now, eighteen hours post-surgery, I lay there and felt my body knitting itself back together with an efficiency that would’ve been deeply unsettling if I didn’t know exactly why it was happening. The system enhancements.The pills.The elixirs.Months of very deliberate choices. They hadn’t just made me faster and stronger. They’d made me harder to kill. More resilient. Capable of healing at rates human biology would file a formal protest over. I was still wrecked. Still hurting. Still wrapped like a bad Halloween decoration and tethered to machines that beeped every time I breathed wrong. But I was alive. And improving. Hour by hour. The nurse came in quietly. Mid-thirties. Blonde. Competent in the way people get when they’ve seen enough blood to stop flinching. She checked my vitals with practiced hands, adjusted my IV drip, glanced at monitors like they might lie to her if she didn’t watch closely enough. Scrubs were standard hospital blue. Name tag read Jennifer. She’d been professional for the entire six hours of her shift. But her eyes lingered. Not on my face. On the muscle definition visible beneath the bandages. On the shoulders. On arms that, even wrecked and stitched and bruised, still looked like they could bench press a bad decision. She caught herself. Blinked. Suddenly became very invested in the IV line like it had just revealed the secrets of the universe. I sighed. Shot five times. Barely conscious. Wrapped like a corpse in a museum exhibit. Didn’t matter. The Taboo Aura and Lust Presence didn’t care about bullet wounds. Didn’t care about hospital gowns or surgical tape or the fact that I was technically a medical liability. It just radiated. Constant. Unapologetic. Making every woman in range notice things they absolutely should not be noticing about a patient in critical recovery like how big my cock was in this insane outfit. Great. Even half-dead, I was still a problem. Jennifer finished with the IV, checked the monitors one more time, and stepped back."Everything looks good, Mr. Carter. Your vitals are stable. Better than stable, actually. I’ll be back in an hour to check on you." She left quickly. A little too quickly. Probably to find a supply closet where she could stand very still and unpack whatever deeply unprofessional thoughts the aura had just shoved into her brain. I closed my eyes, exhaled slowly, and immediately heard ARIA’s voice through the neural buds. "We have a situation." "Define situation." "The estate is experiencing what I can only describe as controlled chaos." She paused, recalibrating. "Correction. Uncontrolled chaos. Madison is threatening to brick my servers if I don’t open the gates. Your mother is crying. Priya is attempting to hack the security system—unsuccessfully, but points for effort. Emma and Sarah are demanding a full explanation of what ’Theta-Seven-Black’ means. Luna is pacing like a caged animal. "And Jasmine just informed Soo-Jin that if the doors aren’t opened in five minutes, she will ’find a battering ram and make her own exit.’" "...They’re scared." "They’re terrified," ARIA corrected gently. "They watched you take five bullets and collapse in a pool of blood. Then I locked them inside a fortress and told them they were not allowed to leave. They believe you’re bleeding out alone in a hospital while they’re imprisoned behind twelve-foot walls and biometric gates." "I am in a hospital." "But you are not dying," ARIA said. Then, quieter. "Are you?" "Not today, Little Goddess." "Then perhaps," she suggested, "you should inform them of that fact. Before Madison successfully figures out how to override my safeguards or your mother experiences a complete emotional collapse." I considered letting them stew a little longer. Safety over feelings. Fortress logic. Let them hate me if it kept them breathing. Then I pictured my mother crying behind reinforced glass. "Connect the call." "All of them?" "Everyone," I said. "Estate main hall. Holographic display." "Understood. Initiating quantum uplink." My watch lit up, a soft blue glow that expanded outward into a hovering holographic interface, three feet wide, crisp enough to count eyelashes. It floated above my hospital bed like something stolen from a sci-fi movie with an irresponsible budget. The feed connected. The estate’s main hall snapped into focus. Marble floors. Vaulted ceilings. Chandelier spilling obscene amounts of light over thirty-two faces that all looked like different flavors of emotional wreckage. They were still in their party clothes. Madison in her red dress, now wrinkled, smeared, and one bad breath away from becoming a crime scene. Priya’s purple cocktail dress torn at the hem like she’d lost a fight with gravity. Linda in black that had looked elegant hours ago and now just made her look painfully small. Jasmine’s white pants dusted with concrete like she’d been personally introduced to the parking garage floor. Everyone else scattered around in varying states of dishevelment, shock, and rage. They looked like celebrities photographed at 3 a.m. after a scandal broke. Which, honestly, wasn’t far off. The second the hologram stabilized and they saw me, the room detonated. "PETER!" Madison surged forward like the laws of physics were optional, hand reaching out before she remembered she couldn’t actually touch me. Mascara streaked down her cheeks. Eyes red. Furious. Relieved. Terrified. "Oh my god," she breathed. "You’re alive. You’re—" Linda pushed past her, and the sound she made wasn’t a sob or a scream, just raw maternal panic breaking through language. "My baby. My son. Peter, are you—are you—" "I’m fine," I said, and my voice came through clear despite the rasp. "I’m healing. The doctors say I’m healing faster than they’ve ever seen." "FINE?!" Jasmine snapped, fury and relief colliding violently. "You took FIVE bullets! We watched you collapse! There was blood everywhere—I thought you were—" "I know," I said calmly. "I know what it looked like. I know what you felt. But I’m in a VIP suite at Mercy General. I had surgery. I’m wrapped like a mummy with a gunshot fetish. I am not dying. I promise." Emma and Sarah clutched each other like they were riding out an earthquake. Sarah’s voice came out small and broken. "Then why won’t they let us come see you?" I exhaled slowly. "Because if I let you leave the estate right now, the next thing we’d all be watching is a true-crime documentary narrated by someone with a very soothing voice." A beat. Then, softer, "I locked it down because Dmitri is still out there. Because the man who hired the sniper isn’t done. And because the estate is the safest place on this planet for you right now." My gaze found Charlotte near the back. She hadn’t moved. Hadn’t said anything. She stood perfectly still, eyes locked on me, face pale like she’d been carved from marble instead of flesh. Guilt hit me hard and deep, a blade sliding between ribs already cracked. Raw. Absolute. Devastating. She watched me like she was counting breaths. Like she didn’t trust the universe not to take me if she blinked. And suddenly, no amount of dark humor could soften that. Not even mine.