He dropped to his knees beside the bed and gathered her against his chest so gently it looked impossible for a man his size.
“Baby girl… Daddy’s here… Daddy’s here…”
Mia pressed her face into his beard.
“I was so scared… but Noah came… he came into the dark… he got me out…”
Javi pulled back just enough to look at her.
“Who?”
“Noah. He’s seven. He saved me. He stayed with me the whole time. He promised he wouldn’t leave.”
Javi turned.
Noah sat quietly in a plastic chair three feet away — small, scraped, bandaged, still wearing the dust of the collapse like war paint.
Javi stood slowly.
He walked over.
Looked down.
“You’re Noah?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You crawled in there… by yourself?”
“Yes, sir.”
Javi’s jaw worked. He swallowed once, twice.
Then the president of the Iron Vipers — the man who never broke, never bent — dropped to both knees on the hospital floor and pulled Noah into his arms.
He cried without shame — great, shaking sobs that echoed down the hallway.
“Thank you,” he whispered over and over. “Thank you for saving my baby… thank you for going into the dark…”
Noah — who had never been hugged by anyone except Nana Clara — slowly raised his arms and hugged back.