No one spoke that possibility aloud.
For now, they were a family waiting for their daughter and sister to survive.
But beneath the grief, beneath the fear and beneath the carefully controlled expressions, an uncomfortable truth remained.
If Camilla Villarreal did not walk out of that operating theatre, the balance of power within the Villarreal empire would change forever.
And somewhere within that family, there could be someone who was already thinking about what that change would mean.
*********
THEATRE ROOM
The operating theatre had finally fallen into the exhausted silence that followed a long and difficult procedure.
For nearly three hours, the surgical team had worked without allowing themselves to think beyond the next step, every movement deliberate and every instruction answered immediately.
