Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 118965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 595(@200wpm)___ 476(@250wpm)___ 397(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 595(@200wpm)___ 476(@250wpm)___ 397(@300wpm)
She walks to a door at the end of the corridor. When I don’t follow, she turns. Her smile is friendly but professional. “The office is more private.”
I look at the faces around me that belong to people I don’t know. One of them seems vaguely familiar. When I catch his gaze, he looks away. The grocery store owner. That’s right. I remember flattening his nose on his counter for refusing my mother’s money. What the fuck is he doing here?
“Mr. Russo,” the doctor says, reminding me she’s waiting.
“I want to see my wife.”
“In a moment,” she says. “We need to talk first.”
Fuck that. Wild horses won’t drag me away from this door. I push it open and step inside, my heart beating with shallow, painful thuds in my chest.
Sabella lies under a cloud-blue blanket on the bed, her face as white as the pillow on which her head rests. Nasal cannulas are inserted in her nose. Monitors beep around her. The sight of her connected to those machines fucks with my head. She looks too vulnerable. Too fragile. I only saw her like this once when her brother paid the doctor to put her in an induced coma, but one look at her now is enough to tell me that this time, regaining consciousness isn’t a certainty. This time, she’s fighting for her life.
I go closer. My insides twist. Fear digs sharp claws into my chest. I thought I knew terror when I chased after the children’s kidnappers in the dangerous landscape of the mountains. That was nothing compared to the dread tearing me apart now.
The soft click of the door behind me makes me reach for the gun in my waistband under my jacket. I spin around, ready to blow off heads, and come face to face with the doctor. I loosen my grip on the gun, leaving it in my waistband where my jacket conceals it.
She crosses her arms. “I would’ve preferred to have this conversation somewhere private. She may not hear us on a conscious level, but I do believe on a deeper level, people in a coma are aware of what’s happening.”
I stare at Sabella’s pale features. Her skin looks as thin and white as rice paper. “She’s still in a coma?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“When will she wake up?”
“It’s hard to say.”
With much difficulty, I tear my gaze away from my wife.
“She suffered a severe concussion and an abdominal hemorrhage,” the doctor continues. “We had to administer a blood transfusion. The bleeding stopped, but we’re keeping an eye on it. Five ribs are broken. She has multiple bruises with shallow bleeding, but those should disappear on their own.”
“What happened to her?” I ask, shaking with fury and something else I can’t allow myself to examine now.
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I just got back from Bastia. I was away on business.”
“I see.” She watches me with a level-headed expression. “Judging by her injuries, she’s been brutally kicked and beaten. She’s lucky to be alive.”
Kicked and beaten.
Lucky to be alive.
My vision unravels. The doctor’s mouth forms words, but I don’t hear them through the blood gushing in my ears.
“How?” I clench my teeth, fighting the urge to rip the room and the whole damn village to pieces. “Who? Who found her?”
“Mr. Martin.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Martin. He lives in the old mill. He said she knocked on his door for help, but that’s all I know. That information concerns the police. My only interest is in your wife’s wellbeing.”
Sabella walked? She walked in her state all the way to the village to knock on someone’s door? With broken ribs and a concussion? Bleeding internally. Because she didn’t have a choice. Because I left her alone in that house.
“Mr. Russo.” The doctor takes on that gentle tone again. “You should also know that your wife’s injuries indicate that she was sexually assaulted.”
I hear her and I don’t. The words get stuck in my brain, but my mind doesn’t process them. A moment of silence stretches as she gives me exactly that—time to process something I can’t. Something I can’t fix.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “The baby didn’t survive the attack.”
The baby.
The baby.
Sabella was pregnant?
With my baby.
The blow nearly cripples me.
Our baby.
Spearing my fingers through my hair, I pull hard, trying to ground myself with the pain, but no physical torture can outweigh the incredible grief.
Fuck.
Sabella.
“You may want to see someone for counseling. I’ll leave a number in the front. The receptionist will give it to you when you fill out the paperwork. You can stay with your wife for a few minutes, but let her rest. That’s the best medicine for her right now.”
The cold, calculated violence that builds inside me is the pillar on which I lean. The familiar sentiment is the only thing that allows me to function. If not for the vengeance already dictating my actions, I’d fall apart.