Page 63 of Forsaking All Others

‘Has he changed his mind? And if so, why let me live? Why not just finish me off?’

I open my mouth to ask for further clarification when a doctor walks in.

She’s tall, dark-haired and wearing blood-red lipstick, which strikes me as odd for a doctor. Taking a quick look at each of the beds, her eyes seem to brighten when they light upon me.

“Let’s take a look at you,” she says quietly as she picks up the chart from the end of my bed and scans it before raising intense blue eyes to mine. “Well, well, well. The rumours are true — this ought to be good.”

I shrink back into my pillow at her slow, malicious smile, every hair on my arms and the back of my neck rising. If I didn’t know better, I’d say this woman was a vampire.

As she places my chart back on the end of the bed without taking her eyes off mine, Miranda draws her attention.

“Hey doc, can you check me out too? My arm’s really fucking hurting.”

Ignoring Miranda, the woman moves to step towards Silke when the doors swing open, and another doctor enters, a man in his mid-forties with a busy, professional look about him. He seems surprised to see her, and his steps falter, but before he can say anything his colleague spins on her heel and stalks out without a word.

I breathe a sigh of relief as the door swings shut behind her, and the doctor, shaking his head as though he didn’t know what just happened, walks around to the side of my bed, takes my wrist in his fingers, presumably to check my pulse, and smiles at me.

“You’ll be moving soon,” he says gently before taking a syringe from his pocket and inserting a needle into the IV.

“Oh?” I frown. “What’s wrong with this room?”

“You don’t belong here, C.”

It takes me a full, long second to realise what he’s just said, but by then the world is starting to blur.

‘C. The only one who calls me that is my father. Oh, fuck!’

Gasping, I rip the IV out of my arm and move to roll out of the bed away from him.

“Do something!” I shriek to the others as I hit the floor, pain shooting through me from the wound in my side. But Miranda and Silke just stare as though I’ve gone mad as the doctor walks around to the side of the bed where I’ve fallen and shakes his head at me, pulling out another needle. Groaning, I try to scoot away from him, the world spinning as whatever he’d injected into my IV takes hold. But just as he grips my arm and moves to inject me, our door swings open with a bang and, faster than I can follow, the Viscount is behind the doctor, and his coat has turned from white to red.

As the doctor falls to the floor beside me, his face a picture of shock, I look up at the bachelor where he stands, the man’s still-beating heart in his hand, his eyes now locked on mine.

‘He’s magnificent.’

Dropping the heart and wiping his hands on his shirt as though what he’d just done was nothing out of the ordinary, he leans down and scoops me from the floor as if I weigh nothing, depositing me gently onto my bed before straightening up and stepping three feet away.

Looking at me from across the room, his eyes flick to my throat before meeting my eyes.

“Who is Valentino?” He asks quietly.

50

When I say the name she looks as though she’s seen a ghost.

“I ah, I don’t, ah..”

“Don’t lie to me, Catriona.”

Her eyes wander around the room, and I realise she might be more forthcoming without an audience.

Miranda, Valérie, and Silke are staring at me as though they’ve never seen me before and hanging on every word.

‘Welcome to my world, ladies. Blood, murder, destruction. Not the fairy tale you imagined.’

Yet there’s one person in this room totally inured to me ripping someone’s heart out in front of her.

“Do something about that,” I growl, pointing to her arm where her IV’s ripped out, blood now leaching onto the bedcovers.