“I offered you the easy way,” he sputters through the blood gushing from his nose. “You might have even enjoyed it. But now…”
The flash blinds me as they keep taking pictures, his blood is dripping onto my face as my scream turns into a croak.
There’s a blur, and Mateo’s off me, and then the hands holding me down are gone. I roll to my side, coughing.
“You motherfucker!Ti ammazzo, maledetto bastardo!I’ll fucking kill you, you bastard!” Lucca slams his fists into Mateo’s face and I see the guard who nodded at me pull his gun on them.
“Get off him, Toscano! We’ll take him to the Dean. Stop!” The guard’s shouting at Lucca but he keeps smashing one fist, then the other until two more men race over, pulling him off a limp and bloody Mateo.
Lucca yanks away from their hands and turns around, looking for me. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he whispers, scooping me up and heading for the medical clinic.
“It’s not your fault,” I sobbed, “I thought I was safe.”
“I should have been with you,” he said, shaking his head.
“Take me back to your place,” I beg, “I don’t need the doctor. I just want to take a shower or something.”
“They hurt you.” The sound that comes from him is painful to hear, anguish, and self-loathing.
“Stop. Lucca honey, look at me. Just put me down, okay?” Stepping into the shadow of a building, he does, cupping my face, running his hands over my clothes. “See? I’m not hurt. They just yanked me down onto the path. They didn’t touch me, not really.”
His mouth twists. “There are marks on your neck from that fucker. You’re going to bruise.”
“Thank you for coming,” I croak, wrapping my arms around his waist.
A guard joins us. “Dean Christie requests that Miss Aslanova get checked out by Dr. Giardo. The Dean understands that she might like to take a moment to recover, but she has set a meeting for 8 p.m. in her office.”
Resting my head against Lucca’s chest, I focus on my breathing.“In, out. Another deep breath, hold for five seconds, out. Deep breath in…”Lev taught me how to regulate my breathing when I started having panic attacks the year he was assigned as my personal bodyguard.
“Fine,” Lucca gritted out. “We’ll be there.”
“The request is for Miss-”
“We’llbe there,” he corrected the guard, picking me up again and heading for the clinic.
I sat through a quick, deft examination with Dr. Giardo, who patched up my skinned elbow and gave me some arnica cream for the bruising forming around my neck. Luca texted Mariya to bring me some clothes and put me in the shower in his room.
“Do you want me to stay?” he said, running the back of his hand over my cheek.
“No, just… give me a minute,” I try to smile, nodding firmly. I’m going to cry, and I don’t want him to watch me. Lucca’s taken the responsibility of this completely on himself, and I won’t make it worse.
Standing under the hot water, I can feel my back itch and throb. The huge bruise on my back from being shot there by Schmidt is still aggravating my scar. Getting thrown on the rock path just made it worse. I remember so vividly when the monster shoved the knife in my back. I remember the shock, and then the pain.
“I’m alive, I’m still alive,” I whisper. “They didn’t get me. I’m still here.” Sitting under the shower spray until it runs cold, I repeat my mantra, over and over until my teeth start chattering from the frigid water.
“What happens next?”
“We go see Dean Christie,” Lucca says. He looks like he really wants to keep carrying me around. However, after the shower, I dressed in the sweats and hoodie Mariya brought me, put my wet hair up into a bun, and pulled myself together. We would walk into the Dean’s office and I would look that piece of shit right in the eye and tell her what he and his sick little buddies planned to do to me.
The main building was quiet, it was late and everyone was gone, aside from the guards who came to my rescue. Lucca and I seated ourselves in the waiting area. Dean Christie is taking a call and has put the person on speaker.
“How can you prove the little bitch wasn’t wanting it?” A man with a coarse, ugly voice shouted.
I couldn’t see the Dean, but her crisp, cold voice was quite clear. “Because your son and his friends were filming the attack on cellphones - illegal here, as you know, but hardly the main offense - and he bragged about it on the video. He was quite descriptive.”
Lucca squeezed my hand, “Are you all right?”
Nodding, I tried to catch the rest of the conversation.
