So, what do I remember?
I remember…the dinner. The dinner with my father and Damon. How happy I was that the two of them were finally going to meet and discuss our future together.
But I wasn’t happy for long, however.
But…why?
I must doze off again, because when I wake up, it’s dark out and I’m feeling less drowsy.
The aching in my thigh grows more intense by the second as sweat beads on my brow. Tearing back the white blanket, I stare at the gauze wrapped around my upper thigh. My skin is discolored with iodine, and there’s a bandage under the gauze where blood has seeped through to the surface.
Memories of what happened begin to flash through my mind like some kind of horror movie.
The dinner with my father.
The confession from Damon.
The truth about the Rossis.
Arlo.
Damon Romero is Arlo Rossi.
And then the gunshots…
Damon shot me.
And then he shot my father.
“Oh god,” I gasp. The heart monitor begins to beep more rapidly in the background as I try to make sense of it all.
The door to my room opens, and a large, hulking form of a man that I recognize as Marco, one of my dad’s bodyguards, enters. He’s dressed in a brown suit; the fabric straining against his muscles. His chocolate brown eyes dart up to meet mine, and they immediately widen in surprise.
“You’re awake,” he says with a deep voice that reverberates through me.
I sit up, and the ache in my thigh has me almost passing out from the pain. “Shit,” I hiss in agony through clenched teeth.
“You need pain meds? I’ll go get the doc.”
“No,” I say with a shake of my head. I don’t want to go to sleep again or not be awake for what comes next. “No narcotics. Just something mild,” I tell him before he disappears out the door once again.
The pain is keeping me awake. The pain is reminding me that I’m still alive after what happened with Damon.
Damon.
I curse his name in my head repeatedly as tears begin to fill my eyes. I allow myself a few moments to cry out my frustration and rage, and then I angrily wipe the wetness away with my hands.
Marco returns a few minutes later with some pain pills and a glass of ice water, which I down quickly. Feeling a little more clear-headed, I ask him, “Is my father…?” I can’t even say the word out loud, because it might just crush me.
His thick, dark brows mash together as he says, “He survived.”
I breathe out a sigh of relief. Even though my father and I have had our differences in the past, he’s all I have left in this world. I do need to speak to him about what Damon brought up that fateful night. Did my father really commit all those horrible acts against the Rossis? And if so, why?
I can’t even imagine him doing such unspeakable things, but then again, I’m starting to feel like the worst judge of character. Just look at what happened with Damon. He was playing me the entire time to get close to my father, and I was a fool to believe that he truly loved me.
Damon even went through me to get my father.Literally.I have the bullet wound and scars to prove it.
“Are you ready to see your father?” Marco asks me, breaking out of my terrible thoughts. “He’s in a coma right now, but the doctors seem to think he’ll pull through.”
