Sarah woke up to an unfamiliar ceiling and the smell of bleach.
An IV was taped to her right hand.
“Easy, girl.
Lie still.
You’ve been seriously hurt.” An old woman leaned over her.
She had gray hair and was wearing a stained apron.
Sarah gave the woman a good look, then swept her eyes around.
A few narrow beds sat there, with faded bedding.
Each separated by a makeshift curtain.
There was a huge window across from them, but she could only see darkness from the outside.
“Thank goodness you’re alive.
You’ve been out for a week, and we were starting to wonder.”
“Where am I?
Who are you?” Sarah asked.
Her mouth and throat were dry.
The old woman helped Sarah to sit up before pouring her a cup of water at the bedside table.
Sarah accepted it with trembling hands and took a small sip.
“I’m Evelyn.
I’m one of the health workers assigned to this village.
A farmer pulled you out of the river.
You are lucky.
A massive flash flood came from the mountains because of the recent nonstop rain.”
She took the cup from Sarah’s hands and set it down on the small table.
“This place is a long way from anywhere.
Two towns past the old border road.
Do you remember your name or where you came from?”
Sarah fell silent.
She remembered everything.
The signed divorce papers, the promise she’d made, and the car crash itself.
“I don’t…” she lied.
She was supposed to cut herself off completely from Adrian’s life.
Going back meant breaking that promise.
Sarah figured Cecilia wouldn’t take it well.
She even suspected her mother-in-law had something to do with the car crash.
Evelyn nodded in understanding.
“It must be from the shock.
If everything goes well, you might remember everything soon.”
Her gaze then landed on Sarah’s face.
Something stiff wrapped around her head, and she lifted a shaking hand to touch it.
Aside from that, bandages were wound tight over her one cheek and the side of her jaw.
She flinched when she touched it.
The skin under the bandage felt tight and raw, like a burn.
The river hadn’t done this.
The fire had, before the water got her.
Evelyn gave her a pitiful look.
“Your face…” she started.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t save your face.
The farmer who found you said he initially thought you were dead when he found you.
You are such a beautiful young woman.
For your face to end up like this…” She shook her head.
“The flood must have done this to you.
I’ve never seen the water leave a mark quite like it, but I don’t know what else it could be.”
Sarah said nothing.
She let the old woman assume as much.
It would be better if Adrian and the world forgot Sarah De Luca ever existed.
She closed her eyes, trying to suppress the tears threatening to spill.
The car driving away from the Moretti gate, the divider panel sliding shut, the locks dropping on their own.
The fear came back — the buttons had stopped working, the doors wouldn’t open.
She remembered begging the driver to slow down before the blow from the rear sent them into the dark.
That was no accident.
Sarah was sure of it.
Cecilia had promised to save Adrian if she signed the divorce papers, but her mother-in-law never assured her she could leave in peace.
The papers, the car, the collision… Sarah suspected everything had been set before she knelt for help.
It was never only about making Adrian leave.
They wanted her dead and completely gone from his life.
And now, they probably thought she was.
Sarah sat still and let the thought settle.
Good.
Let them assume she’s dead.
She can raise her child in peace somewhere quiet and far from the guns and wars between families.
The thought made Sarah freeze.
She instinctively touched her stomach, her face turning pale.
Evelyn took her hand.
“I didn’t know how to tell you, Miss.
Did you know you are pregnant?
You and your little one are lucky to survive that freezing river.”
“I-I’m pregnant,” Sarah repeated.
A single mother with no husband, no home, no money to raise a child on.
The same day Adrian was shot, Sarah had visited her doctor in the morning.
She sat alone in a clinic, nervously waiting for the nurse to call her name.
She and Adrian had been trying to conceive for a year.
When she missed her period, she immediately scheduled an appointment alone.
Sarah didn’t want to raise Adrian’s hopes only to be disappointed in the end.
When the nurse called her name and the doctor read her lab results, she laughed and cried at once.
After months of hoping, waiting, and nothing, she was finally pregnant.
She wouldn’t disappoint Adrian this time, although he never once made her feel it was her fault.
He would just hold her hand and say they would try again.
Then finally, this.
She had wanted to share this good news with him and tell him, ‘We did it, Adrian.
You’re going to be a father.’
In the end, Sarah never got the chance to say those words.
Enemies of her father came first.
Adrian saw them before she did, and she was a second too late to stop them from shooting him.
At the Morettis’ gate, she kept the secret to herself, fearing Cecilia would force her to abort her child and sign the divorce papers.
Her baby would be one more thing for the Morettis to take.
Choosing between her dying husband and unborn child, she felt conflicted.
Sarah was only twenty-one, while Adrian was twenty-four.
They should have had their whole lives ahead of them.
Together.
They met as teenagers on the wrong side of two families that didn’t get along.
Adrian used to climb the old wall behind her grandmother’s house, drop a bouquet on her windowsill, and leave with a grin.
She had loved him from that day.
His mother, however, clearly disapproved of her.
Sarah never knew why until she heard it from her own grandmother.
Long ago, before she and Adrian were born, Cecilia’s older brother died in a shootout against the De Lucas.
Since then, she had held it against Sarah’s family.
When her son fell for the daughter of the family who killed her brother, Cecilia’s old wounds tore open again, and she chose to close them herself.
The De Lucas had been powerful once, and that ended on Sarah’s eighteenth birthday.
The night her parents drove out to a meeting after celebrating her birthday, they never came home.
News of the ambush on the dark road reached Sarah.
No one knew who did it, and what was worse, Sarah didn’t even get to mourn their bodies.
After that, the money and men went, leaving Sarah vulnerable not only to her enemies but to the traitors within their family.
Everyone left her but Adrian.
He was the only one who stayed.
The only one who sent his own men to protect her, married her against his family’s will, and kept her safe for three short years of marriage.
Now, she had no one to protect her.
She had to do all the protecting, not only for herself.
She kept her hand on her stomach.
Beneath her palm, a small life was growing inside her, so small she almost couldn’t believe it.
It was the only piece of Adrian left for her.
The only piece they hadn’t taken from her.
Everyone thought she was dead.
The Morettis, maybe even Adrian if he ever woke up.
They’d all believe the cliff had finished her.
Let them.
Sarah De Luca-Moretti could stay buried down there.
Someone new would climb out instead.
She just had to figure out who that someone was.
When Evelyn moved to another room to get something, Sarah pulled the needle from her hand.
Every inch of her body screamed at her to lie down and rest, but she didn’t.
She slowly set her bare feet on the cold floor, one hand on the wall, the other on her belly as she stood.
She could stay.
She could let the kind woman nurse her back to health.
But a scared-face stranger who almost drowned in the river was still news.
People would eventually talk.
If word ever reached the Morettis, they’d know the crash hadn’t finished her.
They’d come back to make sure.
Sarah couldn’t risk that.
Not with the baby.
A pair of worn boots sat by the door and a dark coat hung on a nail.
Taking them felt wrong.
Evelyn had saved her life.
But she couldn’t walk into the rain barefoot with a child to protect.
She pulled them on and wrapped the coat tight.
“I got you, baby,” she whispered.
“They took your father and everything else.
I will not allow anyone to take you, too.”
Outside, the rain had slowed, but the road remained dark and slick with mud.
Sarah dragged herself out and walked.
It didn’t matter where the road would lead her.
Any road would do, as long as it took her away from the Morettis.
Anywhere.
Anywhere but here.
She stepped onto the sidewalk and never looked back.