The first thing he heard was a rhythmic beeping.
It was slow and steady, probably close to his head.
Adrian tried to open his eyes, but the light burned.
He shut them and tried again.
A white ceiling was the first thing he saw.
A tube was taped to his arm.
The sound of beeping matched his heart.
The smell of alcohol filled the air.
The sheets felt different from the ones he used to have in his bed.
Everything was aching.
His chest felt tight.
Every breath took effort.
Then it came back in pieces.
He was in the hospital.
He had been shot.
There had been men in the dark, a gun pointed towards his wife.
Sarah.
He had turned to push her behind him.
Adrian remembered that much.
He remembered the shot, Sarah’s frightened face, then darkness.
Now, he woke up in this room.
He turned his head—and that alone cost him.
“Sarah.” His voice came out hoarse.
“Where’s my Sarah?”
A hand settled over his arm.
It was warm and familiar.
He turned his head and found his mother.
“Adrian.” Cecilia leaned into view.
“Thank goodness you’re awake.”
“Where’s my wife, Mother?” he repeated.
A wave of sickness hit him before he could force himself up.
“I need to see Sarah.”
Cecilia remained calm.
Too calm.
She pressed him back against the pillow with a gentle hand.
Adrian sank back down, too weak to resist his mother.
He hated how weak he was.
“Rest,” his mother insisted.
“You’ve been asleep for a long time.”
“How long?” His throat was aching.
“How long have I been out?”
“A while,” she said.
“Long enough.
Don’t worry about that now.”
“Just tell me where Sarah is, Mother.” He caught her wrist.
He tried to squeeze it, forcing his grip closed.
“Please.”
His mother looked at him for a long moment, then looked down at their hands.
That look—the one she always wore when she was about to deliver a killing blow.
“She’s gone, Adrian.”
The room went quiet.
Only the beeping was left.
“Gone where?” Adrian forced himself to ask.
“She left you.” Cecilia’s voice stayed calm and even.
“While you were lying here, she signed the divorce papers.
She said she couldn’t take any more of this and walked out.”
“No.”
“I know it’s hard to hear, Ian.
But it’s the truth.”
“No, Mother.
She wouldn’t do that.” He shook his head in disbelief.
“You don’t know her as I do.
My Sarah would never betray or leave me.
Never.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
If she never cared, she wouldn’t have looked at him like that when he got shot.
Instead, she held his hand, never letting it go as she screamed for help.
She never let go, never left him then.
“I saw her sign the divorce papers with my own eyes, Ian,” Cecilia said.
“She signed it without a word.
Didn’t even ask about you.”
Adrian swallowed the lump in his throat.
“Then someone must have forced her to do it,” he rasped.
“Somebody forced her.
Probably put a gun on her head, too.
My Sarah… she’d never do this on her own—”
“There’s more, Ian,” Cecilia continued.
Adrian held his breath, not liking his mother’s tone.
“She was trying to leave the country the same night she signed the divorce papers,” his mother said.
“Her enemies caught up with her and ambushed the car she was in.
It went off the cliff road, down into the water.”
The tubing of his oxygen line hissed.
Adrian looked at his mother in disbelief.
“Stop,” he said.
“Stop it, Mother.
I’ve always known you don’t like Sarah, so stop.”
“It doesn’t matter whether I like her or not, Ian.
I’m merely telling you what happened.
Her car fell off the cliff and was only pulled out two days later.
The weather hadn’t been good when it happened.”
“No!
You’re lying!” Adrian screamed.
“Sarah won’t leave me!
She can’t be dead!”
“No one could have lived through that, Adrian!” Cecilia’s tone became sharp.
She only used his name when she meant it.
“She’s gone, Adrian.
Accept it.”
Adrian shook his head.
His eyes shone with tears.
“You’re lying to me,” he insisted.
“She’s alive.
I know my Sarah is out there somewhere waiting for me.
She needs me, Mother, and I’m stuck looking so pathetic in this bed—”
He shoved the thin blanket off him and swung a leg over the side of the bed.
His legs shook the moment his feet met the floor.
How long had he been out to be this weak?
He grabbed the side rail of the bed.
His knuckles turned white as he struggled to hold himself up.
His arms shook as they threatened to collapse under him.
“I have to find her,” he said in a panic as he looked at the door.
“Let go of me, I have to get to her—”
“Adrian.
Look at me.”
“No, Mother.
I have to—” His words faltered.
Cecilia pulled it from her purse.
She held it up in the light.
A thin gold chain with a little angel on it.
Its wings were burned.
Adrian stopped breathing.
He knew that necklace.
He’d bought it with his own money when he was eighteen.
After months of saving, of working small jobs just to afford the little angel chain.
He’d put it around Sarah’s neck, his fingers fumbling with the clasp.
Their families hated each other.
A Moretti and a De Luca weren’t even supposed to speak or fall in love, but they did.
“Why an angel?” Sarah asked him.
“So someone’s always watching your back, even when I can’t be there.”
Sarah smiled at him and laughed.
She leaned toward him and swore she would cherish it and would never take it off.
She had worn it since then, even at their wedding.
Now, that same little angel was burned and hanging from his mother’s manicured fingers.
Adrian reached for it.
“They found this in the burned wreck, Ian,” Cecilia said softly.
“The car was found under the cliff, in the water.
This was hers, wasn’t it?”
The little angel turned slowly on its chain.
Adrian could only stare.
His hand went limp.
A shiver went through him.
He slid sideways, his knees hitting the cold floor with a thud.
“No,” he said, his eyes never leaving the little angel.
“No.
No, that can’t be—”
Up above him, the little angel still turned in his mother’s hand.
Dizziness hit him before the door banged open.
Nurses rushed in at once.
They gripped his shoulders and arms to pull him back to the bed.
Adrian kept screaming, thrashing on the bed as they placed restraints on him.
The beeping accelerated, then came a sharp pinch of a needle in his arm.
“Sarah!
Sarah!” he continued to scream, trying to fight the effects of the drugs that were pushed into him.
“She wouldn’t leave me!
Find her!
Bring her back!”
His hands frantically clawed against the nurses’ hands and arms until his last strength slipped away.
“She wouldn’t leave me… No… Not my Sarah,” he croaked as his eyes lost focus on the lights above him.
“Find her!
She’s out there… she’s waiting for me… Go and find her—”
“We will,” Cecilia said, smoothing his hair back.
“Rest now.”
“Sarah…”
Adrian’s eyelids grew heavy as the light blurred.
The monitor’s hum slowed.
He fought to keep his consciousness, but he lost the fight in the end.
His eyes fell shut.
Cecilia watched until Adrian’s eyes stopped moving beneath his lids.
Then she dropped the angel into the trash.
One less problem to deal with.
She walked out.