Chapter 2

I wake up gasping for air, panic-stricken as my heart hammers through my chest and my body springs alert in clammy awareness. I sit upright with speed and a force that yanks the tube from my face harshly and makes me yelp as the drain in my arm tugs savagely in synchronised timing. My arm and nose are simultaneously stinging with a sharpness that makes me feel nauseous from the depths of my churning stomach. I am panting from the nightmare which ripped me out of slumber and disorientated with my surroundings.

I seem to be in a small room, filled with moonlight and shadows, breathing hard and sweating as the last fading dregs of my dream slip away, and my view comes into focus clearly, to calm me. It’s still dark, and I jump, insides somersaulting, when a tall looming figure moves from the window and turns towards me sharply, casting a shadow that hits me with a huge déjà vu, and I recoil in terror. My skin goosebumps all over.

“Alexi?” It’s out without thought, body draining of blood as cold fear grips my spine, trembling voice and tears prickle as he moves closer. Stupid reactions hit me before sense does, and I try to dash up the bed to get away from him. Clambering fitfully and awkwardly, so afraid, so traumatised by the memories of my dream and what he is to me.

The monster who haunts me.

The monster who pushed me to hold a gun to my head and end it all.

I remember everything now. I know why I am here and what Alexi made me do to myself in a bid to end my pain.

I shot myself in the head!

Except?… I can’t have.

I’m still here. I am breathing.

Maybe I’m dead, and this is my personal hell? My tormentor for an eternity. It proves he was always the devil as he stands before me now, on the other side.

I feel utterly sick as nausea consumes me, churning my body inside out with a weakening lurch.

“Camilla, calm down… it’s me… it’s Mico. Stop!” The light flicks on over my head as he hits the lamp, and I’m dazzled by brightness, stopped in my tracks by him illuminating the room around us. Half hanging off my bed in a hospital gown as he clings to my arm to stop me from facepalming the floor. Desperately holding my writhing body as I stop bucking and fighting to run and realise it’s not the devil himself after all.

I hold still with paused breath and frozen fear as my brain catches up and connects the dots. Seeing him, taking in the room and face, seeing no one else here that would hurt me right now.

I recoil my tight and stiff limbs and relax a little, breathing heavily to self-calm the waves of anxiety-ridden panic, my body pulsating and clammy as they disperse slowly.

I allow him to pull me back onto the bed carefully and cautiously. He’s being overly gentle but firm. Eyeing him up like a deer caught in the headlights and still so coiled to flee.

My heart rate and lungs are pounding in unison as I drag in the air to seem less hysterical.

“I’m sorry.” It comes out with a wave of tears, emotion hitting me hard. So exhausted suddenly and distraught in the blink of an eye. My body sags with both relief and sheer weakness. Not fit for anything, let alone a fight or flight response as my heart still jackhammers in my chest. I grimace as he rights me, aching body and all, and my head hurts like crazy, more so than it did. A banging drum of aches going off like a pulse in the back of my skull.

“Don’t be. You have had a rough few hours. How’s the head?” He nods at my head, and I automatically lift my hand to touch the one spot that hurts worse, right at the centre back, where I am shocked to find a lump the size of an egg. It’s a complete shock to me.

“What the hell? How did I get a…” I trail off as something else dawns on me, mind rambling over newly-found memories, and it blurts out instead.

“Why am I not dead?”

I held a gun to my head and pulled the trigger with every ounce of decisiveness in me. I didn’t hesitate and put it right to my temple. I intended to end it all.

How does that translate to lying in a hospital with a banged head?

Mico pauses for a second and looks to the open door, his expression cagey for a moment, leaning in so as not to be heard, and lowers his voice.

“Gun jammed, and the bullet stuck in the barrel. Alexi pushed you back to get the gun out of your hand and knocked you for six into the concrete wall. We thought he had killed you.”

His calm tone and serious frown tell me this is not a joke or a dream. I am not floating in the afterlife or hallucinating in a coma.

Everything drains from me, realising what I tried to do and how low I sunk. And yet…

“Why did he try to stop me?”

It’s the burning question in the forefront of my mind. Despite everything I can remember, my foolish heart still clings to a flicker of something, and I inwardly scowl at my weakness. I hate myself for even thinking about him at this moment.

Didn’t he want me gone?

Wasn’t he the one pushing and pushing and goading me to break? Who stood there and did nothing to alter what I was doing? He had to know what I was planning; it was obvious.

He doesn’t deserve to dwell in my mind and thoughts. I need to put him where he belongs for all eternity. In hell with his sadistic ways.

“He’s a son of a bitch, Camilla, but not a completely heartless one. Alexi wanted to end your connection, not watch you die. He never wanted that.” Mico looks away as he speaks, something on that face, but I don’t know him well enough to translate it. He seems uneasy and unable to look at me, and I shake it away, along with the visual of that cold bastard peering at me from inside my head.

Instead, I blink around my surroundings, trying to free myself and focus on anything that is not Alexi Carrero. Take note of the sterile surroundings instead.

The fact that we seem to be in a regular hospital means they were told I knocked myself out and never mentioned the gun incident. It’s not the private one I was in last time, so I guess I was rushed to emergency with only the mention that I had banged my head while plastered on booze cocktails. It would explain his apprehension at being heard.

I know better than to mention the gun either. It only muddies the waters and lands you in shit. The last thing I need is to be put on suicide watch and have a psych trailing my recovery. I had that once before when my injuries from Rick seemed self-inflicted. I knew even then never to open my mouth and let the truth come out.