Chapter 2 - Stitches and Silence
The heavy mahogany table in the ground-floor study felt cold beneath my bare arms, a sharp contrast to the fever burning through my veins. The air smelled of aged leather, floor wax, and the metallic tang of iodine. Rafael stood over me with a curved suturing needle held in a stainless steel clamp, his movements deliberate and unhurried despite the tremor in the room's perimeter. Isabetta had drawn the heavy velvet drapes across the high arched windows, plunging the room into a dim, amber twilight that hid the worst of the blood staining my scrubs.
"My bag, Toby's paperwork," I whispered, my teeth gritted as the cold steel bit into torn skin and tissue.
"I'll find it," Rafael answered, his voice steady and low, cutting through the silence of the room without a wasted syllable.
His hands were steady as he drew the thread tight, tying off the knot before pressing a thick gauze pad over the ragged entry wound. Every breath was a deliberate exercise in endurance. Before the dizziness pulled me completely under, I reached blindly over the edge of the leather cushion where I had shoved the water-resistant manila folder during the frantic drive from the clinic. My fingers brushed the heavy linen paper—Toby's ledger, the names, the clinical trial allocations that had put a bullet through my chest. I tucked it deeper out of sight, beneath the heavy bolster, just as the room dissolved into gray static.
When consciousness dragged me back hours later, the amber light had been replaced by the quiet hum of a brass floor lamp in the corner. The blood-stained scrubs were gone, replaced by a soft cotton guest shirt that hung loosely over my bandaged ribs. Rafael sat in a high-backed leather chair near the door, his long legs stretched out, his watch catching the yellow glow of the lamp. He wasn't sleeping; his eyes were fixed on the doorway, tracking every subtle shift in the shadows outside the hall.
"You're staying with us," he said softly, breaking the stillness before I could even adjust the blanket over my legs.
"That an order?" I asked, my voice dry and cracked, scraping the back of my throat.
May you like
Rafael stood up, walking toward the table with a quiet, measured tread. He stopped just short of the mattress, looking down into my eyes with an unreadable expression carved into his features.
"Yes," he said, his gaze holding mine without a blink. "Look at me."
