Bon Appétit! :D
Elizabeth's POV
Opening my tired eyes forcefully, I saw blinding lights that made me close them again. Memories of what had happened a few hours ago replayed in my head and motivated me to get up and find answers or Black Bear.
The piercing pain was gone but I still felt ill. Sadly, my whole body weighed a ton and struggling was just pointless. I ignored the blinding lights and regained my vision, shielding my eyes with my hand. Fighting off the drugs' effect, I was about to rip off the IV drip connected to the vein on my left hand when the door slammed open.
No one noticed the awoken patient, aka me, as Black Bear and Angelo were too busy arguing. I stifled a yawn and took a sip out of the cup of cold water on the bedside table before pulling out the IV drip. Still resisting the urge to fall back into sleep, I took off with my leather jacket, old clothes and my phone, which someone has kindly put into a bag for me.
In the Mietitore's hospital gown, I walked in between the two men, still deep in their own argument and shut the door behind me. It took me about ten steps before the two men rushed out, frantically looking at the corridors spanning left and right. Morons.
"Elizabeth!" Angelo roared, his footsteps echoing in the corridor. I paused, recognising this place, it is a path I've always walked through to get to Rafael's private ward. Knowing that Dr. Greene's office is near, I sped up.
That night, my thoughts were jumbled up by Rafael being hypnotised and his attempts to kill me. I had thought she was just overreacting to my burnt scars and paid no further attention to her. It was no overreaction, Dr. Greene knows something about me.
I became an arrow of focus, determined to ask Dr. Greene about my scars and the painful nightmares I kept having. Nightmares or memories, I couldn't tell. Judging from the pain, I think it's more of the latter. However when I tried to recall the dream, a familiar pain shot through my head.
Momentarily, I lost my vision and squatted down onto the ground, incase I lose consciousness again. Someone loomed over me, blocking out the fluorescent lights in the corridor, offering me some relief. A light lavender scent told me it was Angelo who hooked his hands under my thighs and carried me in his arms to the ward where I came from.
"I need to talk to Dr. Greene, Angelo. It's important." I emphasised, tugging on his sleeve. The Mietitore prince only ignored me and tightened his grip. I scoffed at him and looked at Black Bear who was behind us. He threw me a grin and raised his phone to my face to show me a photo of a newborn. "Looks ugly." My brutal comment caused Angelo to let out a small chuckle, shaking his head.
Throwing my arms around his neck, I pulled myself closer to Angelo in an attempt to get a better look at Black Bear's phone. In my excitement, I only noticed the sender was Cody which meant that this was baby Mike. An ugly fellow but one who is alive and kicking. Happiness bloomed in my chest and I tucked my chin on Angelo's shoulder subconsciously, grinning like an idiot at the happy news.
Black Bear smiled with me but soon, frowned at something that I've missed. Following his line of vision, I turned to see a reddened ear. His ear was burning hot under my fingers and Angelo turned into a statue at my touch. "What's wrong?" I questioned the frozen prince, who went silent. After the ex warrior cleared his throat loudly, Angelo's long legs started to function again and quickly delivered me back onto the hospital bed.
"I'm fine." Angelo said emotionlessly, glaring at the ex warrior. The two of them started exchanging insults in Italian and making cuts across their necks with their thumbs, causing me to wonder who's the real newborn. I sighed and pulled out my two pistols, "End each other's misery or mine, I beg you."
A sheepish smile stretched across Black Bear's face as they ceased their fight. "Where's Dr. Greene? I need to see her ASAP." I demanded, looking between the two males. "She's making her rounds. She'll come soon." Angelo answered, taking away the cup of water in my hand to replace it with hot water. I let out a small scream internally but leaned back into the pillows and prepared myself for the bombs I'm about to drop on the doctor.
Communicating with the ex warrior through our eyes, I silently asked him if Angelo knows about the situation we were in a couple of hours ago. I subtly nodded at his shaking head and got him to leave the room with a tilt of my chin. The ex warrior received the hint immediately and made an excuse to go and call Dr. Greene and left the room.
"By the way, I'll agree to Rafael's proposal." I announced, earning Angelo's curious stare. He looked at me, albeit with questions running through his head. No doubt, Angelo would question my sudden willingness. But he don't need to know my reasons, because he wouldn't believe in them. It's alright, I will prove it to him. He can't tell me otherwise when I show him perfect evidences of Jessica Gold approaching him with an ulterior motives.
"Why?" Caution coloured Angelo's tone."Once she's gone, Rafael would go back to being the capable Valentine prince he used to be. It's something I want to see as much as you do." I said with genuine sincerity, stating the one outcome I truly desire.
However, it wasn't enough for the prince. "You hate Jessica Gold." He added. Not wrong there, Angelo. "Yes, I hate her but I care about Rafael more." I picked my words carefully, the prince is not easy to fool and if this step goes wrong, the entire plan will go to waste.
"As long as they don't meet, I suppose it will be the best ending for everyone. Though, there is no guarantee if I see her again." The direct threat against his girlfriend worked as I've expected as Angelo narrowed his eyes at me but said no further.
He gave a sharp nod of his head to show his acknowledgement and invited, "We are meeting for dinner later in his ward." The door opened when he was about to pull on the handle, revealing Black Bear and Dr. Greene. I frowned at his retreating figure, feeling a little unease. "Bear, keep an eye on Angelo for me. I don't think he trusts me entirely." I whispered into the ex warrior's ear and watched him leave the ward.
Even though we were dealing with his previous employer, Black Bear showed no signs of worry for the governor. He has remained supportive from the moment I told him about my plans. Perhaps he realised that I couldn't be stopped and the best way to help me is to be there for me.
Dr. Greene gave me a simple physical check and was about to discharge me when I interrupted her. "Dr. Greene, can I talk to you for a second?" Upon my request, the doctor only let out a sigh. She nodded her head and took a seat in the visitor's chair, waiting for me to begin.
"You know how I got my back scars." I started with something simple. The doctor nodded her head without hesitating. "I wasn't a hundred percent sure until..." She trailed off, her mind wandering off from us. "Until I had this headache." I guessed from her worried expression but the doctor shook her head. "Until you mentioned you have the same wind chime as me." She corrected, her eyes focused again.
My brows furrowed, not understanding the connection my wind chime had with my burnt scars. Obviously, they are two very different things. "Um, it's a door decoration, Dr. Greene. I don't see how-" The doctor only responded by holding up one hand. She walked out of the ward and returned with an envelope and the said instrument in her hand.
I stared at her, is she going to perform some kind of musical for me? Eyeing her warily, I let her have her way. The doctor swung the wind chimes gently and my mind immediately felt more relaxed. The second time she swung the instrument made all my problems and questions fall away and I slumped back against the propped up pillow, enjoying the peace.
Mind and body disconnected on their own and I felt lighter than ever. I was unanchored by the troubles that haunted me for so long and nothing mattered anymore. A snap of her fingers pulled all that out from under me. I was rudely returned to the present state where my mind was boggled down, the stress returning. Strength filled me again as I moved my fingers and squeezed my toes.
"What...What did you do to me?" I shuddered, still remembering the sensation. "I think you know the answer to that, Miss Vivere." The doctor replied as she put away the wind chime on the beside table. She stood up, locked the door and lowered the blinds to shield us from an invisible enemy.
"I don't understand." I looked up at her as she turned towards me. The doctor grabbed my hands and leaned in, lines of worry etched on her forehead. "Hypnotism, Miss Vivere. You are under it for a very long time." My double chin popped out at her words, what was she saying? I wagged my finger at her, "That's not possible. I would know if I was suddenly strangling my best friend or I was some kind of love maniac!" My volume raised in panic as I recalled about Rafael's situation.
"But you can't remember anything before you were nine years old, correct? More precisely, the only thing you can remember when you were nine was Tom Vivere giving you the wind chime for your birthday." I was silent by her, swallowing down the saliva pooling in my mouth.
Dr. Greene wrapped her white coat around herself as she let me rationalise things out but it was more of me freaking out. It's like telling me that we don't need air, water and food to live or we are all living in a computer simulation - ridiculous.
The more I delved into it, the crazier it sounded. I got off the hospital bed and started backtracking away from the doctor who looked alarmed. "I don't believe you, Dr. Greene." The headache was getting stronger with every passing moment and her presence was making it worse.
She kept the distance between us as she stretched her hand out, trying to appease me. "Please, Miss Vivere. Give me a chance to explain all this to you, it's very important." Her eyes were watering and her tone was sincere, making me hesitate to leave the room.
After all, Dr. Greene was someone I had worked with quite closely before. If she wanted me dead, she's more than capable of killing me a very long time ago. I straightened up from my fighting stance, loosening my tensed body. Just as she was an arm's length away, her white coat slipped up and I saw the mark branded on her inner arm.
Half of a fox's head, with its fangs out, surrounded by tails.
"No. Not this shit again!" I screamed out at the doctor who looked even more alarmed than I do. She looked down at the marks and the first sight of anger clouded her face. "No, I'm not working for that scumbag." "Yeah, you can save the fucking bullshit for someone who actually cares!" I turned to leave while I still can but the doctor gripped me with surprising strength.
Fighting off her was a lot harder than I thought it would be as Dr. Greene forcefully dragged me back to the bed. Before I could get away, she pulled up her sleeves to reveal the full marking taking up two third of her forearm. There is that fox head but there is a number eight on it too.
"I was the eighth one to be branded by the governor. Branded not employed, Miss Vivere. Do you know the difference?" The doctor's words were laced with menace as she ran a finger through the marking. A permanent reminder that she was the governor's belonging.
Slaves' branding were only heard in the lesser developed cities such as the Abyss and the Pit. I didn't know there were still slaves in the modern Hollow. "What does this has to do with you hypnotising me?" My tone was softer and less agitated towards a victim of the governor but my guard was still up. Learning from the example of Simon Collins, anyone could be his men. Also, a doctor is much easier to employ than a captain of the family.
"Everything, Miss Vivere, everything. Listen to me please, we don't have much time left." The doctor was referring to the Crossing taking place in less than two weeks. Her eyes pleaded for a chance to talk as she sat on the edge of the chair.
I poured myself a cup of cold water and stared at the stressed out doctor, "Talk."
"The governor took on his role in the Chasm twenty one years ago when he was just twenty seven years old. The youngest for a governor. The Mafia praised him for being a genius with so much raw potential." Dr. Greene's face twisted into a sneer. She continued, her hand tightening on the arms of her chair. "Of course he is a genius. He has the Marionettes, the first seven to be branded by him."
The doctor rubbed the mark burnt into her skin and I winced at the pain she must have gone through. With consent or not, it would hurt like one was going through hell. "I was from the Chasm. Being the only professional doctor, I went around to treat people in a few villages, Mafia or not. My speciality was however, hypnosis." She looked over at the wind chime once and continued.
"I was returning to my village late one night only to find it destroyed. No one was left alive as the village was hoarding a man the governor wanted one year into the job and I saw things that I shouldn't have." A shudder ran through her as she remembered being young and fearful, not of the existence of the darkness but the appearance of it - it made the darkness real.
"The faces of the Marionettes warranted an immediate capture on me instead of killing me because of my hypnosis skills. Along the way, I got to know who the Marionettes are. They are with him long before he became the governor and only listens to him. They take out his personal bodyguards like they are training dummies. But the Marionettes is his last card up his sleeves, only the worst gets them." I noted the present tense and my heart sunk. The personal bodyguards were difficult enough to tackle, throw in mindless deity-level killers? Zero chances.
"I'll not put you through the things he did to me but they sure made me missed the times I was safe in my box with a few holes for breathing." Dr. Greene got up to boil water, making herself a cup of piping hot tea that she's unaffected by.
"Charlie Kates was the ex-girlfriend of the governor and the ninth one to get branded." Woah, talk about a hate crime committed by a crazy ex. The doctor smiled at me, knowing what I was thinking, for she had the same thoughts back then. "Anyways, she got thrown into the dungeon cells I called 'home' for about two weeks. Her crazy ex was hell-bent on keeping her there, to stop her from escaping."
The question in my head was obvious but the doctor did not answer me. Just like how she didn't answer me, Charlie didn't tell the doctor what she knew that made the governor imprison her. "With her smart mouth, Charlie managed to trick one of the Marionettes into letting the both of us out of our cells. She took hold of my hand and we ran off." Dr. Greene shook her head in disbelief, looking at the burnt mark on her hand, but with a smile this time round.
"You guys ran from the Pit all the way to the Hollow?" I asked the absurd question. It's a sure way to Death. Not only did they have to worry about the governor, they had to worry about the thousands of kilometres between the core city and the outermost city and survival issues.
I turned around to check for cameras and a production crew, shocked that there wasn't any. Dr. Greene's story sounded like a plot straight out of a movie and had survived only because they were the leads. A pinch on my thigh turned my head back to the doctor, "You're not dreaming nor am I lying. We had to put as much distance as we can between us and the governor." Nodding my head, I gestured for her to continue, my curiosity brimming.
"Another year later, we finally crossed the borders to the Hollow. We had ran out of money and resources by the time we reached the outermost city. It was not enough for this modernised, expensive city." Dr. Greene looked around the high-tech hospital ward, showing luxury at its finest. If she was still living in the Chasm, this would be their version of Heaven.
"We wanted to keep to ourselves and tried living as a full-yang but things just didn't work out. It's hard to...to go back to normal when you had a taste of what sinning was like. Both of us craved for the action and adrenaline the Mafia world has fed us." The doctor admitted, ashamed but without regrets.
I sucked in a deep breath at her confession. When the feud between the governor and I ends, I planned to retire from the Mafia world and experience the life of a law-enforcing resident. No one would fuck with the girl who defeated the youngest governor labelled "a genius with huge raw potential", so I wasn't worried about my old enemies.
However, I didn't expect that kind of nostalgia as Dr. Greene had described. Will I miss the times when I gambled with Death, fought and ran because my life depended on it? How could there be a craving for something so wrong?
I didn't have the answer to the two questions, much to my disappointment.
"Charlie did drug trafficking and I worked at the Saints to sustain our stay here. For a while, things were going great even though they weren't the best. The governor has vanished and the whole thing felt like a dream." Dr. Greene let out smile that light up her face, recalling one of the best times in her life. It was a smile that made her joy contagious as I couldn't help but smile at this temporary happy ending.
"Then Charlie met Sam Mente, the head of the largest Mafia in the Hollow back then."
My eyes popped at the revelation. Even when there were the Mietitores and the Valentines, Sam Mente managed to build a family bigger than theirs? "Wow, incredible. I thought the Valentine and Mietitores make an unshakable fort together." I complimented but the doctor corrected me,"They didn't have an alliance back then. Twenty six year old Sam Mente has built up the biggest Mafia family to date and no one could come close to the Mentes."
"So, I'm guessing they were either friends with benefits turned lovers, enemies turned lovers or they fell in love at first sight." The three ways for all the romance in the world to start. Just so cliche but nonetheless, very true.
Light laughters sprung out from the doctor and she said,"A mix of all three." I made a face at her statement, that was a complicated relationship. "Sam fell for Charlie at first sight. But instead of wooing her like a normal male, he tried to get on her bad side to get her sole attention. She hated him for a good amount of time but that didn't last for a time longer than eternity as she had put it."
The fated couple succumbed to their physical desires for each other but both were too weak to play that game for long. When Sam wanted to break off their friendly arrangements, Charlie realised her feelings for him were more than just lust. "Sam loved her and their friends with benefits arrangement was to help him get closer to her, in some sort of screwed up sense. But when he wanted so much more, he decided to end things." The doctor, who was the middleman throughout her friend's romantic journey, reflected how I felt internally. She was smiling widely as she told the story. This wasn't the end of Sam and Charlie but the beginning.
"Witnessing the might of the governor, Charlie hesitated. She didn't want to get Sam into trouble. Before she could agree to getting together with Sam, our nightmare returned. The Chasm's governor was getting transferred to the Hollows." Her soft voice dropped volume, turning into a whisper.
The governor has trapped them in their safe haven, the last place they can go to. The seven cities made up our country called Chairlow. Surrounded by undiscovered desserts in the north, jungles in the east and west and sea in the south, our neighbouring countries are tens and hundreds times the distance between the Hollow and the Pit.
When Charlie and Dr. Greene came to the Hollows, they had changed their appearance. Charlie had dyed her very notable scarlet hair black and wore black contacts. They even went on to put on fake noses and chins to avoid detection. However, it was all useless.
"He found me first and threatened Charlie with my life. Others would have abandoned me but not Charlie. She exchanged my life with her own and for three days, she was gone." A loud sniffle rang through the air as the doctor wiped away her tears. She lowered her head to calm herself down and the room went quiet for a while.
Dark mascara streaks painted streams down her cheeks but the doctor didn't took notice of it. "I went to Sam for help and he found her infront of the fences around the hills near the Spargimento Di Sangue. She had crawled all the way to the neutral ground." This time, the doctor let the tears flow, overwhelmed by the memory in her head.
"Charlie was extremely dehydrated and famished and experienced hallucinations. She refused to talk to anyone but Sam for nearly a month." I let out a breath that I didn't know I was holding onto, sympathy burrowing deep in my chest.
"With Sam beside her, it didn't take long for Charlie to recover. She said the governor thinks she's dead and she'll remain that way to him as she lives. Hiding behind a mask and refusing to meet any outsiders, she returned to the old Charlie who rescued me, her spirit unbroken. Three months later, Charlie and Sam got married."
A wide grin stretched my face at the good news but it died off soon. This was the happy ending the couple deserved, not the one that Dr. Greene is about to tell me. The story should have reached its epilogue here. I don't know if I wanted to hear the rest of the story. My tolerance for other people's misery has peaked for today, especially if they are good guys. However, the doctor gave me no chances to back out.
"Six months after the wedding, they had their firstborn. It was a goddamn shotgun marriage." The doctor chuckled at the couple who had so much history together. She had thought that they wanted to enjoy being with each other a little longer. After all, the couple didn't exactly go on traditional dates prior to their wedding.
Alexander came to my mind. I think she would have liked Charlie. A woman who was loyal and protective of the people she cares for. Charlie was very capable of taking care of her Sam Mente.
"They had two sons later on. One is Darius Sebastian Mente, birthed three years after the firstborn and the other is David Zakerri Mente, birthed one year after Darius. A short-lived but blissful family of five." Damn, Charlie and Sam are so intense.
I counted the five people. Mother, Charlie. Father, Sam. Brothers, Darius and David. Firstborn, blank. "Wait, you missed out their firstborn's name." The doctor paused in the middle of describing the happy family times and her eyes landed on me.
"I thought you would have guessed by now, Miss Vivere. Or I should call you, Miss Diana Alexander Mente."
Hi, I'm back! :D Finally, there are some loose ends tied up in this chapter!
How many of you have guessed that Elizabeth is Sam's daughter and when did you guessed it? :O
Thank you for reading and see you in the next chapter! :)