But begged? Never.
And yet here he was, on his knees.
Broken.
Helpless.
Human.
The polished marble floor of the private hospital felt like ice beneath him, but he barely noticed. His world had shrunk to the fragile woman lying motionless on the bed before him.
Toher.
His large hands swallowed hers completely, careful—so painfully careful—not to disturb the white bandages wrapped around her bruised skin. Skin that once felt like silk beneath his touch now looked heartbreakingly fragile, as if one wrong breath could shatter her.
His fingers trembled.
His fingers.
Rafael De Luca never knew grief until he had to saw his wife on hospital bed. The pain, the anguish and the guilt he thought he’d never feel, was so real it wrapped around his throat and choked him. He couldn’t breathe, even if he wanted to. It wasas if he had forgotten the simple notion of even breathing was unknown to him.
Every breath felt like he was breathing in shards of glass lodged into his throat even since he found her laying on the side of the road, bloodied and almost dead.
Dead.
His head lowered until his forehead rested against her knuckles, his dark hair falling over hollow, sleepless eyes as broken prayers escaped lips once feared by entire cities.
“Please…”
His voice cracked.
So quietly.
So pathetically.
“Please, God…”
His grip tightened.
“Take everything.” A shaky breath. “My empire…” Another. “My name…” His shoulders trembled. “My life…” And then his voice dropped into something so raw, so torn, that even the nurses standing nearby had to look away. “…but not her.”
Only the steadybeep… beep… beep…of the machines mocked his desperation.
Two weeks.
Fourteen days.
Three hundred and thirty-six hours.
And not once, not once, had those beautiful eyes opened.
Rafael had stopped sleeping after the third day.
Stopped eating after the fifth.
Stopped pretending he could survive without her after the seventh. Because every time he closed his eyes, he heard her screams.
He still heard them. They clawed through his skull like ghosts refusing to die.
