Chapter 191 Chapter 191

Chapter 191 Chapter 191
ANGELO
The corridor was the longest place I had ever been.

I sat in the squeaky plastic chair outside her room, leaning forward with my elbows resting on my knees and my hands hanging heavy between them.

Adore's blood was still dry and dark on my palm, and the plastic pregnancy test was a lump in my jacket pocket, weighing me down with every passing second, I hope the baby was okay, God! Let the baby be okay please.

There was so much blood, so much bleeding and I was not sure what to think anymore.

I sat there in the blinding white light, feeling the minutes tick away like a slow bleed, each one taking a tiny piece of me with it, but I could not bring myself to move.

Don Luca arrived twenty minutes later.
He came straight through the sliding glass doors, his heavy footsteps echoing down the hall as his eyes searched the floor until he found me sitting alone in that chair.

He walked over and sat down right beside me without saying a single word, and I just stared at the floor and kept quiet too.

We sat together in the cold hallway with every lie, every fight, and every bad thing that had ever happened between us hanging heavy in the air, but the silence was the most honest thing we had shared in years.

Kiera came rushing in right behind him, her eyes red as she took a seat on the other side of the corridor. She looked across at me with a sad, fragile expression, and when she pressed her trembling lips together and stared at the shut door to Adore’s room, I turned my head and stared at it too.

"For years, I've only dreamt of avenging my parents, I made a promise to my mother that I will take revenge for her, so for years, I hated you, hated the power that you wield, felt you used it to manipulate those around you." I closed my eyes as I let the past bitterness wash over me only there was no longer bitterness, there was just resignation and regret.

Don Luca didn't say anything, just kept quiet and listened so I continued.

"I wanted to have that same power as yours, to be able to seize it from you, I fell in love with the person I see as my enemy's daughter but I didn't dare let her know about my feelings because a part of me felt I was betraying my parents and when you gave me that empire of yours, I quickly seized it as an opportunity to calm.the guilty part of me, to somehow appease my parents that I have avenged them but now that I have all that power, I suddenly realized it comes with a prize." I looked at Don Luca, my eyes burning with pain and unshed tears.

"If someone had willingly jumped in at that moment to save my wife, I realized how eternally grateful I'll be to that person, more grateful than if it was my own life being saved, now I understood why you didn't fight me back all those years, you'd let me betray you rather than fight the offspring of the man who saved the life of the woman you love." My voice broke and I couldn't stop the tears that flowed from my eyes, "I... I'm so sorry, I was to stupid and now it took me losing the only woman I have ever loved to realize how stupid I have been."

Don Luca grabbed my hand tight, his face emotional, "shush Angelo, you fought for what you believed was right and I am never blaming you for it and as for your wife...my little girl is a fighter, she'll definitely pull through because she is Don Luca's blood and we don't give up easily." He clapped my shoulder comfortingly and I glanced up to stare at Kiera, my anger was mainly directed at her because she was the one whom my father shielded.

Tears were freely flowing down her cheeks and without a word, she simply hugged me.

"I didn't mean to tear your family apart Angelo, if I can turn back the time, I'd rather I was dead that day than to take your father away from you."

A nurse stepped out a little while later to tell us the doctor would be with us shortly before slipping back inside, and we sat there quietly while I stared down at the dry blood on my hand.

My mind kept racing back to the warehouse floor, hearing that sickening crack when Bryant shoved her head into the concrete wall, and I had to clench my jaw tight just to force the air in and out of my lungs.

The doctor finally came out forty minutes later, and I was on my feet before he even finished opening the door.

"She is stable," he said, holding up a hand to calm me down. "The head injury was severe, but she is stable and her heart is strong. You can go in and see her."

I did not stick around to hear the rest of me talking.

I was already pushing past him, stepping into the quiet white room where she lay small and pale in the big hospital bed. Her head was wrapped in white bandages, an IV line was taped to her arm, and she looked so fragile in a way Adore had never looked in her entire life. I crossed the room in two fast strides, leaning over the bed to pull her carefully against my chest.

I held her as tight as I dared while burying my face in her soft hair. Feeling her warm skin and hearing her soft breathing hit me with such a wave of total relief that my legs gave out, forcing me to sit hard on the edge of the mattress while the tears finally spilled over my cheeks.

"You are alive," I whispered, my voice breaking into nothing against her neck. "You lived for me."

"Who are you?" I heard the soft whisper and the words hit me like a heavy blow to the stomach, knocking the air right out of me as the whole world tilted on its side.

She had not hugged me back, I should have felt the wrongness of it before but now my brain finally understood, registering the cold space where her hands should have been hugging me back. I slowly pulled away to look at her face, and my heart stopped when I saw her staring back at me with wide, clear eyes that held zero recognition. Something deep inside my chest dropped into a dark, bottomless hole.

"Adore," I breathed, my hands shaking on the blanket.

She looked right into my eyes, the same eyes that had always been filled with love each time she looked at me were staring blankly at me.

Sitting on the edge of my wife's bed, the horrifying weight of it crushed me, feeling a million times worse than the warehouse, worse than Bryant, and worse than anything I had ever faced in my entire life.

The woman I love do no longer recognize me.

"I am so sorry," she said politely, her voice gentle and distant. "Do I know you?"

I just sat frozen, staring at her and could not speak a word.

The doctor stepped quietly into the room behind me, taking a seat on the other side of her bed to ask her a few simple questions. He asked for her name, the year, where she grew up, and what she remembered last, while I stood frozen against the cold wall, listening to her answer some of them easily while watching her face go completely blank on others.

She knew her full name.
She remembered her parents and the old compound.

She remembered her childhood and her brother Adonis, speaking about things from years ago like she was reading them off a printed page.

But she did not know me. I was the only person she forgot, did I hurt her so much that she chose to erase me from her memory?

When the doctor finished, he called me back out into the hall, I could barely drag my feet out of the room.
"It is partial memory loss," he explained quietly, looking at me with pity. "It happens sometimes with severe head trauma. Her brain kept her childhood and early life intact, but her recent memory—roughly the last four to five years—is completely gone and she forgot everything about you and this might be that you had probably hurt her so much in the past that her brain had just completely shut that out... that's my only conclusion for her to have completely erased just you from her memory" He paused, letting out a soft breath. "She might get some of it back over time, but we cannot promise anything. It could take weeks, or it could take much longer."

I stared blankly at the dark wood of her door.

"She does not know who I am," I rasped out still in disbelief.

The doctor looked at me with pity in his eyes and shook his head, "I am very sorry."

He kept talking about medications, rest, and follow-up appointments, but I did not process a single word coming out of his mouth. The only thing looping in my head was the blank look in her eyes when she asked who I was, the heavy feeling of her arms staying flat at her sides when I held her, and the way the only woman who had ever truly loved me had looked at my face like I was a complete stranger to her.

I pushed the door open and went back inside.

Adore looked up from the bed, watching me walk back toward her with the quiet curiosity of someone watching a stranger cross a room.

I sank back into the plastic chair beside her bed, staring at her sweet face while a terrible, aching love swelled in my chest. It was so huge and total, but it had nowhere to go, because the person it belonged to was sitting two feet away from me and did not even know my name.

"My name is Angelo," I said softly, keeping my voice as steady as I could.

She tilted her head, watching me.

"Do you remember me at all?" I asked, praying for even a tiny spark in her eyes.

She looked at my face for a long moment, truly trying to search her mind for me, but then she slowly shook her head.

She tilted her head to the side, "so, you're my husband?" She asked and I nodded eagerly then she said something that left me completely confused.

"How the hell did I get to marry someone like you? You don't seem like my type."