Chapter 3 - The Sterile Room and the Seventeen Recordings
Three days later, I opened my eyes to the steady, rhythmic beep of a cardiac monitor.
The room smelled of antiseptic, bleach, and clean white sheets. Sunlight poured through large hospital windows, casting pale bars across the floor. My chest felt bruised and heavy, as if a heavy weight had rested upon it for hours, but the suffocating tightness was gone.
Alessandro sat in a vinyl chair beside the bed. He hadn't changed his shirt. He wore the same dark trousers and open-collared white shirt from the night of our anniversary, though his jacket hung over the back of the chair. Dark shadows bruised the skin beneath his eyes. He looked like a man who hadn't slept a second since I stopped breathing.
"You're awake," he said. His voice was rough, worn thin by hours of silence.
"Where...?"
"Lenox Hill Hospital. Private wing. Guarded." He stood up, pouring a small paper cup of water from a plastic pitcher and holding a bendable straw to my lips. I drank greedily, the cool liquid soothing my raw throat.
"The cake," I murmured, my voice raspy. "The little girl."
"Emma is safe," Alessandro said quietly, setting the cup down. He picked up a sleek black tablet from the bedside table. "And you are alive. Because of her."
He tapped the screen, and a video began to play. It was the security footage from Il Cielo.
I watched it in silence. Then he played it again. And again. By the time the sun began to dip below the Manhattan skyline, casting long orange shadows across the hospital room, I had watched the sequence seventeen times.
I saw the little girl slip past the security guards. I saw her tug at Alessandro's sleeve. I saw the precise moment Alessandro lifted the plates and switched them, unknowingly saving his own life by sacrificing mine.
"Who wanted you dead, Alessandro?" I asked, my voice steadying.
"Someone who knew our habits," he replied, his jaw tightening until the muscles stood out in sharp relief. "Someone who knew we would celebrate our anniversary at Il Cielo. Someone who knew which table we preferred."
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"Someone on the inside," I whispered.
"Yes." Alessandro leaned over the bed, his dark eyes locking onto mine with fierce, unyielding intensity. "And I am going to find them. Every last one of them."
