Chapter 30 - Temporary Memory Loss
1999 Words
“Fuck.” the Don muttered under his breath.
Lifting her eyebrows high on her forehead, Alexa spoke almost instantaneously after him, crossing her arms over in front of her chest as she did.
“Yeah, f**k is about right.” she agreed, her left brow quirking slightly as she spoke.
Caught up in such an uncomfortable and unfortunate moment, Dante stood beside his bed in the master bedroom, gripping Alexa’s phone in his right hand.
And displayed on that phone was a singular image, one that the Don had gone to great lengths to ensure would never exist.
So how the hell was it staring him in the face right now?
Who was responsible for having taken the photo?
And more importantly, how had it coincidentally found its way directly to Alexa?
One thing was for sure; someone would pay dearly for this f**k up!
When he spoke next, Dante’s voice was soft, deep and remained calm given his current situation of being called out for infidelity against the woman he loved.
“Where did you get this?”
“Does it matter?” Alexa countered with a frown.
“Do you care to explain it?”
“Alexa… it’s not what you’re thinking, I assure you…” he spoke while slowly shaking his head from side to side.
But judging by her current expression, as she practically glared back at him through her tear-filled chocolate brown eyes, Dante knew just how seriously she was taking this.
This act of betrayal that he had committed against her.
Being a Mafia Boss, Dante had always hated the idea of betrayal, especially when it came to someone he cared about.
In his eyes, betrayal was an unforgivable crime. And it crushed him to think of the possibility that there may be no coming back from something like this.
No future for the two of them…
Swallowing away some of her built up anger, Alexa placed both hands onto her hips as she forced herself to stand her ground against this highly deadly killer.
The man she had chosen to become her husband and father to her son.
“So… start explaining it for me then.” she demanded.
Lowering his head for a moment as he gathered together all of his remaining courage to attempt to fix things, Dante let out a long hard sigh before he began attempting to fix the mess that he himself had created.
He reached out and dropped her phone down onto the soft mattress of the bed, sitting directly on the mattress beside it and resting his elbows down against either of his bent knees while hunched over.
“This mess… it goes so much deeper than you think, bella.”
He spoke, wiping his large open palm down over the length of his face.
“Much, much deeper…”
But Alexa was determined to find out the truth. She was sick and tired of being lied to, pushed away and left out of so many aspects of his life.
In truth, Alexa felt that if this continued that the two may eventually drift apart and the mere thought of it terrified her!
“I don’t care how f*****g deep it goes, or how dangerous it is for me to know these things! I’m sick of you keeping me in the dark all the time, Dante! And now THIS?”
She shook her head, her brows creasing inwards with a angered expression masking her.
“You’d better explain everything to me… right… f*****g… now!”
A moment of silence was shared between the two, and an already impatient Alexa had by then ultimately reached her limit.
Dante clearly wasn’t budging.
Shaking her head and scoffing loudly, she turned and began marching off towards the door calling out with her back to him as she continued with her retreat.
“Fine, don’t tell me. I don’t give a s**t anymore, I’m outta here.”
“Bella, wait!” he demanded.
And as soon as she began heading for the door Dante was up like a flash, chasing after her and managing to reach her right in the middle of the room.
Desperate to get her to stay, the Don grabbed his fiancé by her left arm and spun her back around to face him.
“What?” she snapped at him.
“Please… please don’t go.” he pleaded with her.
She looked him in the eyes, the expression of pure rage barely managing to hold itself at bay as she waited for him to finally open up to her.
Tears continued to roll down either of her cheeks, evidence of the unfortunate hurt he had caused her to feel.
And seeing that evident hurt in her eyes, Dante felt his heart ache as he closed his eyes, lowering his head for a moment in surrender before he spoke with a solemn tone.
“Alright… I’ll tell you.” he finally announced, lifting his head and meeting her eyes once more.
“I’ll tell you everything…”
-
The first thing that Willow noticed as she began to open her extremely heavy eyelids, was that she was in a somewhat familiar room.
After a while of glancing around, she recoignised it as one of Dante’s many guest rooms, back at his penthouse apartment.
But how had she gotten herself here? The last thing she recalled was being at the Gala Ball…
Reaching up and cradling her head with her hand, the red head slowly began to sit up with an uncomfortable groan.
With her vision still hazy and the room still quite dark at this early time in the morning, she struggled to focus on anything well enough.
She did, however, definitely recoignise the room that she was in.
At least she felt somewhat safer now, knowing that she was in a familiar place.
And then suddenly the memories of what had happened all came flooding back, one by one.
Memories of what had happened out on that patio, back at the Gala Ball.
What she had witnessed and then the feel of a large warm hand cupping over her mouth, followed by the sharp sting against the side of her neck…
Lifting her hand up, Willow slid the pads of her slender fingers along the skin on her neck and noticed that it stung to touch.
Only slightly, but enough that she could confirm it wasn’t just a horrible dream.
It was real!
She had been injected by someone from behind out on the patio.
Someone who didn’t want her to go blabbing to Alexa about what she saw Dante doing with that brunette woman.
Those motherfuckers wanted to keep their secret from Alexa and were willing to sedate her in order to do it!
Willow felt enraged at the thought as her eyes narrowed and she slid herself towards the edge of the mattress to get down from it.
She had to go find Alexa right away!
Sliding both legs over the edge, Willow went to put all her weight onto both of them, but suddenly the room around her began to spin and she fell backwards onto the soft mattress.
“Whoa…”
She muttered softly to herself.
“What the f**k did those assholes even give me? I swear to god, when I find out who did this to me...”
Squinting her eyes, she searched the room for any signs of movement, to see if anyone else was in the room with her but noticed nothing out of the ordinary.
She appeared to be alone.
With a sigh, Willow turned to look at the bedside table and noticed that her purse had been placed on top of it.
Perhaps for when she woke up.
Frowning with confusion, she reached across and into the purse, feeling around for what she had been searching for.
And within seconds her fingers grasped it and she pulled it out.
Good, she still had her phone.
Focusing on the screen and still struggling to see clearly enough, she planned on trying to call Alexa at first.
As she tried scrolling through her contacts to locate Alexa’s nickname ‘Lex’, her already blurred vision seemed to be working against her, blurring all the writing in on itself.
“God damn it!” she cursed to herself angrily.
She couldn’t read any of the names properly. The list looked more like a black blur.
Suddenly, Willow’s hand fumbled and she lost grip of her phone, mistakenly dropping it.
‘Thud!’
‘Thump!’
The sound of it colliding against the bedside table before finally hitting the floor was loud enough to have drawn some sort of attention, should anyone else be nearby.
“s**t!” she whispered in frustration, bending down to reach for the phone.
The sudden sound of the bedroom door opening at the other side of the room alerted her to turn and face whoever it was now entering the room with her.
After several blinks, Willow thought she recoignised the tall, muscular frame of the blurry man heading towards her with both his hands out in concern.
“Willow, you’re awake!” the figure called out happily as he made his way across towards her and stopped, crouching down right in front of where she was sitting.
She recoignised that voice right away and smiled.
“Whoa, slow down there. You should still be resting… the effects of the sedative are pretty powerful. You start walking around and I guarantee you’ll fall down and hurt yourself.”
As Roberto took both of her hands in his, still crouched down in front of her, Willow finally caught sight of the warm expression on his handsome face and she too smiled.
“Hey, you.” she greeted him, her voice appearing somewhat slower than it usually was.
The truth was, Willow sounded as if she was currently drunk.
“Hey, you.”
He repeated, squeezing her hands in his.
“What’re you doing up?”
Glancing downwards at the floor, Willow tried explaining to him, even with her slowed speech.
“My phone… I... dropped it…”
“I got it.”
Roberto announced, bending down and grasping the iPhone before lifting it back up and handing it over to her.
“Now come on, let’s lay you back down. You need to rest until the effects of the sedative has worn off completely.”
“Sedative…”
Willow repeated as Roberto helped her to lay herself back down, with her head on the pillow.
He began tucking her in underneath the covers as she spoke again.
“That’s right… someone f*****g drugged me!”
As she went to sit back up in outrage, Roberto held her by her shoulders, urging her to remain lying down as he spoke.
“Hey, hey, we’ll worry about that when you’re better, alright?” he assured her.
“I’m here. I’m not going anywhere, I promise, ok?”
Looking at him, Willow gave him a nod before she lay back down again, allowing him to tuck her in affectionately.
She watched him the entire time that he did, admiring just how much effort he was putting into caring for her right now.
In truth there was a reason for this, but the memory had not yet returned to Willow.
Once she was all tucked in and began to doze off again, Roberto stood over her for a moment in silence.
Just staring down at the beautiful red head as she slipped back into a deepened slumber.
Roberto was a smart man.
He knew that given time, Willow would eventually begin to remember everything, including all the details of what happened out on that patio.
She already told him about being grabbed and sedated by ‘someone’.
It was only a matter of time before she would recall just who that someone was…
And when she did, Roberto knew just how well and truly f****d he would be…
- Writer
