Ruthless and Mine

Back to My Nightmare

Redna's POV

The next thing I know, I’m on the floor. There are voices around me and my eyes are closing slowly.

“Get the doctor!” I can hear the nurse say to someone nearby.

“Is she okay?” Another stranger adds in.

“Where is she going like that?” comes a third voice barely a whisper from afar now.

And then suddenly, strong, sure, impossible to ignore, a shadow falls over me. A hand steadies her shoulder. It's big but my eyes are almost closing and just as I lift my eyelids again, I see him.

“Redna.”

I lift my head, startled by a blurry vision of him in sight. I know I’m losing some consciousness by how everything seems to fade.

There he is: tall, dark, commanding, yet gentle, my mafian father. His eyes scan the corridor, checking around for anything threatening. I catch the glimmer of him before everything suddenly goes black.

“You can’t run like this,” he murmurs, his voice low but warm. “Let me carry you.” I could hear his voice through my subconscious and thoughts. I might not have been really active, a part of me was still full of spite.

I shake my head weakly, pride clashing with her frailty. But before I can even protest in my state in any available way I can, his arms are beneath me, lifting me effortlessly. My body relaxes against him, exhaustion winning.

“Where…?” I manage a whisper, barely able to speak.

“Somewhere safe,” he replies, his grip firm and protective. “No one will touch you. Not tonight. Not ever again.”

The nurse steps back, giving us space.

I open my eyes again, slowly, blurry first, then, back to the space, I was running ever so fervently from a few minutes ago. The man I hate so much sitting just at my feet.

My head stacked against the pillow.

I see a nurse preparing some injections at a corner.

I’d been taking some the size of a glass tube since I came here.

“You wanted to run away Miss Redna…you haven't finished your treatment. You can't handle your condition. It's not a light case, you should know that.”

I squint my eyes to see her face. It's a different nurse, not the one that helped me out.

My mind makes for the baby.

“Where's he? Where's the child?”

The nurse points towards my pa at the edge of my bed. He’s carrying him. I'm weak, but I still glare at him. He ignores me and tends to the child.

“It's in our hands to name your brother, Redna”

I say nothing to him. Son to him, brother and step son to me. But I still loved the child very much. He was nice and ever cute, a quiet child who hadn't cried a thing since they’d brought him to my ward. He didn't look like a child that would bring trouble.

Seeing him address the child as his son softened my heart a bit.

I don't know if he knows the story yet. But the way he looked at the child and handled it, there was raw love in his eyes for the child. At least he still loved it. If only I had received such at birth myself.

When the nurse is done, she leaves the word.

He edges close to a chair just beside my bed.

“Redna…”

I turn over to the other side of the bed and back him.

“Place him in the cot and leave. Your schemes won't work!’

I say softly. And for once, when I needed to shout, I couldn't and I hated myself for it.

“I'm not leaving my son you know? I left you and I won't make that mistake with any of my wife's child again…”

“He's not your son”

I snap.

“I know”

I grow silent for a while. There's ice in the air for two minutes.

Then he says,

“Have you called him a name?”

“No. I want to do so, calm, safe and away from you!”

“That won't happen. I won't let you die”

“Stop talking s**t, okay. The only thing that might kill me is cancer and you! You're the one I should stay away from. You and that asshole boyfriend of mine”

“Maybe. What if there was something else that was actually going to kill you, not cancer? I'm here to prevent that. I'm here to protect you from things you can't see coming Redna."