When We Met

CH 41 Logan

The world seeped back into agonising focus in nebulous increments - a distant murmur of voices, the acrid sting of antiseptics, and the smothering weight of sheer despair threatening to drag me under once more.

My eyelids felt as though they'd been anchored by lead as I fought to pry them apart. Sterile white light seared into my skull like molten daggers until dark shapes finally coalesced from the blinding haze. Noah's weathered features slowly materialised beside the bed, his expression one of harrowed fear and helpless rage.

"Easy, brother..." he rasped, resting a hand on my shoulder to keep me from bolting upright. "You're safe for now, but you've been through pure hell."

Disjointed images and sensations bombarded me in dizzying flashes - the bone-rattling detonations, the choking smoke, Rosaline's bloody, motionless form cradled in my arms...

"Rosaline!" I gasped, struggling anew against Noah's restraining grip. "Where is she? Tell me she's alive, Noah, tell me she is okay!"

He regarded me with pained eyes for a taut moment before nodding once. "She alive...for now. The doctor and nurse are doing everything they can to keep her with us."

The breath I hadn't realised I'd been holding escaped in a harsh, shuddering rush. Rosaline is alive. With that singular certainty anchoring my fracturing sanity, I felt capable of facing whatever new hell awaited.

"And Maria?" I dreaded the question almost as much as the answer I suspected was coming. "Please...tell me you've found our sister."

Noah's jaw tightened, causing the scar on his cheek to bunch in stark relief. When he spoke, it was with a hollow rasp drained of all hope.

"She's been taken, Logan. By HIM."

A yawning pit of pure desolation opened in my chest, swallowing any vestiges of relief over Rosaline in an icy torrent. Her uncle Hector may the bastard rot eternally had struck the most insidious blow possible by abducting Maria and a hair on my sweet angels head.

Grinding my teeth until fiery needles of agony lanced up my jaw, I hauled myself upright and swung my legs over the side of the cot despite Noah's muttered protests.

"What are his demands?" My voice was little more than a gravelly rasp, scraping painfully through a throat scorched by fumes and exertion. "Name them, and we'll have his black heart skewered on a pike before the night is through!"

Noah opened his mouth, undoubtedly to advise patience or caution. But the look of pure, unadulterated hatred I levelled in his direction seemed to rob him of speech for an endless beat. When he found his words again, they emerged in tumbling, furious rushes.

"He means to extract his 'promised due' from Father for services rendered something to do with some property or land exchange in London, I can't be certain. What I DO know is that Hector reached out and claimed Father betrayed their agreement and knows we have his heir, thats what I overheard from fathers conversation. This just solidified what father was thinking this whole time and he has been badgering me about Rosaline." He says with a pained face.

I felt my face contort in anguish at the mention of his demands and at the thought of my father finally knowing who the Fernandez heir is. "First the old bastard sells out his own flesh and blood, by killing his own brother and his family, and now he grinds us underfoot for the sake of mineral wealth and acreage? And wants the heir that he has be badgering us about since the deal he had with father, How utterly...unsurprising and disgusting." I uttered furiously, he messed with the wrong clan and he hurt the two most important women in my life.

Seizing the edge of the mattress, I hauled myself upright, gritting my teeth against the burning waves of agony crashing through my midsection. Noah watched me carefully, making no move to stop my agonising progress.