He Took My Love 99 Times. The 100th Time, He Lost Me Forever. novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: At the Door

Fabrizio and Donata come for Gemma and the ward's patients stand in the doorway; Paola whispers that there are ninety-eight more.

The knock came while the video was still playing.

It wasn't loud.

Three slow taps on the glass, the way Fabrizio had always knocked on the bathroom door when I locked myself in to cry.

I stood up.

"Don't," the nurse said, and put herself between me and the front window.

"It's him," I said.

"I know who it is, honey. Stay back."

Leone walked to the door and turned the lock.

Fabrizio stood on the sidewalk under the streetlight in his black overcoat.

Donata was at his side with her pearls on and her hands folded, and two guards waited behind them with their coats open.

Rain was coming down on all of them.

"Dr. Barsi," Fabrizio said politely. "I'm here for my wife."

"There's no one here by that name," Leone said.

"Then there's a woman in a blue dress who left my family's ballroom in the wrong state of mind."

"She's a patient. She walked in on her own."

"She was carried," Donata said coldly. "By your van."

I walked up beside Leone before I could think about it.

Fabrizio's eyes found me, and his whole face softened with relief.

It was a perfect performance.

I had watched it a hundred times and believed it each time.

"Gemma," he said. "Thank God."

He stepped forward and held out his hand.

"Come home, amore. We'll talk. You don't have to be alone tonight."

His palm was open and steady.

I looked at it.

I knew that hand better than my own, and I wanted to feel something, anything, for it.

I felt something small.

It was a flicker, no bigger than a match, down low in my chest, and it had one word in it.

Run.

"No," I said.

His hand stayed where it was.

"You're upset," he said. "You've signed ninety-nine forms because you trusted me, and now someone has frightened you, and I'm sorry for that."

"Nobody frightened me. A doctor said a number in front of two hundred people."

"Gemma."

"Ninety-nine," I said, louder, so the guards could hear it too. "You never told me it was ninety-nine."

Behind me, I heard the beds creak.

The old baker had stood up in his flour apron.

The nurse had stepped to my left, and the thin boy was on my right with a blanket around his shoulders, a skinny, furious bodyguard.

Then another patient came from the back, and another.

A woman in a hospital gown, a man with a cane.

The patients filled the doorway, and none of them said a word.

Donata looked them over.

"These are the people Barsi keeps," she said. "Beggars who sold their hearts and want them back."

"I didn't sell mine," I said.

"You gave it." Her eyes were chips of ice. "It's the same."

"It isn't," said the old baker, gently. "If you gave it, you'd remember."

Fabrizio dropped his hand.

For the first time that night, his voice wasn't warm.

"Then let's be clear," he said. "You've filed a claim."

"This morning."

"The Board will hear it in nine days. I'll be there. My mother will be there. And I'll bring every page you signed, Gemma, and a doctor who'll say a woman who can't remember her own marriage isn't fit to stand in front of the families."

"I remember everything," I said.

"Do you?"

His smile came back, small and sad.

"Then you remember how much you loved me. Because I'm the only one who does."

The words went through me.

It wasn't pain, exactly.

It was the first thing I'd felt in months that had a shape.

"Take her out of the doorway," Donata said to the guards.

Neither guard moved.

Eleven patients stood shoulder to shoulder, and there was a camera on a pole across the street that did not belong to the Montanaris.

A man in a raincoat was holding it up.

"Press," Leone said mildly. "Every claim in this city gets a reporter now. It's the one thing the Board can't buy."

Fabrizio looked at the camera for a long moment.

Then he turned up his collar.

"Nine days," he said to me, and he said it tenderly. "Sleep well, amore."

He walked back to the car with his mother beside him.

I leaned on the doorframe and my knees gave way.

The nurse caught me under the arms.

"Easy," she said. "You did it. You said it twice. That's more than most people say in a week."

I laughed, and it came out wet.

Leone was watching the street, not me.

"They'll be back," he said. "Or he'll send somebody else. Stay inside tonight."

I nodded.

I went to the front window while the others drifted back to their beds.

The Montanari car hadn't left.

The rear window slid down an inch as I watched.

A pale hand came out of it and tapped the glass twice.

Paola was alone in the back seat, with her blond hair coming loose from its bun and her silver dress under Fabrizio's coat.

She wasn't smiling now.

She looked straight at me through the rain.

"Ask him," she mouthed, slowly enough for me to read, "who bought the other ninety-eight."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend