On Halloween My Husband Bet I'd Never Leave Him So I Stopped Waiting novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: His Own Pen

I woke to a beeping monitor and a ceiling I did not know.

My throat felt scraped raw, and there was a line taped into the back of my hand.

My mother sat in a chair by the bed with her coat still on.

"Four hours," she said. "You were out four hours."

"Alive?"

"Alive." Her voice broke on the word, and she put her fist against her mouth until it passed.

The doctor came in with a chart.

"You had a severe reaction, Ms. Ferraro. The second dose is what saved you. Your friend gave it inside ninety seconds."

"Which friend?"

"The tall one. He's in the corridor. He has refused to sit down."

"Let him in," I said.

Tommaso came in slowly, like a man who expected to be sent away.

His tie was gone, and one sleeve was stained with something brown.

"Signora Bianca."

"You had a pen."

"I have carried one for you since the night of the party," he said. "In my left coat pocket. Your mother knows."

"I told him to," my mother said.

"Why?"

"Because the night of the soup, your own pen sat loose in your bag with no case," he said. "Anyone could have touched it."

"Camille."

"Or someone she paid."

I looked at his hands, which were hanging at his sides and were not entirely still.

"You counted for me," I said.

"I would have counted to a thousand."

My mother stood.

"I will give you a minute," she said, and she went out with the doctor and closed the door.

Neither of us spoke.

The monitor beeped.

"I thought you were dying," he said, finally, in a rough low voice. "I have been in rooms with men who wanted to hurt your family. I was never afraid in any of them. I was afraid on that carpet."

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