Chapter 85 - Antonio
The only sounds are the low, rhythmic hiss of the ventilator forcing breath into her lungs and the steady, electronic ping of the heart monitor.
She lies in the bed, a small mound of a person beneath starched white sheets, dwarfed by the machinery that is keeping her tethered to this world. To me.
I stand just inside the door, my feet rooted to the floor. My eyes take her in, piece by shattered piece because to see the whole of her is an agony I am not yet equipped to bear.
Her right cheek, the one I used to trace with my knuckles, the one that would flush with warmth under my lips is a landscape of pristine white bandages, a grotesque mask hiding the ruin beneath.
The left side is a tapestry of brutality.
A violent purple bruise blossoms across her temple and a trail of sutures, like a clumsy black centipede, crawls from her hairline to her jaw.
What little of her lips that I can see are cracked and swollen.
My gaze falls to her hand, resting palm-up on the sheet. It’s the small, familiar hand I’ve held a hundred times, yet it’s a stranger’s. Her fingernails are caked with grime. There’s dark, dried blood lodged deep under the nails, like reminders of the horror she endured in that concrete cell.
It’s a detail so small, so visceral that it finally shatters the icy wall of shock I’ve been building around myself.
A young woman in lavender scrubs sits in the corner, her eyes fixed on the monitor screen with a concentration that is not entirely performative.
She’s been carefully avoiding my gaze since I entered.
She knows who I am. She’s heard the stories, the whispers that follow me like a shadow.
Right now, she’s not looking at Antonio the man; she’s looking at the Kingmaker, and she is petrified.
Good. Let her be.
Her fear is a bubble of normalcy in this otherwise inverted reality.
I step forward, the sound of my oxfords on the floor impossibly loud. I pull the single visitor’s chair closer to the bed, the legs scraping a protest in the humming silence.
I sit, and the helplessness of the position, sitting, waiting, watching, claws at my throat.
This is not what I do.
I act, I command, I dismantle threats and build empires from the fucking rubble.
I do not sit passively by a hospital bed while the only thing that has ever truly mattered to me lies broken by a violence I should have prevented.
Her skin is cool and unnervingly placid as I reach out and take her hand.
I trace the line of her wrist, feeling the faint, fragile pulse that beats in time with the machine’s harping song.
My thumb brushes over a smear of dirt on her skin, and all I can think about is their hands, their fingerprints, their filth still covering her, still tainting her, contaminating her.
This is wrong.
Every particle of her deserves to be treated with reverence, with care.
She’s the mother of my child. She should be surrounded by silk and soft light, not by the ghost of filth and terror.
The thought is a spark on a powder keg of impotent rage.
I can’t do this. I cannot just sit here and be idle.
“I need water. Warm water. Towels. Now.” The words are out of my mouth before I’ve fully formed them, my voice low but cutting through the sterile air like a blade.
The nurse jumps, her head snapping up. Her eyes, wide and frightened, meet mine for a split second before darting away. “Mr Macrae, she, she’s stable. The staff will give her a proper bed bath in the morning. It’s all under control.”
Her reassurance is like gasoline. Under control? Nothing about this is under control. My world is lying in this bed, half her face gone, and this woman talks to me about fucking schedules?
“It is not under control,” I say, the words measured, each one dropped like a stone. “And it is not good enough. I want water and towels, now.”
I don’t raise my voice. I don’t have to. She scurries from the room, like a leaf caught in a hurricane of my will.
I turn back to Grace, my anger receding as quickly as it flared. Leaving behind a raw, aching tenderness. I lift her hand to my lips and press a kiss to her knuckles, ignoring the grit against my skin. “I’m here, Dumpling.” I whisper, the endearment sounding like a vow. “I’m here.”
The nurse returns a moment later, carrying a plastic basin of steaming water and a stack of soft white towels. She sets them on the bedside table with trembling hands and retreats to her corner, making herself small once more.
I dip my fingers into the water. The temperature is perfect.
This, I can fix. This one small thing.
I start with her hand, the one I’ve been holding.
I work with focus, gently opening her fingers one by one.
I wipe the towel over her palm, along the length of each finger, carefully cleaning around the medical tape securing the IV line.
I use the corner of the towel to gently work the filth from under her nails.
Each particle of dirt that dissolves into the water is a small victory, a reclamation.
This is not just dirt; it is the residue of the men who took her, of the despair that convinced her to pull the trigger.
I am washing them away.
Washing away both her sins and mine.
I move to her arm, wiping away the smudges of grime, tracing the delicate blue veins beneath her pale skin.
I move the basin to the other side of the bed and repeat the process with her left hand, her left arm.
I am an archaeologist of her pain, meticulously brushing away the layers of evidence, trying to find the woman I know is buried beneath.
I dampen a fresh corner of the towel and lean over her.
I begin to clean her face, the unbruised part first. I stroke her forehead, smooth and pale as marble, wiping away the sweat and tears of her ordeal.
I clean her eyelid, so still and peaceful in its forced slumber.
I trace one side of her nose, the curve of her unharmed cheek.
I am painfully careful around the bandages, a territory I cannot enter, a wound I cannot heal.
The helplessness is still there, a vast, dark ocean around this tiny island of action.
I cannot wake her, I cannot take away the physical pain she will feel when the drugs wear off.
I cannot erase the memory of whatever horrors she saw, whatever depths of hopelessness she felt.
I, Antonio Macrae, who moves markets and topples governments, am powerless against the storm inside her fractured mind.
But I can do this. I can ensure that when she wakes, the first thing she feels is clean. That the touch she knows is one of care, not just possession. That she understands, on some deep, subconscious level that I am washing the world away for her, protecting her the only way I can.
The water in the basin grows cloudy, tinged with brown and pink. I empty it, refill it with fresh, clean water, and begin again.
I am not just cleaning her; I am anointing her.
This is my penance and my prayer.
The Kingmaker, brought to his knees not by an enemy, but by a woman.