to her? Was her father scouring the streets, searching for some sign, some way to bring her back home? Or did he simply write her off?
Neither would surprise Genna.
Chapter Three
Dante was dead.
He was sure of it.
Death was a son of a bitch, but it came mercifully quick. There one second, gone the next. He'd been awake, and suffering, and then nothing. Nothing. It was almost like being put to sleep.
It had all been taken from him in a blink.
Yeah, Dante was dead.
But somehow, someway, he was still fucking breathing.
He inhaled sharply, but it was like sucking air through a straw. He was suffocating, drowning in the bitter darkness, while loud shrieks pierced his ears. Confusion clouded his thoughts. He couldn't see a damn thing. Fiery red splotches melding with pitch black, like blood drops in a void.
He couldn't get a grip. Nothing he did made a difference. His body no longer worked. He couldn't move a fucking muscle. His voice was lost.
Heaven wasn't meant for him.
He was in Hell.
But goddammit, some way, some how, his lungs kept inflating.
"You need to hold on, okay? Can you do that for me? Try to relax. We’ll get you through this."
The soft-spoken voice, serene and feminine, broke through the haze. It felt like déjà vu, like he'd heard it before. Like maybe this wasn't the first time he'd been told those words. Like maybe, somewhere, somehow, she'd already called to him. They washed through him until he could almost feel them, a strange sensation rushing through his comatose veins.
It took every ounce of strength he had to break through the darkness. Bright white light blasted him, blinding him, as he forced his eyes open. Blinking, his vision cleared just enough for him to make out a blurry face. It was just a flash of creamy skin, dark hair and dark eyes, but there was something kind about them, something kind about her. It was something that warmed him from the inside when a soft smile touched the corners of her pink lips.
He was looking at an angel.
He was sure of it.
The piercing shrieks continued, so loud he almost didn't hear it when she spoke to him again.
"That's it," she whispered. "Just keep holding on."
The bright light surrounded her like a halo.
She was an angel of mercy.
She'd almost rescued him from the pit.
The sight of her nearly brought him back to life, but the world faded black again, and he could do nothing to stop it.
Dead.
Days. Months. Years. It still didn't matter. Dante had figured they would kill him, and he could've sworn they did. But that voice just kept calling to him, urging him to hold on, pulling him to the surface, again and again.
The first thing Dante saw, when regaining consciousness, was the face again.
That face.
It was still blurry, and he struggled making everything out, but he saw her standing by his side. While her presence should've brought Dante relief, panic bubbled in his chest. He couldn't move. Literally. He inhaled sharply, shrieking shattering the air when he did. He tried to turn his head to see where the noise was coming from and caught a glimpse of his surroundings.
Wires and tubes ran from his body in all directions, hooked to machines all around the room. Alarms went off as a heart monitor raced, the obnoxious blaring and beeping grating his skin.
A hospital.
The worst Hell there is.
“Try to relax," she said as she reached over to quiet the machine. "You may not like it, but the ventilator's helping."
It took Dante a moment to understand. The ventilator.
He might've still been dead, but now he realized he wasn't going to stop breathing... not as long as a machine did it for him.
It took some effort, but Dante managed to lift one of his arms as the woman tinkered with a machine beside him. He felt around on his face, his fingertips faintly grazing over bandages, before he found the piece sticking out of his mouth, the tube shoved down his throat. He wrapped a hand around it and pulled, panicking, and gagged when it started to budge. More alarms sounded, and the woman jumped into action, shouting for help. Others descended upon the room, crowding around him. It was a blink to him, flashes of people moving, as wooziness set in, a strange sensation rushing through his veins after a man shouted, “Sedate him!"
The woman appeared again then, looking down at him, another smile on her lips, but this one was different. This was a