Page 2 of Beautifully Shattered (Secrets & Scars #3)

N othing feels real. Not this hospital, not the staff, not even me.

It’s like I’ve slipped into another dimension.

A place built from nightmares, where the sun never truly rises and the moon never truly beams. A world ruled by pain and suffering, where any trace of happiness is ripped away the second it dares to appear, like it was never real.

Just a tease. A cruel reminder that you’ll never crawl out of Hell.

They’ve wrapped me in heated blankets, but nothing can melt the ice in my veins. They can’t stop the trembles that wrack my body as Ringo pushes me in a wheelchair. Lexi walking beside me, her hand in mine, offering support, but her hold feels like disintegrating mist. It’s there… but not.

All I can feel is this brutal grief, squeezing my heart with so much force I’m certain it’s about to explode.

I wish it would.

I don’t want to do this… but I have to. I won’t be able to make sense of anything until I see Bobbi with my own eyes. Maybe that’s the moment I’ll snap awake. Maybe this whole thing is just a fucked-up dream.

God, I want that maybe to be real.

The sight of Doctor Madden standing outside the door with ‘Morgue’ written across it has my stomach roiling.

I want this to be a dream, but I know it’s not. Even though nothing feels real, everything also hits with a vividness that guts me.

Dammit. I don’t even know anymore. My head is all kinds of wrong right now.

The doctor gives me one of her fake sympathetic looks again, and I just glare at her.

She should have saved my daughter. She doesn’t deserve my decency. Not even a slither of it.

I’d been waiting for them to bring my little girl to me, swaddled in a blanket so I could hold her, but maybe that’s just the way it’s done in movies. The doctor insisted that I had to come down to this eerie basement. Said it will be easier for me this way.

Nothing about this is easy.

“You ready?” Lexi asks, and I glance up into her blue eyes, swimming with tears.

None of this was real until she stepped into my room. One look at her, and I knew. I knew Ringo, the nurse and the doctor weren’t lying.

My little girl was gone.

I nod, even though I’m not ready. How can anyone be ready to see someone they love dead ?

But I need to do this. I have to see Bobbi with my own eyes.

If I don’t, I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering if this is just some twisted dream. A nightmare too brutal to even comprehend.

The doctor pushes the door open, and inside, a man stands by a row of stainless steel doors that look like something out of an industrial kitchen.

Shit.

I guess it is. A fridge for the dead.

I shake my head, ready to tell Ringo to turn the wheelchair around, panic clawing at my insides as my stomach lurches.

“I’m going to be sick.” I croak just as someone shoves a vomit bag in front of my face, catching the first expulsion.

Behind me, Lexi holds my hair back with one hand while rubbing my back with the other, and I heave and heave, like if I just vomit enough, maybe I can throw up the grief too.

But it’s no good.

It’s still there. Heavy and crushing.

I can’t do this.

When I’m finally done, I wipe my mouth with the back of my shaking hand, and Ringo’s hand moves into view, reaching for the bag.

“Let me take that for you, Angel.”

Shit. Why is he being so gentle with me? I practically blamed him for my little girl’s death.

Do I blame him?

Maybe.

I asked him to save her, and he didn’t.

Was it his fault? Probably not. But I need someone to blame. I just have to.

Right now, aside from the doctor, he’s the only one here my fury knows how to aim at. There’s this wall of madness around me, thick and suffocating, and I don’t know what to do with it.

I’m so full of hate I can taste it. So much that I’m scared even Lexi might catch some of the blast.

I let Ringo take the bag from me, unable to meet his eyes. I’m too angry, too close to breaking. But I keep it bottled in, needing to get through this moment.

“Show me.” I force the words past my lips, my voice raspy and barely there.

The older man in the white medical coat nods and opens one of the lower doors before sliding out a metal tray, and on it… a white sheet covering a very small lump.

My heart just about stutters to a stop, and I watch frozen as he slowly peels back the sheet.

A sob rips from my throat as I reach for the wheels of the chair, taking over to move myself closer, coming to stop beside her… beside the lifeless, impossibly still body of my baby girl.

Shit.

This is real.

Bobbi’s gone.

My little girl is dead.

Cries fall from me, tears tracking down my cheeks in a never-ending river, but my eyes never waver, taking in every inch of my Bobbi.

I didn’t get a good look at her out in that pine forest. She was messy, and I was crying then too, but I was also struggling to stay conscious.

Now that I think about it, that must have been from the blood loss.

Reaching out, I glide my finger gently over her tiny digits, her fingernails tinged blue, matching the rest of her skin.

“Hey, l-little o-one.” I sob. “I’m s-so s-sorry I couldn’t p-protect y-you.”

I trace her eyelashes and brows, barely there, both so light in colour. I wonder if she would have grown up to have blonde hair like me.

I guess I’ll never know.

“She’s beautiful, Abs.” Lexi kneels beside the wheelchair, and we lock eyes.

“She kind of l-looks like an a-alien,” I admit, the words stuttering out between sobs, and Lexi’s lips kick up in the smallest smile.

“An adorable alien.”

I nod, fresh tears falling. “Yeah. My l-little adorable a-alien.”

Reaching out, Lexi gives my shoulder a gentle squeeze that nearly anchors me, like she knows I’m barely holding on.

I can feel Ringo on my other side… quiet, but there.

I don’t want to drag my eyes away from my little girl for even a second, but when I hear him quietly sniff, I risk a glance.

Tears wet his eyes as he stares down at my baby, his jaw moving, clenched tight like he’s fighting to keep it together.

Shit.

I didn’t even think about what this might be like for him. He’s probably remembering Hope.

I know I’m angry at him. At everyone. But I’m not so far gone that I don’t feel the punch of his pain. It hits me hard. Right in the centre of the thing that’s broken.

My heart.

I want to ask him to come closer, but that wall of madness is still here, so impenetrable I can’t seem to break through it.

So, I turn my eyes back to my little girl, for one last look.

She’s right here. I can see her, lifeless, blue and cold, but my heart refuses to believe she’s really gone. Not when she still feels so alive in my heart.

I can feel it then. My heart. The beat faint at first, starts to thump harder, and with it, something inside me begins to stir.

It’s not light.

It’s not warmth.

But something so much darker.

Something heavy and primal, unfurling in my chest like a wildfire.

I should be scared. But I’m not.

No.

There’s no room for fear anymore, because I’ve just realised something.

Now I know why I didn’t die.

Leaning forward, I pull myself up on shaky legs, my body trembling under the weight of everything I’m carrying.

Lexi and Ringo steady me, one on each side, and I lean down, pressing my lips to my little girl’s stone-cold forehead.

My tears spill onto her delicate skin, and for a moment, I let myself wish we were inside a fairytale, where a kiss or the drop of a tear could magically spark her little heart back to life, sending blood rushing through her veins again.

A fairytale where there’s always a happily ever after.

But my story doesn’t end like that.

No.

Mine ends in violence and blood .

“Mummy will get them,” I whisper, knowing Lexi and Ringo can still hear, but the man standing off to the side can’t. “I will make every single one of them pay. I won’t stop until they are all dead.”

Using my thumb, I gently brush away the tears clinging to Bobbi’s skin. A soft touch that feels like both a blessing and a curse.

“That’s one promise I know I can keep, Bobbi.” I straighten, my heart shattering all over again as I look down at her one last time, and swear one last promise. “And once they are all gone… Mummy will join you.”