Page 65 of Cinder (MC Fables #2)

E lla

I still can’t believe my father is alive. I ride in the ambulance to the hospital and stay with him. The doctor says he will live. But he is very unwell. Severely undernourished and weak, with extreme muscle deterioration.

The only reason I leave his side is to check on Lucretia.

After saving her from Viktor, Beast took her back to the clubhouse, and it’s where I find her, asleep on Annika’s lap in the library, with the rest of the old ladies and club girls around her.

“She finally drifted off to sleep about twenty minutes ago,” Annika says quietly.

I kneel in front of her and Lucretia. I don’t want to wake my sister. She looks peaceful. At the hospital, Beast assured me Viktor hadn’t had a chance to do the unthinkable to her. But if the Knights hadn’t shown up, I don’t doubt he would have.

I think about Viktor’s head in the box, and I’m happy he’s dead.

I reach out and stroke my sister’s hair.

“Thank you for looking after her,” I whisper.

“She’s been through a lot,” Annika says.

I try to bite back a sob, but it breaks through. “I know.”

“But so have you by the sounds of it,” she says. And the hand she puts on my arm is kind and comforting. Which I never expected from the ice queen.

“I’m so sorry I lied to you,” I say, rising to my feet as I cast a look around the faces in the room. “All of you.”

“Hey, you don’t need to apologize. From what Beast said, you didn’t have a lot of choice,” Luna says.

“I don’t think I would’ve been as strong,” Bambi adds.

I turn to Mya. My bestie. And my face cracks with another sob. “I’m so sorry.”

“Oh honey.” She wraps her arms around me and hugs me close. “I can’t imagine what you were going through.”

“Beast says your father is alive,” Belle says, nursing Lucy in her arms. “How is he doing?”

“They’re running tests. They don’t know what’s been done to him in the cellar.” Just the thought makes me want to shoot Luca again. “I should really get back to the hospital. ”

My gaze slides to my sister.

“We’ll look after her,” Annika assures me.

“She has all of us looking out for her,” Bambi says.

Demri takes my hands. “Go be with your father. Lucretia is safe.”

I look at the women rallying around my sister. Around me. “I don’t know how to thank you guys.”

“You don’t need to,” Mya says. “We’re family, right?”

This time I hug her and squeeze her tight.

And when I leave the clubhouse for the hospital, for the first time in a long time, I feel the warm arms of family around me.

I arrive back at the hospital the same time as Lars. When I see him walking down the corridor, I run to him and throw my arms around him, and he holds me tight.

“It’s okay, baby. I got you.”

I must be in shock. Or coming out of it.

Or perhaps the adrenaline has left my body and that’s why I’m feeling everything.

My emotions rise to the surface and pour out of me while I’m in his arms. I bury my face in his warm neck.

The thought of my father being imprisoned in that cellar is almost too much to bear.

“What if the doctors are wrong and he doesn’t survive?” I sob.

Strong, assured fingers wrap around the nape of my neck as Lars holds me close. “We’ll face whatever happens together. ”

I melt into his embrace, absorbing the comfort of his strong body.

And let the pain pour out of me.

Having figured out what he was drugged with, the doctors slowly bring my father out of his sleep.

It’s a gradual process.

For days he seems stuck in a place between sleep and consciousness.

The doctors tell me he may never fully recover. The prognosis is worse than they first thought. Or he might stay in this twilight existence for weeks. Maybe months, before regaining consciousness.

But he is alive.

And that is a start.

Every day, I sit at his bedside and squeeze his hand tight and ask him to come back to me. Refusing to believe he won’t.

I spend nights at the hospital talking to him while he drifts in and out of consciousness, and during the day, I try to keep spirits high as the physical therapist works on moving his arms and legs.

Through it all, Lars doesn’t leave us. He gives me alone time with my father, but I know he is on the other side of the door, ready to give me whatever I need.

Ready to hold me up if my father doesn’t make it .

But on the seventh day, my father finally wakes up.

At first, he is confused and not himself. He’s a man in his sixties who is afraid and weak and angry because of the drugs. But the more he is nourished and medicated correctly, the more he becomes himself again.

“My bambina,” he says, his voice raspy from being drugged for so long.

I let go of a deep breath.

He is going to be okay.

And the second week after he was found in the cellar, Angelo Moretti is able to tell us exactly what happened.