Page 42 of Matteo (The 4 Seats #1)
Chapter Thirty
Eleanor Wang
T he door slams open with a force that sends a shiver down my spine. Patrick storms in, eyes wild with urgency, clutching a small key like it's salvation itself. "We gotta go, El," he barks, striding toward me with purpose etched into every line of his weathered face.
"What? Where? What happened?" My words tumble out in a frantic mess, the pain in my leg throbbing in time with my pounding heart. "The doctor said I can't move!"
"I don't care what the doctor said, the doctor is gone. We gotta go, love," he snaps, fingers deftly undoing the cuffs that bind my wrist to the bed—cold metal clinking against cold metal.
"Patrick, we can't. The doctor said I cannot move!" Desperation laces my voice as I gesture helplessly to the damaged limb, feeling every bit the trapped animal I am in this godforsaken place.
"I don't give a shit what the doctor said," he growls, his arms sliding under my legs and around my back—a prelude to agony. "Fuck, Patrick!" The scream rips from my throat, raw and ragged, as even his gentlest touch feels like knives dancing across my skin.
"I’m sorry El, but this is going to hurt." There's a twisted apology in his eyes before he hoists me up into his arms. Holy fuck tards baking in the summer sun! That hurts! My mind screams obscenities as the room spins, black dots encroaching on my vision like vultures circling their dying prey.
"Argh!" It's all I can manage as the pain crescendos, a symphony of suffering conducted by the cruel maestro that is my shattered leg. "Patrick, stop!" But my pleas are swept away by the tide of necessity—he's not stopping, and neither is the relentless grip of darkness threatening to claim me.
The room blurs into a nightmare as Patrick drags me from the bed.
His hand now, ironclad around my mouth, stifles the screams clawing their way up my throat.
"Seriously El, shut the fuck up," he snarls, breath hot and heavy against my ear.
The TV's drone slices through the tension in the hall—some crime show playing judge and jury, as my legs hit the ground so Patrick and keep a hand over my mouth.
A thunderous crash echoes from the front door, splintering wood, shattering calm. Matteo. My heart leaps, fierce and frantic as his voice barrels down the hallway. "Eleanor!"
"Matteo!" I scream back muffled by the hand covering me, every fiber reaching for him.
"I said, shut the fuck up, El!" He's all brute force and boiling anger, dragging me backward. White-hot pain lances through my leg, a vicious serpent sinking venom deep. Nausea swarms, threatening to choke me, but I fight it, fight him, with everything left.
"Matteo!" It's a muffled battle cry behind Patrick’s hand. My good leg thrashes out, desperate to find his shin, anything. We're retreating, slinking like cowards toward the house's shadowed rear. "Eleanor!" Matteo's closer now—a promise, a threat, a salvation.
Every inch we move, every second that ticks by, Matteo's calls become the drumbeat of my pulse. Closer. Louder. Unstoppable.
I'm a fucking statue, frozen by the pain, as my teeth snap uselessly behind swollen lips. Patrick’s hand is a fleshy fortress I can't breach, and I curse the day vanity got the better of me and I put to much filler in them.
We glide past doorways, one glowing dimly—Mrs. Tinsdale's sanctum, probably.
He halts, suddenly, and his arm slips from my waist. He's fumbling for something behind him. My legs scream under my weight, a chorus of agony that blurs my vision. Blackness nibbles at the edges, creeping closer, ready to swallow me whole.
"El—Eleanor!" Matteo's voice slashes through the haze, raw with desperation.
"Let her go, now!" His command is a thunderclap in this tense silence.
Patrick's retort is a viper's hiss. "She isn't yours!"
Metallic cold kisses my temple; the gun—a promise of oblivion. Matteo's eyes, twin storms of horror and fury, lock onto mine just as darkness claims me, dragging me down into its depths.