The Godfather’s Forsaken Rose Chapter 28
Adrian held me tightly as I stared at the scene before me, stunned.
My heart seemed to stop.
I could see Dominic’s eyes in the instant he was thrown through the air.
There was no fear.
No regret.
Only a complicated emotion that looked almost like relief, as if he were saying:
Look.
This time, I saved you first.
“Dominic!”
Adrian was the first to react. Still holding me as I trembled, he shouted to the bodyguards and hotel security rushing toward us.
“Call an ambulance. Now.”
Everything dissolved into chaos.
I looked at the motionless figure lying in a pool of blood. My face went pale, and my body trembled beyond my control.
Even if I no longer loved him, even if there had been too much resentment between us, a living person might die in front of me because he had saved me.
No one could face that and remain completely calm.
Adrian felt me shaking and held me tighter. His warm palm moved gently over my back, his voice low and steady.
“Don’t be afraid, Bella. It’s okay. The ambulance is coming. It’ll be okay.”
His voice was like a wall I could lean against.
The emergency room lights stayed on all night.
Adrian and I waited on the bench outside.
He held my hand the entire time, silently lending me strength. I leaned back against the chair and closed my eyes, though the faint trembling of my lashes betrayed how unsettled I was.
At dawn, the emergency room doors finally opened.
The surgeon came out exhausted and told us Dominic’s injuries were severe: multiple fractures, internal bleeding. But after emergency treatment, he was temporarily out of immediate danger and had been transferred to ICU for observation.
He was not fully stable yet.
I breathed out, but my heart remained heavy.
After another day and night outside the ICU, Dominic’s vital signs gradually stabilized. He was moved to a private room, though he remained extremely weak.
Adrian went in with me to see him.
The room smelled of disinfectant.
Dominic lay in a white hospital bed, tubes connected to him, his face almost translucent with pallor. He had grown terribly thin. Only his deep eyes lit faintly the moment he saw me, like a drowning man catching sight of driftwood.
His lips moved.
“Bella…”
Adrian patted my shoulder, silently telling me he would wait outside. Then he considerately closed the door, leaving us alone.
I walked to the bed and sat in the chair beside it.
“The surgeon says you’re safe for now,” I said evenly.
Dominic looked at my face as if he wanted to carve it into his soul.
With difficulty, he lifted the hand that was not attached to an IV, as if to touch me. But when he saw the clear distance in my eyes, his hand fell weakly back down.
“I’m sorry.”
His voice was hoarse and full of regret.
“Bella, I’m sorry. I know no matter how many times I say it, it can’t make up for what I did to you.”
He began to speak in broken fragments, as if emptying out everything he had held in for too long.
How Sophia had deceived him.
How he later realized his feelings but refused to admit them because of pride and stubbornness.
How losing me had filled him with pain and regret.
He apologized again and again.
Confessed his love again and again.
He even laid down every scrap of dignity and begged.
“Bella, I know I don’t deserve you. I know I deserve worse than this. But please, give me one more chance. Just one. Let me spend the rest of my life making it up to you. Let me atone. Without you, being alive is no different from being dead.”
As he spoke, tears slid from the corners of his eyes and disappeared into the white hair at his temples.
I listened quietly.
I did not interrupt.
Only when he grew exhausted, when his voice faded into heavy breathing and desperate expectation, did I finally speak.
My voice was soft, but every word was clear.
Like a precise scalpel, it cut open everything that had once existed between us.
“Dominic, thank you.”
“Thank you for saving me this time.”
“I will remember that you saved my life.”
Hope flickered in his eyes.
Then my next words extinguished it.
“But love is not gratitude. And it is not guilt.”
“It was over between us long ago.”
“It ended when you broke my wrist for Sophia without hesitation. When you used your connections to have me locked away and left me to suffer. When, again and again, you chose to believe her and hurt me.”
“The wound is too deep to mend.”
“My heart died a long time ago.”
I watched the light in his eyes fade little by little until only silence remained.
Then I said calmly, “Dominic, let’s leave it here.”