Chapter 6 - The Sleeping Beauty
The fourth floor was silent, lit only by dim blue emergency lights. The floor smelled faintly of lavender and sterile saline.
Lorenzo kicked open the heavy steel door marked 402.
Inside, the room was soft, carpeted, and surrounded by large reinforced glass windows overlooking the stormy forest outside. In the center of the room sat a hospital bed draped in white linen.
Monitoring machines hummed softly beside it. And lying in that bed, her long chestnut hair spread over the pillows like dark silk, was Isabella.
Lorenzo stopped in his tracks. The rifle slipped from his fingers, clattering loudly against the carpet.
She looked small. So painfully thin. Her skin was as pale as porcelain, her lips barely tinted with pink, her fragile wrist connected to an IV drip pumping clear liquid into her veins. But she was breathing. The steady, rhythmic rise and fall of her chest was the most beautiful sight Lorenzo had ever witnessed in his life.
"Isabella..." he whispered.
He moved to her bedside as if walking on thin ice, terrified that if he moved too fast, she would dissolve into smoke—another cruel trick of his grieving mind.
He sank onto his knees beside her bed. He took her cold, thin hand into his broad, warm palms, lifting it to his lips and pressing his mouth against her knuckles, weeping silently.
"I'm here," he sobbed into her blanket. "I'm here, my love. I found you."
Isabella’s long dark eyelashes fluttered weakly. The neuro-inhibitor drugs had slowed her reactions, but the familiar sound of his deep, resonant voice seemed to tear through the fog in her mind.
Slowly, painfully, her eyelids opened.
Her chestnut eyes—the candlelight eyes from the portrait—focused on his face. Tears immediately began to pool in the corners of her eyes, slipping down her pale cheeks.
"Lo... Lorenzo?" her voice was a fragile, papery whisper, so faint the storm outside nearly swallowed it.
"Yes, baby. It's me," Lorenzo choked out, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry it took me so long."
"Our... our baby..." Isabella sobbed weakly, her hand trying to squeeze his fingers. "Lorenzo... the car... they took her... they took our little girl..."
Lorenzo let out a broken laugh, kissing her face over and over again—her cheeks, her eyes, her nose, her lips.
"She's alive, Isabella!" Lorenzo laughed through his tears, wiping her tears away with his thumb. "She's alive! She's downstairs right now! They didn't kill her! Our baby girl is waiting for you!"
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Isabella’s breath caught in her throat. Her heart monitor spiked, beep-beep-beeping rapidly as shock and overwhelming joy flooded her weakened system. "She's... she's breathing? My baby is alive?"
"Yes," Lorenzo promised, lifting her frail body into his massive arms, holding her close to his chest where she belonged. "And no one will ever separate us again. I'm taking you home."
