His Mafia Prince
Chapter 73: Eyes Shut

I hear noises of monitors beeping and what seems like the voices of doctors consulting each other from afar. It dawns on me that I’m in a hospital. My eyes flutter open and the first thing I feel is disappointment.

Extreme disappointment.,

I don’t want to be alive.

I don’t want to be in a fucking hospital.,

I wanted to be dead. Dead people don’t have to deal with humiliation after humiliation.,

The nurses ask questions. The doctors ask questions and so do the police. Everyone keeps asking me questions and the answer I give them is the same. Silence.

Sasha always tells me to just listen to him and do what he asks. But I have never trusted him enough to do that. I was afraid of when his brother finally decided to enlighten him about my little secret. I had to act fast. I didn’t stay put as he had expected me to. Now? It’s too late.

I have learnt my lesson, but now it’s too late.

"You have visitors. Do you want them to come see you now?" a nurse’s voice breaks me out of a trance. She sounds soft, mom-like.

Everyone has been sympathetic except for her. She is empathetic. She even chased the cop away when he wouldn’t stop asking me questions, bugging me over and over for any little detail that I remembered and if I wanted to press charges. He kept asking me to give him a little something that he could work with. I couldn’t.

The nurse made sure that I was warm, and covered in a pile of blankets and pillows to ease the pressure of my sore body. She was courteous enough to dim the lights, pull the shades and yell at the doctor to lower his voice.

Even now, she is crouched by the bed just so she can be at eye level with me. She isn’t standing over me like the doctors or Angelo and his goons did.

I bite my jaw hard and close my eyes instead of answering her. She is nice to me but I already made up my mind that I’m not going to say a word to anyone.

She gives up and I hear her scrubs rattle as she makes her way out. The door shuts behind her with a soft click.

I exhale shakily and open my eyes again to look at the silhouette of the city that I can see beneath the shade. It’s already nighttime. I must have been out for many hours. The ambulance brought me in unconscious, the doctors made sure to keep me unconscious and time passed. The world moved on like nothing happened. Yet I was suspended in that alley and death was denied to me. I was helpless and pathetic. Weak and powerless.

I couldn’t defend myself.

I couldn’t even die.

What’s the point of anything now?

Someone gasps on my side. I know it is Lucia without turning. I close my eyes again hoping that she goes away.

"Tyler?" I noticed then that it is Jericho because his mother had already started sobbing. "Are you awake?"

I don’t answer. I stay still. I can’t move even if I wanted to. The drugs they had pushed into my system earlier made me a slug. I’m just a lump of existing flesh. Just like I was when Angelo fed me drugs at that rundown motel.

"Look what they did to him." Lucia sobs. "What kind of people do this?"

"He’s alive," Jericho says. "That’s the most important thing now."

It baffles me how they’re just speaking about me like I’m not even here. Then again, No. Whatever they say isn’t the most important thing, but I’m not going to argue.

"Come on," Lucia says with a shaky voice. "Let’s go get something to eat. We can get some flowers and a few stuff on our way back. Maybe he’ll be awake by the time we’re back."

"Okay," Jericho says. I hear his mother’s footsteps by the side of the bed. I hold my breath when she leans over and kisses the side of my head. It takes me all the willpower to not flinch.

Seconds later, her sniffing and Jericho’s squeaking shoes disappear.

I open my eyes again and I watch the lights pop on the tall buildings across the way. The sky behind the building is a haze of orange and purple.

A shadow shifts in the corner, blocking my view of the silhouette until it looms over me completely.

"Baby"

It is Sasha. Fuck. Even if I just saw his shoe from where I’m lying, I’d recognize the deep rumble in his voice from anywhere. It’s now too late to pretend to be asleep. I’m certain that he already saw me. I don’t have to look at him anyway. I don’t have to talk. At least I still have those two things under control. The only things I can control.

He lowers on the side rail and goes down on one knee next to the bed. He reaches for my hand but I pull it away and hide it beneath the sheets.

"T...Tyler," his voice cracks.

I almost cave but I force myself to be strong, even just this once. My gaze is stuck where I’m looking as I try to minimize the sadness I see in the distance. This is just another reason why I should be dead. A man of such status and strength as Sasha on his knees and on the verge of tears because of me? For me? It makes me sick to see what I’ve reduced him to.

I don’t deserve his sympathy. I deserve his anger. I didn’t listen to him. I didn’t trust him. How many times had he tried to talk me down?"

"Talk to me, baby. Please." He urges me softly.

I swallow hard and cement my tongue on top of my mouth.

"Who did this? Do you know them?"

I wish I didn’t. God. I wish I didn’t. The fact that I know one of them and remember their faces makes me more miserable. I wish I didn’t remember their faces. I wish Angelo was a faceless one that I could forget, but no. I remember them vividly. I recognize the two alphas but I know Angelo. The lunatic who drugged me, left me to die only to come back to finish the job when he realized I survived and ruined his chances at being head of the syndicate.

"Was it Kasi? The guy who left with Angelo at the funeral?"

That was one of them. But I can’t find it in myself to talk. I remain quiet.

"Was it Avi?" he asks again. I have no idea who that is.

"Tyler, look at me." He snarls, barely masking the tension in his voice. His fingers dig in the sheets so hard that I’m almost certain he’s going to rip it apart. "I said look at me."

Even with him demanding, I still refuse to look at him. It is already bad enough to hear his voice break. I doubt that I can stand looking at him in the eye.

"Was it Angelo?" he sounds so desperate for answers just as much as I’m desperate for him to go away.

A tear flows freely at the corner of my eye and I squeeze them shut. I’m hoping that he didn’t see it and that I can stop my eyes from burning.

"Tyler, was it Angelo?"

When I remain silent for a few suspended seconds, he lowers his head to the side of my bed, trembling while breathing shakily.

He mumbles things in that language I don’t understand again like he’s praying or something. I don’t even care what the words mean anymore. I have no desire to know what he is rambling. I don’t want to know because it was the same language Angelo and his goons used while taking turns to batter me. The act was already humiliating enough.

Unable to control the embarrassment, more tears flow freely beneath my shut lids. I can’t stop them anymore. I can’t control anything when it comes to what these mafia goons decide to do with me or to me. So much for being the leader’s omega. What a crock of shit!

"I am going to kill them," Sasha says, lifting his head from the bed. "I’m going to kill every last one of them. I promise."