Chapter

Rosette had never liked visiting hospitals. She did not remember when this dislike started, was it after her mom died or just the childhood memories of needles and bitter medicines? The smell of death and disinfectants repulsed her.

She was having a hard time keeping her breakfast down. "1720.. 1720..20" she mumbled as she navigated the white corridors trying to find Libelle's room.

1719 came into view and just a door ahead was 1720. She knocked once before clicking open the latch.

"Peach I'm here." She said as her eyes landed on the girl sitting on the bed with her leg in a cast.

"Rosy!" Belle called, "I thought you were so mad that you won't come." Her eyes were puffy with crying.

Rose raised the box of chocolate covered strawberries and smiled, "I'm not that cruel."

She took off her coat as she gave the box to Libelle and sat on the chair beside the bed.

Libelle had already opened the box and popped one of the strawberries in her mouth. Rose pressed her palms to Belle's face and raised it to face her,

"Let me take a look first." She said as she examined her stuffed face.

"I'm all good." She mumbled. Indeed she was, except for a red swelling on her cheek bone, everything seemed fine.

Rose brushed a careful finger on the bruise, "Tell me what happened exactly." She ordered her.

Rose was hardly ever impolite but she wasn't the one who would tolerate Belle hurting herself due to her stupidity.

Belle had been one of those fiery kids in school. Detention was a habit for her. Her hobbies were as much of a trouble as she was, the girl who played soccer in a skirt just to piss the pt teachers off and the girl who put glue on the teachers chair only to get caught.

And here she was sniffling like everytime. No matter how much trouble she made, she could never bear Rose's anger. All the rivers came splashing down from those round eyes.

She rubbed her nose with the back of her hands and started to explain her guilt, not that she felt guilty.

"Someone asked me if I wanted to go see bike racing and I agreed but at the last moment he called it off so I went alone.. I was planning to sit around silently but this girl came out of nowhere and said I was checking out her boyfriend..." she stopped and looked down.

"And?" Rosette prodded her cheek with a finger.

"He looked like an overboiled cabbage with tattoos" she protested, "plus he was eyeing me the whole time and I even tried telling her that but that dumb bi—," she was about to curse but cleverly changed it "-scuit, pulled my hair, so I umm.. might've given her a smacking or two."

Rose sighed and ruffled her open hair,

"Who did you make this plan with?" She asked.

"With..." She trailed off.

"With Rowan, right?" Rose said smiling mockingly.

"How did you know?" she asked, her eyes widening to the size of baseballs.

"Who else will dare take your troubling ass to a bike race." She answered.

"Right." Belle nodded her agreement. "I agreed to go with him but then he bailed out on me for some girl. I'm PISSED." She fumed stuffing another strawberry into her face.

"You like him, don't you?" Rose smiled while picking out a strawberry for herself.

Belle choked on the strawberry, and coughed,

"How did you.." she managed to ask, her ears red hot,

Rose held back her laugh as she pulled her ear lightly,

"Oh darling, everybody sees how you look at him."

Belle opened her mouth to say something but just then a knock sounded on the door,

"Come in." Rose said.

The door swung open so violently that it seemed impossible to not have broken its hinges. A panting and sweating Rowan came into view.

"YOU BROKE YOUR LEG?!" he asked loudly.

"Who in the world told you?!" she snapped back.

"Your insta story dumbass." He raised his phone in his hand, gesturing to it.

"Okay, okay cool down." Rosette tried intervening.

"Cool down? she broke her leg Rose!" his eyebrows crèche together in tension.

"You cant change what has happened by yelling, can you?" Rose said picking up another strawberry. She knew better than anyone what a hotheaded person Rowan was.

These two fought like dogs but at the end of the day, still clung to each other like lost puppies. 'Reliable enemies' that's what they called each other.

His eyes went back to Libelle's plaster, he groaned pressing his fingers to his temples, "Why would you go there without me?" he asked.

"Because I wanted to go alone." She said dramtically smiling.

Rowan raised an eyebrow, "What?"

"It was because you dropped out at the last minute scumbag!" she yelled back.

Cold silence engulfed the room as both of them threw nuclear bombs with their glaring gazes.

Rose who had been enjoying a real life drama, cleared her throat, "I'll go see the bills." She said wearing her coat and picking up her purse.

"Just don't kill each other." She threw a smile at them before stepping out and shutting the door behind her.

'Who's gonna tell them.' she thought, before walking off.

She took out her phone from her pocket and opened Katy's texts. She had asked her about birth control. Katy had texted her both an emergency dose and a daily dose.

Rose was considering which one to take when she turned a corner and bumped into someone.

It was a light bump but the person, a patient, stumbled backwards. The nurse by his side quickly grabbed on to him and steadied him but his crutch fell down. Rose swiftly picked it up and handed it over to the nurses outstretched hand.

She finally looked up and met his gaze, an apology at the tip of her tongue, when she saw those eyes. Those terrible blue eyes.

Jacob. she could never forget that face for it still haunted her in her worst nightmares but this Jacob looked different.

His left leg was plastered and his face was put together by bandages. A support belt around his chest with crutches supporting him below his shoulders. He looked haggard and beaten up with his face a red and purple mess and his dirty blond hair swept up greasily.

"Fancy meeting you here." He said, that smirk still the same on his distorted face.

Rose froze for a second. She did not breathe. Her body felt like a stiff piece of lead.

"Breathe ma'am." The chubby nurse by his side said politely.

Rose blinked twice before stumbling back and taking a hard breath.

Jacob didn't move a finger, but his smirk grew wider, his face looked like a psychopaths.

"Don't you dare!" Rose warned, her breathing heavy. She was panicking.

"Oh no, I'm not stupid enough to lay another finger on the mafia's wife." He said.

"What bullshit are you going off about?" she asked, glad that her voice didn't come out shaky, "Did you hit your head as well?"

His jaw tensed and his lips curled inwards, "You think I hurt myself, huh?" his voice bitter and venomous, his eyes went crazy in their sockets, they looked dead but anger still showed clearly in them.

"It's none of my business" Rose said, ready to head off. She didn't like how this was going, she was scared no matter how much she comforted herself.

"This is your fucking business! Your husband did this to me." He made vague wrist movements as if getting a fit.

"Stop spewing nonsense when you're not in your right mind." She snapped back.

"You think you know him?" he smiled weirdly, "You don't! You fucking don't!! You don't even know how his parents ended up dead, do you?" He grinned psychotically. His nurse grabbed him by the arm and tried pulling him away, but since he was injured she couldn't use much force.

"You freak!!" she yelled back.

"You fell for the suit, Rose!! He's a murderer!! He tried killing me!!" he said, his eyes bulged out with anger. His nurse was struggling to make him shut up.

What was he talking about, Mafia? Murderer? Killing?

"He killed his own father, Rosette!!" he yelled and laughed rabidly at her, continuing in spine chilling tone, "Wait till he gets sick of you, pretty doll."

Hearing the commotion the hospital authorities came to the scene and started dragging him away, but he kept screaming and laughing hysterically on the top of his lungs,

"A MONSTER WRAPPED IN SILK IS STILL A MONSTER."

A nurse came by her side and shook her to see if she was fine. Rose was numb. The world around her had dissolved into nothingness. She did not notice the nurses or the commotion or the authorities asking her questions.

All she could hear was the frantic echoes of his screaming in the corridors. She felt nothing at all or maybe everything at once. All his words played like a loop in her head.

The nurses shook her violently to get her out of the slump. She just brushed off their hands and stared ahead as she started walking towards the pharmacy.

They wanted to call after her but she seemed fine walking by herself. She was far from fine, but the world was whiter and slower this way.

She refused to believe those words. She had been scared a little too long.

She felt weak. She wanted to collapse and scream lungs out to the moon, cry an ocean and slowly drown in it but she needed to walk. How much did she even know about the man she called husband?

.......................................