Sweetness. For a second, I felt something in my chest. It was an unfamiliar feeling. I had tried to decipher it before. The only known cause for this eruption in my chest was laid in front of me. Moretti.

A sudden knock on the door of his hospital room jarred my brain and I jerked up to an upright position. I had locked the door but the person outside must've had a key because not a second later, a man in a white coat walked in.

"You're the doctor, I presume," I said, acting like I totally wasn't kissing the lips of his heavily medicated patient.

He reached out to shake my hand. "I'm Dr. Patel." I grabbed his hand tightly and he pulled his back with a wince.

"I'm Psy-" I stopped myself. Probably not the best idea to call myself psycho in front of a medical professional. Was it a fitting name? Yes. But he didn't have to know any of that.

"Bella," I said with a nod towards him.

A look of recognition went through his eyes. "You're Bella?" I nodded yes, confused to why he asked.

"There's a young man who's just waken uo from surgery, he wishes to see you."

___

I opened the door slowly, cautious and confused as to who would want me to comfort them after surgery.

"Bella! How you been, Loca?" A cheery, yet still groggy voice welcomed me.

My eyes lifted into a smile unintentionally at the sight of the handsome, friendly face.

"Santiago." I walked over to his side, taking a seat in the cheap plastic chair sat by his bed.

"I would say you look better not covered in blood but that would be a lie coming from me," I smiled, evilly.

His face went to feigned shock. "Wow, you really can be scary, you know that?"

I laughed and so did he, but soon after my face fell serious when he winced from the pain.

Our gaze fell to his bandaged wounds.

He started to speak, "I don't know what happened." He rubbed his head full of black hair with his unwounded hand.

"Don't worry, I got rid of the old man who did this."

His head lifted hopefully, "So it's over?"

I shook my head and looked out the window of his room. "Far from it." There was still the man who hired hot tub guy, and he wanted Moretti dead. Very dead.

He looked down solemnly, "Well is he awake?"

I looked at him and he quickly found the answer in my eyes.

"Shit," He put his hand over his eyes this time, rubbing harder. He looked so distressed. "I-I couldn't save him." I could tell he felt the weight of all of this on his shoulders.

"Don't blame yourself," I said sternly. "It was not your fault, you did everything you could, Santiago." I tried to reassure him, which wasn't something I often did for people. But he was laying here looking like a fucking kicked puppy, and I had no choice.

"You don't understand," his voice cracked, "Moretti is like my brother."

He swallowed a gulp and I waited for him to continue.

"A-And this wasn't the first time." He looked guilty, his features creased and drawn in tightly.

"What do you mean? Moretti was shot before?" I racked my brain trying to remember if they had ever spoken of this event before. But nothing came up.

He lifted his hand. "No. No, not Moretti."

I lifted a brow, "Then who?"

He shifted in his bed with a sigh. "W-We were all three together, things had been so smooth for so long, we had let our guard down."

His voice got choked up once more and I could see regret filling his puppy dog eyes.

"I had told her to meet me outside, I was going to finally confess to her. We had all grown up around eachother our entire lives, and I had fallen for her. I had fallen for her like it was the easiest thing in the world." He looked back as if he remembered a fond memory.

"But she was a little late. I had grown impatient and went inside to find her. I searched for her everywhere in the house for the longest time." He gritted his teeth.

"Turns out she was in the garden the whole time. And when I found her, all that was left was a pool of her blood and a letter from the Russians wishing us well."

So they had killed her. "Santiago, it's not your faul-"

He cut me off gruffly. "It was my fault. Had I kept my fucking mouth shut and never told her how I felt, she would've slept safely in her bedroom at the end of the hall that night."

"How could you have predicted that?"

He didn't listen to me, too consumed by his emotions.

"I cannot fail the Moretti's again," he cried.

The Moretti's? This sparked a question in my mind.

"Santiago, who was this woman?" I asked carefully, making sure not to further cause him grief.

He barely lifted his head from his hands, small tears around his eyes.

"Natalia Moretti."

____

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