The beeping was the first thing she heard—slow, steady, and relentless. It drilled into her skull, sharp enough to make her wince, a rhythmic reminder that she was still alive even if she didn't want to be. Aria tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt like they were made of lead, pinned down by a weight she couldn't fight. Her body refused to respond, a disconnected mass of heavy limbs and static. Everything felt fundamentally wrong.
Then came the pain. Her head throbbed with a dull, sickening heat, and her throat burned as if she had swallowed glass. Her right leg felt distant, a cold ache that didn't seem to belong to her anymore. She tried to shift, but the tug of wires around her fingers pulled her back. Her breath hitched, shallow and panicked. Where am I? Light eventually forced its way into her vision, blinding and clinical, before settling into the stark reality of white walls and the suffocating, sterile scent of antiseptic. A hospital.
Fragments of the night began to stitch themselves together in jagged pieces. The roar of the rain. The blur of the speed. The slick, black road. The sudden, violent scream of metal on metal. Her fingers twitched weakly against the stiff hospital sheets as a shadow fell across the room. She didn't turn her head; she didn't have to. She knew that scent anywhere—expensive, familiar, and utterly suffocating. Silas.
He didn't rush to her side. He didn't call her name with a voice full of relief, and he certainly didn't reach out to touch her. Instead, he stood at the foot of the bed, his arms crossed as he surveyed her like a broken piece of office equipment that needed to be handled. "You really outdid yourself this time, Aria," he said, his voice flat and devoid of any warmth. He didn't even look at her face; he glanced at his watch as if her survival was an inconvenience to his schedule.
"Do you have any idea what kind of mess this has caused?" he continued, his tone hardening. "The press is already running stories. This is the last thing I needed before the merger." Aria slowly turned her head, her vision swaying until he finally came into focus. Something felt… off. She knew his face—she had memorized every line of it over five years—but the spark was gone. There was no warmth, no magnetic pull. Just a vast, cold distance that she couldn't bridge.
"I wasn't drinking," she managed to whisper, her voice sounding like sandpaper against her throat. Even weak, her words were steady. Silas barely blinked at her defense. "It doesn't matter," he snapped. "It's already been handled. Mechanical failure. My team took care of it." His team. His control. His perfect, polished solution to a messy human problem. He stepped closer, but his eyes remained like flint.
"I've paid for the best doctors," he said, already moving on to the next item on his checklist. "You'll recover. After that, you'll leave. I've arranged everything." Leave. Just like that. Aria watched him, her mind struggling to process the finality in his voice. For some reason, her chest didn't flare with the usual agonizing rejection. It just felt cold, like a fire that had been doused by a sudden flood.
"You're sending me away?" she asked, her voice hollow. Silas exhaled a short, frustrated breath, as if she were being intentionally difficult. "Don't make this harder than it needs to be. You've already caused enough problems." Problems.Her fingers curled instinctively against the sheets, the word stinging more than the physical injuries. Suddenly, his phone buzzed. He checked it immediately—his true priority.
"I have a meeting," he added, already turning toward the door without a second glance. "Don't complicate things, Aria." He didn't wait for her to respond, and he didn't look back. The door clicked shut with a finality that echoed through the silent room, leaving her alone with nothing but the steady, mocking beep of the heart monitor.
Aria stared at the ceiling, her breathing coming in uneven shudders. Something wasn't right. It wasn't just the physical pain or the empty void in her head. It was him. The way he spoke to her, the way he looked at her—as if she were a ghost he was tired of seeing. Like she didn't matter. Like she never had. As her eyes drifted shut, a memory clawed its way back to the surface, stronger than the rest.
She saw the rain pouring down again. She felt the metal crumple and the glass shatter against her skin. And then, she heard the footsteps. Slow. Unhurried. A man standing outside the burning wreck, simply watching. He wasn't reaching for the door. He wasn't calling for help. Her breath hitched in the quiet hospital room as she heard that voice again in her mind—low, calm, and terrifyingly cold. "It's done."
Her heart skipped a beat, the monitor spiking in a frantic rhythm. Done? Done what? Her fingers twitched, the memory slipping just out of reach as the darkness began to creep back in. But one thought remained, sharp and terrifyingly clear. That man hadn't come to save her. And somehow, in the depths of her soul, she knew—he had been standing there in the rain, waiting for her to die.