"It's you and me. Together," he says. "Us against the world."
*****
All my life, I've never trusted men. The image of them planted in my head is the figure of my abusive stepfather who has made my mother and I live in hell.
But then, an encounter w...
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My eyelids flicker. I try to open my eyes, but the blinding light makes me wince.
Slowly, I open them again, and this time, I still see white and nothing else. But then, my vision gradually becomes clearer.
It's a white ceiling.
My gaze travels around the surrounding, rays of sunlight coming through the window. I'm in a hospital room.
I'm still alive.
"Lais," a hoarse voice of a woman makes me turn my head, and I find Veronica sitting beside my bed, staring at me with teary eyes. "You're awake." She breaks into a smile. "How are you feeling, sweetheart?"
I'm still trying to absorb what's happening. Did I survive?
The last thing I remember is that Tuck was throttling me on the floor and that I was struggling to breathe, to live.
The image of Jake beaten to death suddenly flashes back in my mind, and I abruptly sit up on the bed even though it causes my head to pulse with sharp pain.
"Where's Jake?" I stutter, panic engulfing me.
A sad smile touches Veronica's lips before she bursts into tears.
No. No. No. This can't be true. Please, tell me that your son is alive too.
"He's in another room," Veronica whispers.
Thank God.
"How is he?" the words slip out of my lips, even when I didn't remember moving them.
Veronica still has sadness skating all over her face, and that makes me more restless.
"He has stabilized," she says. "His condition is really bad, but," she pauses, nodding at me. "But he survived too."
Tears pool in my eyes. His condition must be far worse than I am. He has got beaten by three men endlessly.
"When I called you again, I never thought that it would reach you, but it did," she says. "The police tracked your location in an instant and ordered the units in that respective area to ambush the place immediately."
What about Tuck?
As if knowing the question in my head, she continues, "The police caught Tuck and his friends while they were going to kill both of you, just in time." The rage in her voice as she talks about Tuck makes me shudder. "We will make sure that they will get the highest punishment. My husband has been tightly monitoring this process. Tuck and his friends have planned premeditated murders, not to mention that they're involved in drugs. It's going to be really easy for us to bring them down."
I sigh in relief. Finally, I can breathe freely. There's no way that Tuck can hurt us again.
"Now that they're caught, the police can also track all of their drug deals and underground movements," she adds. "The police will banish all of it, catching all of the people involved. We're keeping the world safe from people like them."
