If Only She Knew

34. The Last Night of Love...

Present time, London...

Ariana woke up feeling the soft texture of a bed underneath. She woke up suddenly and her brain did the catch up of what had happened before in a few seconds, and she saw it all in her mind like they say it happens right after you die...

Her right hand was sprawled across the sheets and she soon found she couldn't do much to move it since it was handcuffed to a side barrow. Her ankles were immobilized, too.

She took a few spasmodic breaths. Was this only a nightmare?

She was chained like an animal and there was a IV catheter in her left hand, connected to an IV fluid container. What where they feeding her?

She originally wanted to pull it out of her hand with her teeth but a mirror directly in front of her bed stopped her.

Her hair looked wild, unkempt, and with the white gown and her angry face, she looked like a savage. Like a terrible, insane person.

She still wanted to get that catheter out, though. It was a sign of her newfound slavery, and she needed out. So what she did next was rolling on her side, trying to get her right hand to reach the catheter.

"Argh, shit." It was no use. Those who did that were ahead of her with one step.

And one was enough.

"Glad to see you're finally awake, miss Johnson." A blonde nurse entered the room, surveying Ariana with big, condescending eyes. Ariana was startled.

"Wish I'd had woken up sooner... Why am I here?" Ariana asked the nurse, her voice cracking on the edges. She had a phobia of doctors and hospitals and like the last time she was in a hospital, after being left for dead in the snow last winter, she was wavering.

The nurse sported effortlessly a straight, rectus smile.

"This isn't a regular hospital. You are interned in a psychiatric ward for now, due to being a prime suspect of a 1st degree murder spree, also diagnosed with chronic amnesia."

The woman scribbled something on her clipboard, not failing to catch Ariana's shocked face, blurry, from the corner of her eyes.

"Prime suspect? Me?" Ariana wanted to laugh. Everyone, absolutely everyone had been a suspect for the Big Bucharest, VELLA and all the interconnected murders attributed to the one, faceless serial killer that had haunted UK in the last two years.

A few times they had arrested innocent persons. Webster Robinson, innocent, killed himself in prison while his wife, Alina Petrova, also innocent, who was rumored to have killed him ten years ago, is still waiting for her trial.

Somehow, the killer betrayed Ariana.

He used her, made her ruin her own family, the Johnson's Electronics company after making her believe it was evil, and then crucified her in the end... After he killed her father.

"I swear, whatever evidence you found on me, I'm being framed," Ariana spoke while her breath and heart rate started going wilder, and watched the nurse nod vainlessly. She didn't believe her. "It's no secret that a few months ago I was talking to the real killer through SMS messages. It's no secret that I- I helped bring my family company down! It was on the fucking news!" Ariana shouted at the nurse.

The nurse frowned, bringing her hands up as she turned around.

"Bring that up in a court of law, not here-"

"It's, oh, so obvious I'm being framed! Why would I kill my own father?!" Ariana's voice trembled and she was scratching the comforter continuously. "I know you don't have anything to do with it, sorry I screamed at you..." she then added, softly, as she took a breath.