Page 73 of Indulgence
He was possibly going to kill me.
I fought back.
I beat him with an iron.
“Natalie!” My name echoed out in the hall. “Natalie!”
Matteo barreled into the room, shoving past the security guard in the doorway. His face was a mask of fear. He looked so frantic that I barely noted Adam behind him as my husband dropped down and pulled me into his arms. His eyes roved all over my face and down my body, taking in all my injuries.
A moment later, a flurry of people invaded the hallway. Police officers, EMTs, hotel management.
A thousand questions were thrown at me, yet all I could focus on was Gerard’s unconscious body being loaded onto a stretcher and wheeled out of the room followed by two police officers.
“Ma’am?” I heard someone say as he or she touched my arm.
My body recoiled from their touch as the room began to fade out. The sounds muted and my vision tunneled as I heard Matteo call my name.
It was as if the moment Gerard was no longer near me, my body and mind could relax. But with that, all the pain, fear, and anguish of the past twenty minutes rushed back in, and I shut down.
Everything went black.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Natalie
“She really gave him hell,” someone with a husky voice said. “She should be proud of herself. Fighting back takes so much courage.”
Matteo’s reply was garbled to my ears, but his voice was clearly identifiable.
“We’ll swing back in a few hours,” the other person told him. “Hopefully, she’ll be awake and feel up to giving a statement. Then you guys can head back to Washington.”
Flashes of my time with Gerard in the hotel room assaulted me in rapid secession. The beeping from something beside me started blaring rapidly.
“Natalie?” Matteo said from my side. When I attempted to turn my head toward him, I was met with sharp pain everywhere. “Natalie, can you hear me?”
I blinked my eyes open as people rushed into the room. A bright light was shined in my eyes one by one as I voice my displeasure with it.
“Natalie,” a strong feminine voice called to me. “I’m Dr. Kurtz. Can you hear me?”
A mangled mashup of sounds left my mouth as I continued to fight the light trying to blind me. Hadn’t I been through enough?
Fingers entwined with mine at my side. “It’s okay, love. You’re safe now.”
The beeping slowed, and the light turned off. I blinked my eyes slowly open.
“Welcome back,” Dr. Kurtz said. “You’ve been asleep for a few hours. That’s nothing to be too concerned about after all you’ve been through. How do you feel?”
In the ten minutes that followed, I learned the extent of my injuries.
It took five stitches to close the gash in my forehead. I had a small hairline fracture in my cheekbone, which should heal on its own. I hadn’t seen the swelling so much as felt it, but she assured me that the swelling would go down after a few days. My ankle had been dislocated, and I had one broken rib. My nose also had to be reset.
When the doctor left the room, Matt twisted his fingers through mine. “I need to ask you something, love.”
With slowness and precision, I turned my head toward him, trying not to upset the dull ache lingering in the back of my skull. He shifted forward and pressed his lips against my knuckles. “What about the kinds of things we can’t see?”
My heart thudded. I knew what he was asking, and I didn’t want to think about Gerard’s filthy hands touching where he wasn’t welcome. My voice was horse and strained. “He—” I cleared my throat. “He touched me.” I swallowed down the bile rising from my gut. “He bit me.” I shuttered thinking and the white-hot pain I felt when he sunk his teeth into my breast. My body started to shake involuntarily.
Matt stood from his chair and sat on the bed, trying to pull my battered body into his. I scooted to the side as far as I could to give Matt enough room to lie next to me and pull me into him. I didn’t care how much I hurt. I needed his comfort as the tears began to leak from my eyes.
