HIDDEN

Chapter Eight

A gentle breeze blew through the windows, lightly rustling the curtains. Mia opened her eyes and blinked at the sun rays streaming through the opened windows. She narrowed her eyes as she gazed outside through the opened windows and she wondered if it was dusk or dawn. She had no idea how many hours that she had been sleeping for. The last thing that she remembered before she blacked out was that she wasn’t in this room for sure, she had been in a smaller room with a very powerful naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling as the only source of light. Mia remembered the beeping sound of the heart monitor and she looked at her right hand at the mark of the IV needle where it had been inserted in her vein. She closed her eyes trying to paint the picture of the place that she was previously in.

Was I in a hospital? But why? I remember there was a nurse … the old man and the pain, it was unbearable …I couldn’t move my body… I was panicking because of something or maybe it was because of someone…Mia said to herself and she tried to pull herself to a sitting position but her whole body was aching as if she had pins and needles all over. She didn’t have a choice but to remain in the lying on her back position.

“ Where am I?”, Mia softly asked still focusing on the opened windows.

“ You are at home ma’am ”, someone answered her question and she was startled by the presence of someone else in the room.

The nurse who was attending to her earlier was actually sitting on the left side of the bed close to a dressing table. The middle-aged woman was dressed in her white uniform and she looked at her with a bright smile.

“ It’s nice to see that you are finally awake ”, the nurse said and she stood up and walked towards the bed.

Mia wasn’t at ease, she couldn’t remember anything apart from the fact that yesterday she was in a hospital, now she is in this beautiful bedroom and had just been informed that this was her home. The nurse reached out to touch her forehead and Mia squeezed her eyes shut. For some reason, she was anxious to have this unknown person in the room with her. She didn’t know what had happened to her and why she couldn’t remember anything about herself. She glanced around the room, at least she would have remembered her bedroom, where she usually sleeps if this was indeed her home, but nothing made sense to her dazed mind. With her eyes still shut she fought her way back into her mind, trying to dig somewhere in that darkness that surrounded her hoping to find some sort of light, anything that could make her feel better. Then a face appeared, the face of that handsome man who had been in her room yesterday attending to her. Who was he? Where is he? She asked herself, for some reason even though she had only met him yesterday, he was the only one who could calm her down and his presence made her feel relaxed.

Or maybe you know him, but have forgotten who he was…she said to herself.

“ You don’t have any fever ma’am. I’ll get you something to eat. You haven’t had anything to eat since last night. You need to get your strength back in order for you to get out of that bed ”, the nurse said with a soft smile and she walked out of the room.

Mia didn’t answer, she was wondering if she should eat or drink anything given to her by that woman. Even if she was wearing a nurse’s uniform, she didn’t trust her. As long as she doesn’t know what really happened to her and who she was and where she was, she didn’t trust anyone around her. Memory loss can be very emotional and frustrating especially when you have absolutely no clue what your life was like, you just exist because you are still breathing. A body without a past, wondering about in this absolutely crazy world without any knowledge of who you really are. Mia wished her memories were recorded like a videotape and tucked away somewhere inside her brain and all she had to do is just press replay and everything will come back to her. But unfortunately, that was impossible. She glanced over to her left and noticed the brown bandage around her shoulder and she finally realized that’s why the left side of her body was sorer than her right side. She slowly lifted her right hand and gently touched the bandage and she winced in pain.

“ You shouldn’t be touching that”, someone said and this time it was the voice of a man.

She turned her gaze towards the person standing in the doorway and she automatically smiled when she saw who it was.

“ You are here!”, she softly said with an excited smile.

“ Of course, where else will I be. This is my home”, Luca answered.

“ Your home!?”, Mia asked with narrowed eyebrows.

Please don’t tell me that I’m related to him, that I’m his little sister or one of his cousins …Mia said to herself and she suddenly felt this sudden pinch of sadness as she looked at him wishing that she could remember something about him.

“ Yes… This is my home and you are my…”, Luca was saying and Mia closed her eyes, she wished that she could cover her ears with both hands to stop herself from hearing that this guy was her brother, or cousin and then she heard him mentioned the word Wife. The word echoed through her mind, she slowly opened her eyes and looked at him with wide eyes.

“ Did you just say wife or I’m imagining things?”, she asked.

Luca had to laugh because of the way she was staring at him with wide eyes and an excited face like it’s the best news she had received in her life. Mia looked at her husband laughing and she smiled. He was even more handsome when he was laughing. She was thinking that probably she had fallen for him at first glance. She paused the image of him standing there a few meters away from the bed, she took her time to admire him. She noticed his tiny dimple in his left cheek. It added another sexy feature to his strong and defined face like he was sculpted by a skillful sculptor. She wished that she could run her fingers through his long messy curls but all she had to do was sigh with a soft smile, she felt like a teenager who had just run into her crush.

Luca turned and looked at his “ wife”, she looked at him with those radiant brown eyes and it seemed like they were telling him “ I love the fact of being your wife” and that made him quickly stop smiling as he remembered who she was. She might have forgotten who she was but not him. Mia saw his calmed face turned into a serious one. She was surprised by his sudden change of attitude, he was no longer looking at her with those gunmetal blue eyes filled with coolness instead she noticed a hint of anger or annoyance on his face. She couldn’t really understand what had happened and that made her wondered what was their love story like. Were they really in love? Or they had issues and now he felt obliged to stay by her side because of whatever had happened to her. Mia wished she could remember something about her husband, remember how he was towards her, how they were together. Her eyes lingered on his lips.

How did he kiss me? How did he make love to me… where did we make love, in this bed… how long have we been married for … how did he propose… So many things went around in her mind and she felt like throwing up as the whole room suddenly seemed to be going around like those thoughts in her mind. Luca noticed that she wasn’t feeling well and he quickly walked to her bedside. He was going to attend to her like a Doctor will attend to a patient, not like a husband will attend to his “loving wife”. He gently pulled her to a sitting position, he sat on the edge of her bed next to her and gave her a few sips of water from the glass on the bedside table. He placed the glass down and looked at Mia.

“ I don’t feel well. I want to throw up… I can’t breath…”, Mia anxiously said looking at Luca. She didn’t care that her body was sore, she forced herself to lift her right arm and wrapped it around Luca’s neck and laid her head on his shoulder and she closed her eyes. Somehow she started to feel better just by being close to this man who calls himself her husband. Luca was surprised with her sudden move, he quickly lifted his hand to pull her away from him but then he remembered that he has to earn her trust, he couldn’t push her away every time she will get close to him. Luca couldn’t give her a hint that he was not into her, he has to play that game of pretending until he gets the answers to not only his father’s issues but also answers to his own investigations. Every time that she was this close to him, he just had to pretend that she was someone else than the daughter of Elena Conti.

But he had to admit, when he had looked through the file that his father had given him about Mia Conti, he had found her to be quite an interesting woman. She wasn’t like any other of the other girls that he had been involved with, but yet again he didn’t get to know them for long to find out who they really were. Mia was an attorney at law who had been trained in the Indonesian martial art Silat. Luca had wondered amongst all of the other martial arts why did she choose this specific one and who taught her one of the deadliest forms of martial art in the world?

Probably they needed her to study one of the most dangerous forms of martial art so that she could one day work with them, Luca said to himself as he glanced down at her face resting on his shoulder. He always had  to be one step ahead of his enemies, he always made sure that he knew as much as he could about them.

Luca stared at her pale face, and he remembered the pictures of her in the file. Mia Conti was an absolutely beautiful woman… well at least on the outside. He didn’t really know her that well to say otherwise, the only time he had spoken to her, she had left a sour taste in his mouth.

“ What happened to me? Why can’t I remember anything except for last night”, Mia asked with her head leaning on his shoulder.

Luca felt the sadness in her voice. He couldn’t understand what she was going through since he had never experienced that himself but he had an idea of how much of an emotional agony it was to lose your memory. He had attended a few cases whereby patients had woken up from a coma and forgetting everything. The pain on their face about waking up and not even remembering that they once had life is something that he could never forget. He sympathized with them but he couldn’t bring himself to feel the same way towards Mia. Losing her memory was somehow a way for them to keep her closer, to use it in their advantage to learn about the whereabouts of those documents. Now the only thing they will have to find out is, how long will be she be like that. They will have to investigate with the help of a Neurologist regarding how far does she remember and what type of amnesia was she suffering from. His preliminary diagnosis was that Mia could be suffering from Dissociative amnesia, a form of amnesia often linked to overwhelming stress from issues such as abuses or even accidents. The person could have witnessed or experienced an accident causing that person to be traumatized to the point of not remembering important information about his or her life and even making them forget their identity. But he wasn’t a Neurologist to give a proper diagnosis.

“ Are you listening to me? You didn’t even answer”, Mia said and she raised her head to look at him. Her brown eyes boring into his, their faces inches apart. Her eyes slowly moved to his lips and she was tempted to kiss her husband. Luca could see what was happening and he surely didn’t want to kiss her but how will he get out of this.

“ I’m sorry”, he heard someone said from behind him and he nearly breathed a sigh of relief. He slowly removed Mia’s arm from around his neck and quickly stood up.

“Please attend to her”, he said to the nurse and hurried out of the bedroom.

Luca had to hurry out of the bedroom before Mia could say something to try and stop him from leaving. He walked out on the balcony of the two-story villa and stared at the lake as the last rays of sun said goodbye. In the end, his father had proposed that he and his “ wife” should stay at the villa close to the lake. It was a place that little amount of people knew about its existence, even Lorenzo’s family didn’t know that he owned this place. Luca had said that he didn’t need any bodyguards and the only man allowed to come up to the house apart from his father was Mustafa. He didn’t want his father’s bodyguards to know about the whereabouts of Mia. That was one of his terms followed by a longer list of the way he wanted things to be and one thing he wasn’t sharing was a room with Mia. He will sleep in the guest bedroom downstairs using the excuse of her injury and the fact that she has a nurse to attend to her needs. Luca had also stated that one of his terms was that he will spend one week here and one week in his own house. It was only day one and he was suffocating with her presence, he wondered how he will deal with the other days to come.