Antonio ( Underworld Mafia Romance 3)

He stops as he notices me removing my mask. The woman gives me a look of surprise as well.

I try to sit up again, but he stops me.

“You really shouldn’t be up yet,” he tells me. “Your ribs need more time to heal.”

I rest my head on the pillow. “Are they broken? How many?”

“Two,” he answers.

“Any other broken…” I cough, “…bones?”

He frowns. “You really shouldn’t talk yet. Your throat must still be sore from all the smoke.”

I realize it is. Smoke? So I was in a fire. That would explain the third degree burns on my leg. But not the headache. Or the memory loss.

“Here.” The woman offers me a glass of water with a straw.

I lift my head and take a few sips. The cool liquid soothes my parched throat.

“Thank you,” I tell her before turning my gaze back to her husband. “Please… tell me what happened.”

For a moment, he just stares at me. Then his shoulders rise and fall as he lets out a sigh.

“Fine.” He drags a stool to my bedside and sits, then scratches the back of his head. “But first, let me introduce myself. I’m Dr. Mitch Woods. This is my wife, Abby Woods. She’s a nurse, too.”

“It’s good that you’re awake.” She gives me a smile for the first time. Gentle. Comforting. “What is your name?”

I open my mouth to answer but nothing comes out.

What? Did I think it would just come to me?

“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. “I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything about me.”

Worry creases her features. Her husband takes out a penlight from his pocket and shines it into my eyes to inspect my pupils. Then he turns it off.

“Follow my finger please.” He moves his finger back and forth.

My eyes follow it.

“No sign of serious brain damage as far as I can tell,” he says as he puts his finger down.

I know. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to think coherently. Or talk. Or be awake at all.

“But maybe you’ve lost your memories because of the blow to your head,” he explains. “You really don’t remember anything?”

I shake my head.

“Not even your name?” Abby asks. She looks even more worried now.

“No.”

She grabs something from the table by the door – a leather necklace with a silver pendant in the shape of an ‘A’.

“Maybe this will help,” she says as she places it between my fingers.

I stare at it with furrowed eyebrows. “Is this… mine?”

“You were wearing it,” Mitch answers. “Abby took it off when she was washing you. Does it look familiar?”

I can’t say it does. If I was wearing it, though, then it must be mine. And the ‘A’ is probably the first letter of my name.

A name that starts with an A. Adam? Aaron? Alfred?

As I run my thumb over the pendant, I feel the grooves etched on its back. I turn it over and take a closer look.

“Antonio,” I read the engraving in a whisper.

“What?” Abby asks.

“Antonio,” I repeat in a louder voice. “That’s probably my name because that’s what it says here.”

Abby takes the necklace and examines the pendant. Mitch peers over her shoulder and lifts his glasses.

“You’re right,” he says. “It does say ‘Antonio’.”

I guess that’s my name.

“Does it ring a bell?” Mitch asks me. “Or make you remember anything else?”

I shake my head. “Unfortunately, no.”

“What about the fire?” Mitch asks as he sits down. “Do you remember it?”

Again, I shake my head. “Is that what happened? I was rescued from a fire?”

“It seems so,” Mitch answers. “Though I’m afraid we don’t know the details either. You were brought here by a woman, a stranger.”

A woman?

“She’s gone now. She just showed up, asked if I was a doctor and told me to take care of you. I was so busy tending to your injuries I didn’t ask her a lot of questions. I didn’t even get her name. The next thing I knew she’d disappeared.”

Abby nods. “I’d say she was in her thirties. Blonde. She wore a black leather jacket. She had injuries, too, but she insisted on treating them herself. I guess she left as soon as she’d done that.”

So she just rescued me and then left me here? Like the Good Samaritan from the Bible?

“So you don’t know who I am or what happened to me?” I ask the couple.

They both shake their heads.

“You weren’t carrying any ID,” Abby says.

“I know you probably got caught up in some explosion because I took out shards of metal and glass from your arms and legs,” Mitch says. “You must have been blown away and hit your head on a wall. You broke your ribs, too. And apparently some burning debris landed on your leg.”

I glance at my leg. “Is it worse than it looks?”

“I don’t think so,” Mitch answers. “There will be significant scarring, of course. I don’t do skin grafts. I would have brought you to a hospital for that but I hesitated because that woman didn’t. Maybe I should have.”