"I won't say anything." I promised.
Declan reacted like he'd heard the funniest joke and laughed, "How can I be sure you won't talk? If you do, Vanessa will abandon me immediately!" His eyes turned red.
"Only if you die can I feel at ease!" As he spoke, a razor blade slipped from his sleeve and slashed toward me.
I instinctively leaned back, I fell onto my father.
Declan didn't look frail at all, his fingers gripped the blade, ready to slit my throat.
Suddenly, a withered, pale hand clamped down on his wrist. I heard the monitors next to me explode with sound.
The doctor had said: when a patient is about to regain consciousness, the machines will make noise.
I whipped around in shock, "Dad?"
Though his eyes remained closed, his hand instinctively stopped Declan from harming me and he whispered, "Don't ... touch ... my ... son."
The sound of high heels approached. In a flash, Declan cut his fingertip with the blade and shoved it into my dad's hand.
Tears streamed from his eyes as he cried out, "Don't kill me!" The next second, he threw himself into Vanessa's arms.
He clutched her like a drowned man and whined, "Vanessa, his dad tried to kill me … I just heard he might wake up and I wanted to see him. Did I do something wrong?"
Declan's eyes were full of tears and a drop of blood at his fingertip ignited Vanessa's fury.
She grabbed my wrist and nearly crushed my jaw with one hand and said, "You were trying to kill Declan again, weren't you? I paid for your dad's treatment all these years and this is how you repay me?"
I shook my head desperately, "I didn't! It wasn't me …"
Vanessa's smile was like that of a demon from hell. She said, "Right, it wasn't you this time, it was your dad."
Panic surged inside me. I knelt at once and begged, "It wasn't my dad! He's in a vegetative state, he doesn't know anything! It was Declan who tried to kill me! It was him!"
Declan immediately refuted, "I didn't. Vanessa knows I faint at the sight of blood." He clutched his forehead.
Seeing that, Vanessa became even more convinced.
She spotted the blade in my dad's hand and gritted her teeth, "Fine. Very well …" She yanked out the ventilator from my dad.
"Beep …" The sound rang in my ears.
I lunged forward, I tried to reconnect the machine, but she kicked me to the ground. I begged her, "No! Vanessa, please, I'm begging you! Without the ventilator, my dad will die in one minute!"
"Hit me! Kill me if you want! Just please, don't hurt my dad!" I cried out.
Vanessa looked down at me with disdain and said, "Dying is too easy. Don't think I don't know, vegetative patients can last ten minutes without a ventilator. I'm just punishing you."
As she spoke, she ordered the hospital to cut power to the room for ten minutes.
Vanessa linked arms with Declan and glanced back at me while saying, "Tomorrow is my wedding night. Come back and warm the bed. If you don't, you'll see what happens."
I crawled to my dad's bed and tried to give him mouth-to-mouth. But it was useless.
Ten minutes later, the power returned. The moment I reconnected the ventilator, the heart monitor flatlined.
My dad was dead. The man who had endured everything like a dog under another's roof, he was gone.
I sat numbly by the bed, until I heard footsteps again. My tear-swollen eyes looked up.
Someone said to me, "Help me with something, will you?"
***
Maybe to prove something, Vanessa made the wedding even grander than in my previous life.
Even the tie clip on Declan's suit cost tens of millions, dazzled with brilliance.
As she entered the venue, Vanessa instinctively scanned the crowd but didn't see me at the designated spot.
It wasn't until the vows had ended and those ninety-eight "blind box" men she'd collected came up to toast one by one, that she finally asked, "Where's Allen?"
Number Twenty-Five thought for a moment and said, "You mean the Number One man? Haven't seen him."
Vanessa frowned in objection, "He has a name. He's not just 'Number One.'"
Number Twenty-Five nodded blankly, watched her walk away.
Suddenly she remembered, Jane was also technically my mother. So she circled half the venue to find Jane.
Jane was smiling while holding a phone, she said something to Mr. Shelby.
"Hi Jane, why haven't I seen Allen today?" Vanessa asked.
As soon as she said it, Jane and Bob exchanged a cryptic glance. A strange sense of dread tightened in Vanessa's chest.
The next second, she saw Jane raise her phone. In the faintly glowing screen, she saw something she would never forget.
