Sweet Downfall (37 page)

He leaned closer to her face. “Angie, wake up, baby…” he whispered. “Don’t do this to me…I didn’t mean what I said…I’m sorry…Angie?”

She stirred in his arms. “I can’t breathe…” she said weakly, barely opening her eyes.

“Hang in there, baby. You’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.”

She cried weakly. “Jaq…I’m so sorry…so sorry…”

He hugged her. “It’s okay. Shhh, it’s okay. Don’t think about it anymore. Everything will be alright.”

When they reached the hospital, he rushed Angie to the emergency room.

Nurses immediately flocked to attend to her. He was gripped by greater fear when a nurse clamped a ventilation mask on Angie face and another applied chest compressions. A doctor arrived. Orders were barked, nurses scampered all over the place, doing their jobs.

He stood there watching, suspended in the most helpless state of terror he’d ever experienced in his entire life.
God, why are they reviving her? Is she dying?!

“What’s wrong with her? Is she sick, Darry?!”

“I don’t know! She seemed fine…No, she isn’t fine…Oh God, Angie!”

A nurse approached them. “Sir, ma’am, please wait outside.”

“No!” he protested. “We can’t leave her!”

“No, sir. You must leave the room. We will get back to you later,” the nurse said sternly.

They were forced to leave the emergency room.

“Oh God, I need to call Angie’s family.”

“Please, not yet, Darry. I wanna know what’s wrong with her.”

“But…”

“If you call them, I will have to leave immediately. You know her father and brothers all want to kill me, and vise versa.”

Darry sighed heavily. “Alright, when the doctor comes out, I’m calling them.”

“Thanks.”

Darry went to sit on a metal bench. They waited outside the emergency room in agitated silence. He sat beside Darry, pumping his legs and rubbing his palms together in anxiety. He couldn’t sit still.
God, please, I will forgive her anything! Anything at all if she will be fine.

“Jaq?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you still love her?”

He sighed. “It doesn’t matter anymore, Darry.”

“No. It would matter. It would matter a lot.”

“Why would it still matter?”

“Because she still loves you.”

He didn’t know what to make of that. How could a woman love him and do what Angie did to him eight years ago?

“No matter what happened in the past, no matter how painful it was, it didn’t kill your love for each other.”

Yeah, his love for her was still freakin’ alive, alright. It refused to die. And for the life of him, he didn’t know why. People would often compare love to a plant. You’d need to take care of it to keep it alive, water it everyday, feed it with fertilizer or whatever to keep it healthy, even talk to it so it will bloom and bear fruit faster. How was it then that his love for her was still alive despite that it was trampled on, abandoned and was never be returned?

It was the ultimate foolishness. He was the ultimate fool.

After almost thirty minutes, the doctor came out from the ER and approached them.

They immediately stood up.

“Doctor, is she alright?” Darry asked.

“Are you relatives of the patient?”

“Yes, ” Darry lied. “We’re her cousins. Is she okay?”

“The patient suffered a severe drop in blood sugar. The drop of blood sugar causes low blood pressure, that’s why she fainted. It is triggered by extreme stress or lack of food intake or a heart ailment. We need to do a series of tests for her other vital organs. But she has been stabilized for now. She’s also developing a case of severe anemia and we need to check her hemoglobin level.”

“But she’s been healthy all her life, doctor. I’ve never seen her get sick worse than a flu.”

“Has the patient been subjected to some emotional ordeal lately?”

Jaq swallowed hard, guilt eating him up. Darry glanced at him briefly before answering. “ I’m afraid, yes, doctor, she’s been having really serious emotional problems lately. She hasn’t been eating and sleeping well.”

The doctor nodded. “She needs plenty of rest. She needs to take a break from work or whatever is giving her emotional or mental stress.”

“But she’s okay now, right? She’s not in critical condition or anything?” Darry wanted to make sure.

“No. But we’ll perform a series of tests on her to really make sure she’s all clear. She’s been given a tranquilizer, so she would be resting for hours. You will be able to talk to her tomorrow. She needs to be confined for a few days. Please, arrange for her accommodation at the nurses’ station.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

The doctor left them.

“Jaq?”

“Call her family now. I need to go.”

“Are you alright?”

Darry’s question sounded strange. “Yes.” He was far from alright. He would probably never be alright.

“She will be okay, Jaq. Don’t worry.”

He nodded. She had to be. One of them had to be okay, at least. “Take care of her, Darry.”

“I will. Thank you.”

Jaq left the hospital. Aboard the Escalade, he borrowed the chauffeur’s phone and called Alexis. He forgot his phone at MAB.

“Man, is she okay?” Alexis asked with concern.

“Yeah, she’s fine. Can you do me a favor, bro? Please, make sure Gwenna is taken care of. Have her billeted at a 5-star hotel or anywhere safe.”

“I’ll take care of her, don’t worry.”

“Tell Wendy I’ll make it up to her. I just can’t deal with them anymore tonight. I’m not going back there. I’ll be at the club.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. You take charge of my party. Just extend my apologies to the guests and the gang.”

“Alright. I’ll take care of it.”

He cut the call. He stared at the bright lights that lined the streets as the vehicle zoomed by. He was one big chunk of numbness and he was grateful for that. He didn’t want to feel anything more tonight.

When he reached Lothario, he went straight to his suite. He drank three shots of whiskey and popped a pill. It was fast.

He felt sleepy within a few minutes.

Chapter Fifteen

SHE WAS NOT PREPARED
to see any of them. Not while she was lying in a hospital bed completely helpless and devoid of energy to confront all the lies perpetrated by the family she had thought was worth giving up her happiness for.

Sherry was beside her hospital bed. “Ange? Are you, okay?” she asked gently, touching her hand.

Angie pulled her hand back as if burned. She glanced at her twin brothers. They couldn’t look her straight in the eye.

She stared at her father whose head was bowed. “Dad?”

Manolo lifted his head and met her gaze. His face was etched with harsh lines of worry, his eyes, tormented. He looked older today, much older.

She was afraid to ask her father, to learn the truth from his own lips. Would she be able to handle the truth? His truth that she was almost sure now were all lies from the beginning. But she couldn’t go on living without knowing what really happened eight years ago.

“Dad, I will ask you something and I want you to tell me the truth.”

Manolo nodded.

“What was that document you had me sign in that hospital eight years ago?”

Manolo looked at his hands and sighed deeply.

“Please, Dad. I need to know.”

Her father’s eyes became glassy. “I hope you can forgive me, Angelina.”

Her tears flowed. “Please, Dad, don’t tell me I put Jaq in prison by signing that document. Please God, no…” She shook her head, wanting her father to deny it.

“Angie…” Her father walked to the side of her bed. The guilt she saw in his eyes said it all.

She felt like a big fist squeezed her heart, crushing it. She sat up on the bed, chasing her breath. “Oh God! Why?! Why, why, why?! I trusted you, Dad! I trusted you with all my heart!”

Her father’s hand lifted to touch her. She cringed from him, unable to bear the thought that this man was her father. The man she had chosen over Jaq, the person she had considered more important than the only man she had ever loved.

“How could you do this to me! How could you do this, Dad! Oh God, no, no, no…!” she wailed in the room, uncaring of the world anymore.

“Angie, calm down…please, calm down...”

She lashed at Sherry. “You?! Why are you even here? Have you no shame?! I trusted you so much, Sher! How could you do that to me?! I am your sister!”

Sherry began to sob.

Angie turned to her brothers. “And you, you left me with nothing! You took everything from me! Why don’t you just kill me?! What did I ever do to you to deserve all this?! I thought I was lucky to have brothers who would defend me from harm, who wouldn’t hurt me! But you’ve hurt me so many times! All of you! Why do you hate me so much?! Why?! Why?!!!” She was screaming at them like a person gone mad, but she no longer cared. She no longer belonged in this family.

“That’s not true, sweetheart
.
We love you, Angie. I do love you.”

She shook hear head vehemently, his father’s words not making any sense anymore. “No, Dad, you don’t love me. You never did! If you truly loved me, you wouldn’t have done that. You wouldn’t have made me betray the man I loved in the most cruel way and make me believe all these years that I saved him. I don’t understand how you can love me and do what you did. It’s hurts, Dad. It hurts so much!”

“I know. I know. Oh God, I’m so sorry, sweetheart. It was my fault. All of it. I was blinded by my hatred…”

Her father’s words seemed to fade. She fell back on the bed, gasping for breath like a fish out of water. Her vision was suddenly flooded by tiny exploding stars and she could not see...

“Rad, call the doctor!” she heard his father’s voice from a distance.

She heard her sister sobbing, but she too seemed far, far away.

She was so tired…so very tired…

Jaq…Jaq…I’m so sorry, my love. I’m so sorry…

Jaq was awakened by the loud knocking on the door.

He sat up on the bed and groaned as pain shot straight to his head. His skull felt like splitting in two. Shit! Sleeping pills and whiskey didn’t mix well.

“Jaq! You in there? Jaq!”

Why was Alexis at his door this early? He checked his watch. It wasn’t early. It was already noontime. Damn, he had slept that long?

Alexis shouted his name again.

“Coming!” He hauled his ass from the bed. He was still wearing his leather pants from the other night. Shirtless, he padded barefoot to the door and wrenched it open. “Bro, what the fuck is so fuckin’ urgent?”

Alexis looked unhappy, too, obviously roused from bed. “Yeah, I asked them that myself,”

“Who?”

“You have guests.” Alexis gestured to his right.

He stuck his head beyond the jamb.

The Yulo twins were standing there.

Jaq assumed a defensive stance as Alexis stepped aside and the twins moved to stand in front of him.

He didn’t say another word and just stared at them. What the hell were they doing here?

Strangely, Rad looked calm. Ram was his usual catatonic self. They looked like meek lambs, which freaked the shit out of him. He wasn’t used to anything but hostility from these two.

Alexis mumbled something and walked away.

“Jaq...can we talk?” Rad asked in a low, conciliatory tone. It was the first time that Rad uttered his first name in years. What the hell had gotten into this asshole?

“Schedule a meeting in the ring. We’ll talk there.”

Rad coughed and looked really uncomfortable. He glanced at his twin.

Ram cleared his throat. “We’re here…to apologize, Jaq.”

Now THAT, he never expected in a million years.

These two were apologizing to him? Impossible. They were up to something. He leaned on the door jamb and crossed his arms on his chest. “Apologize? For what?”

The twins looked like their asses were under a raging furnace now. Apologies must be alien in their world full of self-entitlement. “If you have nothing more to say, I wanna go back to bed,” He dismissed them and moved from the door.

Ram raised his hand. “Wait...Jaq...”

“Two minutes.”

Ram swallowed hard and spoke. “We want to apologise...for everything. What we did to you before…it was wrong. Very wrong.” He sighed deeply. “We are sorry, Jaq. We hope you can forgive us.”

The twins were now nervously pretending to inspect the intricacies of the cream Italian marble floor like fidgeting schoolboys at the principal’s office. It simply boggled the mind. What in hell brought this on?

“Is that all?” he asked them coldly.

They both nodded.

Fuck them! What they did to him was pure hell! Now here they were, eight years later, saying sorry. Sorry?! What the fuck…! He wanted to bang their heads together.