Chapter 6: Blood on the Croissants
The Monaco brunch was Alma’s idea of a special kind of hell, but Sergio had worn her down. “They like you,” he’d said, which felt like a strange and terrifying indictment. Now, surrounded by polished silver and louder laughter, she kept her hands folded in her lap, a neutral island in the stream of gossip. The first indication was a sharp, perfume-choked gust of air. A blonde woman in a wildly expensive-looking ripped dress was suddenly just there, her face a mask of shattered porcelain. “You think you can just take him?” she shrieked, the words slurred and venomous, before her manicured hands became claws.
They raked down Alma’s face, a white-hot sear followed by the shocking wetness of blood. A fistful of her dark curls was yanked, snapping her head back with a jolt of nauseating pain. The world became a scrambled montage: the underside of the table, a dropped champagne flute exploding, Kelly’s shouted “Hey!”, the weight of a body on hers. She couldn’t breathe, the woman’s forearm a bar across her throat. Copper flooded her mouth. Sergio’s voice cut through the din, a raw “Get the fuck off her!” just as other hands, large and frantic, hauled the writhing woman away.
Alma lay on the sun-warmed stone, gasping. A thick, warm trickle from her eyebrow was blinding her left eye. Her chest burned. The Mediterranean sky above was a merciless, brilliant blue.
The Mediterranean sky above was a merciless, brilliant blue. A ringing filled her ears, dulling the shouts around her into a muffled underwater roar. “Alma. Alma, look at me.” Sergio’s face swam into view, his eyes wide and dark with a panic she’d never seen there before. He was kneeling, his hands hovering over her, unsure where to touch. “Don’t try to move, just… shit.” Her vision tunneled, the blue narrowing to a pinhole, then flooding back with a nauseating swirl of concerned faces—Kelly, Pierre, Lando—all staring down. “An ambulance is coming,” someone said, the voice sounding very far away. The coppery taste in her mouth thickened. She tried to say she was fine, but only a wet, choking sound emerged, and the world grayed out again.
“Stay with me, hey, stay with me.” She felt pressure on her cheekbone, a crisp white napkin already blotched red held by Sergio’s trembling hand. Her body was a distant, heavy thing. Sirens warbled in the distance, cutting through the brunch’s stunned silence. Strong arms slid beneath her shoulders and knees, lifting her with a jolt that sparked fireworks behind her eyes. “I’ve got you,” Sergio murmured into her hair, his racing suit smearing with her blood. The last thing she registered was the cool shade of the terrace awning passing over her face, then the blinding sun again. “What the hell was that?” Pierre’s voice cut through the fog as they loaded her into the vehicle. Sergio didn’t answer, just climbed in right after the medics, his face a stony mask. The doors slammed, sealing them in a bubble of sterile light and urgent, professional tones. Alma drifted, tethered only by the pressure of his hand gripping hers.
The ambulance doors banged open to a barrage of shouting in French and the crisp, antiseptic smell of institutional panic. Gurney wheels clattered over linoleum, and Alma was swallowed by blinding white light and moving shadows. “BP is 90 over 60, facial lacerations, possible orbital fracture, she’s disoriented—” a medic recited as hands transferred her. Sergio’s grip was forcibly broken. “You need to wait here, monsieur,” a nurse said, blocking his path. “The hell I do,” he growled, trying to shoulder past her.
Alma’s world narrowed to a cycle of sharp, probing touches and muffled questions she couldn’t quite parse. “Can you tell me your name?” A penlight danced painfully across her vision. She mumbled, “Salma,” but it came out thick and wrong. The ceiling tiles flowed above her like a slow river. Then Sergio was there again, his voice cutting through the procedural haze, arguing with someone in rapid, tense Spanish about consent and next of kin. “She works for me, I’m responsible, just tell me what you’re doing!” His fear vibrated in the air.
A new commotion erupted at the ER entrance—shouted questions and the flash of a camera. Paparazzi, tipped off about a driver at the hospital, had breached the perimeter. Security shouts tangled with the ringing in her ears. A young doctor with tired eyes sighed, snapping his gloves. “This is now a circus. We need to move her.” Chaos wasn’t a sound; it was a pressure, building until the walls themselves felt ready to burst.
Chaos wasn’t a sound; it was a pressure, building until the walls themselves felt ready to burst. They moved Alma to a private room, a silent cube where the only sounds were the hiss of oxygen and the steady beep of the heart monitor. Sergio stood by the bed, his knuckles white where they gripped the railing, watching the rise and fall of her bandaged chest. Her face was a map of violence: four parallel lines, deep and angry, scoring her cheek from temple to jaw, another set raking down her neck where the woman’s nails had torn flesh. Purple bruising bloomed around her closed eyes, and her lips were swollen and split. He couldn’t look away from the shallow cut on her eyebrow, neatly stitched now but still weeping a faint pinkish fluid into the gauze. A uniformed officer stepped into the room, his crisp attire a stark contrast to Sergio’s blood-smeared suit. “Mr. Pérez?” the officer said, his voice low and practiced. “We’ve identified the assailant.” Sergio didn’t turn, his gaze fixed on Alma’s motionless form. “Why?” he asked, the word cracking in the dry air. The officer shifted his weight. “She’s a fan. A obsessed one. Has been following your career for years, itineraries, hotels.” He paused, choosing his words. “Psychiatric evaluation is pending, but it’s clear she has significant mental health issues. She believed Ms. Khalil was... a threat to her connection with you.” Sergio finally turned, his expression hollow. “She almost killed her over a delusion.” The officer nodded, glancing at Alma. “The doctors say the scratches are deep but will heal. The concussion is moderate; she needs rest. The bruises… well.” He handed Sergio a card. “We’ll need a statement when she’s awake.” Sergio took the card without looking at it, his attention snapping back to Alma as she stirred faintly, a weak sound escaping her throat. But her eyes remained closed, lost in the dark of the concussion. The door clicked shut behind the officer, leaving Sergio alone with the beeping machine and the ghost of the woman who didn’t know she owned his heart.
The door clicked shut behind the officer, leaving Sergio alone with the beeping machine and the ghost of the woman who didn’t know she owned his heart. Hours bled into the sterile light, marked only by the shift change of nurses and the slow drip of saline into Alma’s vein. He finally slumped into the chair, its plastic creaking, and let his head fall into his hands, the scent of her blood still on his sleeves.
A low, pained moan snapped him upright.
Her bandaged fingers twitched on the starch-white sheet. Alma’s eyes fluttered open, blinked slowly against the glare, and focused with immense difficulty on his face. “Sergio?” Her voice was a ragged whisper, scratched raw from the tube they’d removed. He was out of the chair in an instant, his hand finding hers with a gentleness that felt alien to his calloused grip. “I’m here,” he said, the words thick. “You’re in the hospital. You’re safe.” She tried to nod, but winced, her free hand rising weakly towards the bandages on her cheek. He caught it, holding it lightly. “Don’t touch, por favor.”
The confusion in her brown eyes was worse than the pain. “What happened?” she breathed. He looked down at their joined hands, his throat working. “It was because of me, Alma.” The confession came out in a broken rush, laden with a guilt so profound it bent his shoulders. “That woman. She was… she’s unwell. She thought you were with me. Not just working. With me.” He forced himself to meet her gaze, seeing the dawning horror in it. “She attacked you because of a fantasy in her head. Because of me.”
Alma’s hand went limp in his. She stared at the acoustic tiles overhead, processing. “So I got my face rearranged,” she finally said, her voice flat and horribly practical, “because of a stranger’s parasocial fantasy.” A sharp, bitter laugh escaped her, ending in a wince. “The translations I do.”
Sergio flinched. “Don’t.”
The door opened, and a doctor entered with a tablet, her demeanor calmly efficient. “Good, you’re awake. The scans are clear—no fracture, which is excellent.” She adjusted Alma’s bandage with clinical precision. “The lacerations, however, were quite deep.” The doctor’s tone softened, but remained direct. “Most will heal well, but the ones on your cheekbone and near your hairline went to the dermis. We’ve referred you to a specialist, but even with excellent intervention, some residual scarring is likely.”
Each word landed on Sergio like a physical blow. His vision tunneled, the doctor’s voice fading to a buzz. Scars. Permanence. His fault. Alma just listened, her expression unreadable beneath the dressings. When the doctor left, the silence returned, heavier now, saturated with a future she hadn’t chosen.
“I’ll pay for everything,” Sergio burst out, the words choked. “The best surgeons, anywhere in the world.”
Alma turned her head slowly on the pillow, her eyes finding his. They weren’t accusing, just unbearably tired. “It’s not a car part, Sergio. You can’t just order a replacement.” She watched him unravel, saw the raw guilt etched into every line of his face, and something in her shifted from shock to a dull, aching pity. “Stop,” she whispered. “Just… stop looking at me like you’re at a funeral.”
He flinched back as if slapped, releasing her hand. The monitor beeped a steady, oblivious rhythm. Alma’s focus drifted from his shattered expression to the sterile ceiling, her thoughts moving with a thick, syrupy delay.
Scars. The word floated in the hazy space between the doctor’s clinical explanation and her own understanding. It didn’t connect to the numb, throbbing mask her face had become. She pictured a scratch on a car, something buffed out with polish and time. Her fingers rose again, trembling, toward the bulk of the dressing on her left cheek. This time he didn’t stop her.
The pad of her index finger met not skin, but rough gauze and the hard ridge of stitches beneath. A strange, detached curiosity overtook her. “How many?” she asked, her voice still a rasp. Sergio cleared his throat, the sound rough in the quiet room. “The deep ones? Four, maybe five. I wasn’t… I couldn’t count.” She let her hand fall back to the sheet, a weak thump. “Five,” she repeated softly, as if testing the word.
It still felt theoretical, a problem for a future version of herself. The daze wrapped around her, cotton-wool thick. “Will I look like a cartoon villain?” she mumbled, the attempt at a joke dissolving into a wince as her split lip stretched. Sergio’s choked noise was halfway between a sob and a laugh. “Jesus, Alma.” She turned her head, the movement slow and painful, to look at him properly. The raw anguish in his eyes was a mirror she couldn’t bear. She blinked, slow. “You should go shower,” she said, her tone almost mundane. “You’re still covered in… me.” He glanced down at the dark, rusty stains crusting his forearms and looked suddenly sick. The reality of it, the permanence he knew and she couldn’t yet feel, hung in the antiseptic air between them.
The reality of it, the permanence he knew and she couldn’t yet feel, hung in the antiseptic air between them. He just stared at his stained hands, knuckles taut. “I should have seen her coming,” he said, the words hollow and cracked.
Alma’s gaze was unfocused, drifting from his bloody sleeves to the IV line taped to her wrist. “Don’t be an idiot,” she mumbled, the medication loosening her tongue. “You’re a driver, not a psychic bodyguard.”
A weak, airy sound escaped her that might have been a laugh. “She was just… a fan with bad ideas and worse nails.” She blinked slowly, her thoughts visibly scattering. “The espresso machine at Monza makes a better threat.”
Sergio’s head snapped up. “Alma.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said, her speech gaining a slurred, earnest momentum. “It’s the… the noise around you. The crazy static.” Her bandaged hand waved vaguely. “I walked into the static. My contract, my problem.”
She was babbling now, her filter dissolved by shock and drugs. “You didn’t tell her to… to redecorate my face.” Her good eye tried to focus on him. “You just called me Alma by the espresso machine. That’s all.”
She fell silent for a moment, breath whistling slightly through her split lip. “The pillows here are terrible,” she observed to the ceiling. “And you really do need to change your shirt.”
He looked down at the dried blood, his own and hers, flaking on the blue race suit fabric. "It's not just a shirt, Alma," he whispered, the weight of everything collapsing his voice into something rough and private.
Her eyes, one mostly swollen shut, held a liquid sheen that wasn’t entirely from the painkillers. "I know what it is," she breathed out, each word a conscious effort. "It's a really ruined shirt."
A fragile silence stretched, broken only by the hum of the air conditioning. She watched him struggle, watched the guilt twist his features into a mask she didn't recognize. The distance between the bed and his chair felt cavernous, charged with everything unsaid.
With a slow, deliberate motion that sent a fresh throb through her temple, she raised her right hand. Her fingers, pale and trailing the hospital ID bracelet, crossed the space between them. They stopped just short of his jaw, hovering in the sterile light.
Sergio went utterly still, his breath catching. Her bandaged fingertips, cool and trembling, finally made contact. She touched his face, her thumb brushing the rough stubble high on his cheekbone. The touch was shockingly intimate, a bridge thrown across the wreckage.
She held his gaze, her own blurred but unwavering. "This wasn't you," she said, the words clear now. Her thumb swept once more, a faint, grounding pressure. "The static isn't you."
A shudder ran through him. He turned his head just slightly, pressing his cheek more firmly into her palm, his eyes closing. A single, hot tear tracked through the grime on his skin, tracing a clean path. He didn't lift a hand to hold hers there; he simply accepted it, this fragile anchor.
The door hissed open.
The nurse entered with a fresh IV bag, her shoes squeaking on the linoleum. Alma’s hand fell from Sergio’s face as if the connection had been severed by a guillotine. “Time for more antibiotics and something for the pain,” the nurse announced, her cheerfulness a brutal contrast to the room’s air. Sergio stood abruptly, his chair screeching back, putting physical space between them as the nurse worked. He watched the clear liquid drip into the tube, his own pulse hammering in his throat.
Alma lay still, her good eye tracking the nurse’s movements with a flat, detached focus. When the woman left, the silence felt newly charged, brittle. The beeping monitor counted the seconds they weren’t speaking. Alma’s breathing hitched, a wet, ragged sound. She turned her head towards him, the bandages crinkling.
Her composure, the practical shell, finally fissured. “Don’t go,” she whispered, the words small and cracked. “Please.” She didn’t sound like his composed, multilingual PA; she sounded very young, and very scared. Her bandaged hand reached out again, not to touch his face, but to clutch weakly at the bloodstained fabric of his suit sleeve. “Stay. Just… stay here.”
The raw plea, so unlike her, unraveled something final in him. He sank back into the chair, his own exhaustion a sudden weight. Carefully, he shifted, sitting on the very edge of the mattress. He didn’t embrace her, fearing the wires and her wounds, but he let her fist keep its desperate anchor on his arm. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said, his voice low and steady, a promise carved into the sterile air. “Nowhere, Alma.” She nodded once, a jerky movement, her eye closing as another tear escaped the swollen lid. Her grip didn’t loosen.
Her grip didn’t loosen. It held fast through the remaining days, a silent tether during the slow, painful march of stitches coming out and bruises fading to sickly yellow. TWO WEEKS LATER, ALMA IS RELEASED FROM HOSPITAL, SERGIO INSISTS SHE’LL STAY WITH HIM. “Absolutely not,” she said, the protest weak as she signed the discharge papers with a hand that still trembled. He just took the duffel bag from her shoulder, his expression leaving no room for negotiation. “Your apartment has twelve steps to the front door, and the paparazzi are camped on the curb,” he stated, his voice low. “My place has a garage elevator, security, and a guest room that doesn’t look at a wall.” She stood in the harsh hospital fluorescence, the new pink scars on her cheekbone stark under the lights, and felt the exhausting weight of arguing. “I can’t hide in your apartment, Sergio.” He guided her toward the private exit, his hand a steady pressure on her back. “You’re not hiding,” he corrected gently, steering her past a gurney. “You’re convalescing. There’s a difference.” The underground garage was cool and silent, a relief from the glaring scrutiny of the world above. He opened the passenger door of the subdued SUV, not his usual flashy car. “Besides,” he said, a tentative lightness in his tone as she sank into the seat, “you still haven’t finished explaining the espresso machine threat from Monza.” A faint, real smile touched her lips for the first time in two weeks.
The smile vanished as the SUV ascended the spiraling garage ramp, the motion blending the city’s glittering lights into watery streaks that lanced behind her eyes. A thick, cottony pressure filled her skull, muting the engine’s purr to a distant hum. “The steps,” Sergio said, his voice careful as he killed the ignition in his private bay. “There are three, from here to the elevator.” He was out and at her door before she could fumble with the seatbelt, his hand offered not as courtesy but as necessity.
She took it, the world tilting nauseatingly as her feet touched concrete. The elevator walls were polished steel, and she kept her gaze fixed on their blurred reflection—a tall man holding the arm of a woman who listed like a sail without wind. The silence in his penthouse was profound, a vacuum after the hospital’s relentless noise. He led her to a sunken living room, its vast windows a black tableau of the night sea. “Sit,” he murmured, guiding her onto a deep sofa. “Just sit.”
She obeyed, the soft leather embracing her, and watched him move through the open-plan space with a focused efficiency. He returned with a glass of water and two pills, his bulk blocking the glare from a solitary downlight. “For the headache,” he said, placing them in her palm. His fingers were warm. She swallowed them dry, the action requiring intense concentration.
“I can’t remember my Dutch,” she stated abruptly, her voice oddly detached.
“What?”
“The word for… elevator. Or water.” She looked at the glass in her hand as if it were a foreign artifact. “It’s just gone. A whole piece of the static.” Her laugh was a thin, brittle sound. “Maybe she scratched it out.”
Sergio crouched before her, his eyes level with hers. The raw concern in them was more unsettling than the fog in her head. “It’s the concussion. It comes back.” He reached out, his thumb gently tracing the air just beside the longest, still-angry scar on her cheekbone. He didn’t touch it. “The doctor said confusion is normal. The words will come back.”
She leaned into the space where his thumb almost was, her eyes closing. The daze wasn’t peaceful; it was a muffled, swirling isolation. “It feels like being underwater,” she whispered. “Everything sounds far away, even you.” He stayed perfectly still, his presence a quiet anchor in the room’s expansive silence, bearing witness to the slow, internal mending he felt utterly responsible for.