Page 68 of His Dark Prerogative

“He said he’d had a headache.”Tears collected in my eyes as I tried to explain.“And there’s something else.He had a blow to the head a few days ago, and his doctor wanted him to have another scan before we left.”

Frozen dread seized me as I watched another two men rush into the room.Hurrying past me, they spoke in German as they stretched Harper out on the carpet.

“A blow to the head?”Kaspar asked as the men, who I assumed were medics, checked Harper’s vitals.“With what?”

“A decanter.”I could hardly get the words out.

“For alcohol?”Confusion flashed in her gaze.

“Yes.His doctor wanted him to have another MRI, but we left the country and came here...”

“Ich habe seinen Puls verloren!”one of the medics called out, motioning for Kaspar to give him room, and I watched in shock as he proceeded to deliver chest compressions to the man I loved.

“No!”I cried out, not needing to understand their language to see what was going on.Harper’s heart had stopped, and if they couldn’t get the organ working again, then mine was about to break wide open.“You have to save him!”

“Miss Craness.”Kaspar dashed around the couch to console me.“We are doing everything we can.

“Pulse is back!”The second medic spoke in English, his words inspiring fragile hope as I clung to the officer who’d arrested him.“He needs a defibrillator.”

My knees buckled as someone else rushed past us with a stretcher.Gripping the back of the sofa, all I could think was how I’d let it all happen.I should have made him go to see a doctor.He had the money, yet I’d known he was trying to stay below the authorities’ radar, and dealing with medics wouldn’t have helped maintain our anonymity.

I pulled in air as I tried to make sense of the spiraling events.Harper had collapsed, and his heart had stopped, and I didn’t know why.Everybody else in the room was speaking German again, their words whizzing over my head as the fragments of hope I had for a future with the man I loved unraveled around me.

“We need to get him to a hospital,” Kaspar said, presumably translating some of what the medics were telling her.“They can check his heart there and give him an MRI.”

“Can I go with him?”

I knew already what her answer would be, but the idea of losing him all over again, of watching him leave the room, and maybe even die and not even being allowed to be with him, seemed too cruel to contemplate.

“You must stay here,” she instructed.“I will let you know about his condition.”

“But, please...”I watched as two of the medics lifted the stretcher his body was strapped to from the ground.In all the time I’d known him, I had never seen him look so helpless before.Even the version of the man I’d left sprawled out in his unit that day hadn’t seemed so sad and powerless.“He’s on his own!Who will advocate for him?”

“I will go with him,” she assured me, directing the medics in German.“He’s still in my custody.I’ll ask my colleague, Michel, to keep you informed.”

She ushered me away as two men carried the stretcher toward me, and fleetingly, I caught sight of his pale face.

“Please look after him,” I called out as his unconscious form disappeared from view.“I love him so much.”

Those final words caught in my throat, the sentiment tangible yet trapped in the choking emotion that seemed hellbent on strangling me.

Every hope I had in the whole world was invested in Adam Harper.On his survival, on his love for me, on his life, and on the amazing future I knew we could carve out together.

There was no choice.

He simply had to live.

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The End