Chapter 362: There Is A Delivery Man From The Pharmacy

It wasn’t just the shaking in her hands anymore. It was the tightness in her chest that came without warning, the sensation that she couldn’t quite breathe deeply enough. It was the way her heart would suddenly race for no reason, then slow down to a crawl. It was the sensitivity to light and sound, the way the morning sun coming through her window felt like it was burning her eyes. The way a maid’s footsteps in the hallway made her flinch.

It was the sweating. The constant, low-level sweating that made her clothes stick to her skin despite the cool temperature of her room.

And underneath all of that was something worse. A clarity that was almost painful. A sharpness to her thoughts that felt wrong after months of the medication’s soft blur. It was like waking up from a long sleep and discovering that everything around you had changed while you were unconscious.

Isabella pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, trying to make herself smaller. Trying to contain the shaking that was getting worse, not better.

There was a knock at her door.

"Come in," Isabella called out, her voice not quite steady.

A maid entered, one of the household staff who’d known Isabella since childhood, though Isabella could never quite remember her name.

"Signorina Russo," the maid said, "there’s a delivery for you downstairs. From the pharmacy."

Isabella’s entire body went rigid for just a moment.

Then she stood...too quickly, the room spinning slightly, and moved toward the door.

"Thank you," she said, already moving past the maid, already heading for the stairs.

***

The delivery man was waiting in the entrance hall, a nondescript box in his hands, a clipboard under his arm.

Isabella reached him and practically snatched the box from his hands.

"I’ll sign," she said, taking the clipboard with shaking fingers and scrawling something that barely resembled her signature.

"Grazie," the delivery man said, already turning away.

Isabella didn’t watch him leave. She was already clutching the box, already heading back up the stairs, her breath coming in short gasps.

Back in her room, door locked, Isabella tore open the package with an intensity that surprised her. The bottle of pills tumbled out...small white tablets in a plastic container with her name on the label.

She opened the bottle and swallowed two pills dry, her throat barely able to manage it. Then she sat on her bed and waited, her entire body tense, her mind focused entirely on the sensation of the medication entering her system.

After ten minutes, the shaking began to subside slightly. After twenty, her heart rate started to normalize. After thirty, she could breathe deeply again without the sensation that her chest was closing.

But something was different. The medication was working, yes, but not completely. Not the way it usually did. Her thoughts were still too sharp. Her awareness was still too acute. The relief was there, but it was incomplete.

Isabella got up and moved to the bathroom on unsteady legs. She turned on the shower and cranked the water as cold as it would go.

Then she stepped under the stream.

The shock of the cold water made her gasp, made her entire body contract. But she stayed there, letting the freezing water rain down on her, using the physical sensation to ground herself, to pull her away from the mental spiral she could feel beginning.

The cold water became almost meditative. She stood under it, eyes closed, letting the chill wash away the anxiety, the trembling, the weird sharpness of her thoughts. Her skin erupted in goosebumps. Her teeth began to chatter. But the cold was also clarifying. The cold was real. The cold was something concrete to focus on instead of the abstract terror that had been building in her chest.

After what felt like both minutes and hours, Isabella turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. She was shaking again, but this time from cold rather than withdrawal. She wrapped herself in a towel and stood there, dripping onto the marble floor, trying to organize her thoughts.

The medication had arrived. She’d taken it. She was going to be okay.

And while she was standing there, towel wrapped around her, her body slowly warming back up, her mind drifted to someone else.

Dante.

Isabella closed her eyes and let herself think about him for just a moment. Let herself wonder where he was right now. What he was doing. Whether he was alive.

The last time she’d seen him had been in that warehouse in Jersey City. She’d been terrified, confused, caught between relief and horror at what was happening. And then Dimitri had come, and there had been gunfire and chaos, and she had been taken away by Dimitri’s men.

She didn’t know if Dante had survived.

Had Dante escaped? Was he alive somewhere, planning his next move, thinking about her the way she was thinking about him?

No. Isabella’s internal voice cut through that thought sharply.

Isabella, stop. Don’t think about him again. You need to get your head straight back.

She opened her eyes and looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. Pale. Thin. Eyes that looked haunted. This was what she’d become because of Dante. This was what loving him had cost her.

She couldn’t let herself fall back into that. Couldn’t afford to think about him. Couldn’t allow herself to wonder if he was alive or injured or missing her.

Isabella dried off and dressed in clean clothes. She brushed her hair mechanically and tried to compose her expression into something that wouldn’t alarm her mother if she happened to cross paths with her.

Then she returned to her bedroom and climbed into bed.

The medication was working now. Her body had stopped shaking. Her heart was no longer racing. The panic had subsided back into the background hum of her mind where she’d learned to keep it.

She lay there in the darkness, staring at the ceiling, and let her eyes drift to the phone on her nightstand.