The Dutiful Wife Read Free Page A

to the hospital, answering Saul’s anxious question about his cousin with a grim, ‘He’s alive, but badly injured. He’s been asking for you.’
    Saul nodded his head. ‘And the incident?’
    ‘We haven’t spoken to him about it as yet. The factthat the car was to some extent bullet-proof tells us something about Mr Petranovachov’s lifestyle and his feelings about his personal safety—bullet-proof but unfortunately not bomb-proof.’
    They had reached the hospital entrance now, and were quickly and discreetly whisked down corridors and eventually into an antiseptically clean and sparsely furnished waiting room adjacent to the private part of the hospital, where the Chief Inspector handed them over to a dark-suited consultant, accompanied by what Giselle guessed must be a senior-ranking nurse.
    ‘My cousin?’ Saul asked again.
    ‘Conscious and eager to see you. But I should warn you that his injuries are extremely severe.’
    Giselle looked anxiously at Saul, and said, ‘If you want me to come with you…’
    Saul shook his head. ‘No. You stay here.’
    ‘I’ll have a hot drink sent in for you,’ the consultant told Giselle, before turning to Saul. ‘Staff Nurse Peters here will show you to your cousin’s room. I’m afraid I can’t allow you to have more than a few minutes with him. We’ve patched him up temporarily, but we need to sedate and stabilise him before we can operate and tidy up the mess made by the bomb.’
    The mess made by the bomb. What exactly did that mean? Giselle worried once she was on her own. She hadn’t liked Natasha, but her violent death had reawakened her own memories of the violent deaths of her mother and her baby brother, whom she had witnessed being hit by a lorry. For years she had carried the guilt of being alive when they had died, after sharp wordsfrom her mother had resulted in her holding back when she had started to cross the road with the pram. That holding back had saved her life—and filled it with guilt. Only Saul’s love had enabled her to come to terms with the trauma of the accident.
    Poor Natasha. No matter how selfish and unpleasant she had been, she had not deserved such a cruel fate.
    In the hospital room Saul looked down at his cousin, wired up to machines that clicked and whirred, his head bandaged and his body still beneath the sheets.
    ‘He’s lost both legs,’ the nurse had told Saul before she opened the door to the room, ‘and there’s some damage to his internal organs.’
    ‘Is he…? Will he survive?’ Saul had asked her.
    ‘We shall do our best to ensure that he does,’ she had answered crisply, but Saul had seen the truth and its reality in her eyes.
    His vision blurred as he looked at Aldo. His cousin had always been so accommodating, so gentle and good.
    ‘You’re here. Knew you’d come. Been waiting.’
    The words, though perfectly audible, were dragged out and slow. Aldo lifted his hand, and Saul took it between his own as he sat down next to the bed. Aldo’s flesh felt cold and dry. The word lifeless sprang into Saul’s mind but he pushed it away.
    ‘Want you to promise me something.’
    Saul gritted his teeth. If Aldo was going to ask him to look after Natasha in the event of his death then he was going to nod his head and agree, and not tell himthat she was dead. Aldo adored his wife, even though in Saul’s mind she was not worthy of that love.
    ‘Anything,’ he told Aldo, and meant it.
    ‘Want you to promise that you will look after our country and its people for me, Saul. Want you to take my place as its ruler. Want you to promise that you will secure its future with an heir. Can’t break the family chain. Duty must come first…’
    Saul closed his eyes. Ruling the country was the last thing he wanted, and he had always felt confident that he would never have to do so. Aldo was younger than him, after all, and married. He had assumed that Aldo and Natasha would produce children to succeed to the title.
    And as