The first time I realized I was conscious was when I heard a persistent wringing in my ears. The darkness around me triggered a state of utter confusion within me. My eyelids felt heavy to lift and every time I tried to open them, I felt intense pain in the right side of my head. When I finally managed to awaken, I noticed that I was awkwardly sprawled on my back with my left leg twisted at an ungodly angle that injected extreme pain every time I tried to move it. I was wedged in between two strong dark walls made of leather and I had another leather wall strewn across my lower body. I noticed Alessandro's body haphazardly strewn across my lower torso. Blood oozed out of his temple and his eyes were firmly shut. 

My body gave in to panic at seeing his disheveled state and convulsed into shivers. I tried to calm myself with deep breaths but the chaos and lack of memory as to my surroundings seemed to feed my panic and turn it into a full blown assault on all my senses. My heartbeat fluttered faster than a hummingbird's and my flight or fight response kicked in. I tried moving my body with all my might but all I could feel was painful needles pricking me all over. Slowly, memories of me being driven by Alessandro from college crawled into my mind. I remember my body being hurled across the car and then nothing. I came to the conclusion that we had probably been in a car accident. I tried to move my right undamaged leg again but it was safely and uncomfortably lodged between Alessandro's seat and the car floor. 

"Alessandro!" I called out. I tried yelling but it did not come off as anything more than a whisper to my ears. I didn't know if I was actually speaking low or my ears were damaged from the crash.

"Alessandro! Wake up!" I tried shouting out to him again. 

His eyes started fluttering open. They gave way to confusion at first, but then he saw me. The understanding and predicament of his situation dawned on him and he sprung into action like a man who was trained to react like a soldier when attacked. He struggled with all his strength against his seat belt.

"Ella, are you okay?" he asked me with determination in his voice. For someone who had just realized he was in a car accident merely seconds ago, he exuded nothing but calmness.

"I don't know," I panicked. Tears started rolling down my leg as my situation started sinking in. I was crushed under pounds of metal and my left leg felt absolutely numb. "I think my leg is broken. And every time I talk, I get this intense pain in my chest."

Alessandro kept struggling against his seat belt. It was still wedged tightly against his body and he wrestled with the buckle to unlock it. After feebly trying to disengage, he took a moment to catch his breath and regain some strength. He let out a long sigh that ended with a groan of pain. 

"What is it?" I asked, worried that he had suffered critical damage.

"Nothing," Alessandro said between clenched teeth. He was pressing his right hand against his abdomen as if applying pressure to an open wound.

"Are you hurt?" I asked him. 

He brought his right hand away from his abdomen and I noticed the crimson liquid that glistened under the orange street light that filtered in through the windows. Panic gripped every part of my being and I started screaming. 

"HELP!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. 

I kept screaming the word relentlessly. I wanted to be under the safety of my house once again. I longed to hug my sister. I wanted to tell my father of all the ways he had ruined my childhood with his insecurities. I wanted to tell Anna how grateful I was for her friendship. The reality that I was going to die on a street in Paris, surrounded by no family and not even the comfort of my real name, filled me with a sense of hysteria and desperateness. It was ironic that my fake death had been moaned by so many people and my real death would go unnoticed. 

While I was praying for divine intervention, Alessandro had not given in to panic but coupled all his energy into finding a way to get us out. He found a shard of glass sharp enough to cut through his toughened seat belt. He slowly cut his way through the toughened material, his palm slicing with the jagged edges of the glass. Once free from its restraint, he tried using all his might against the passenger side door right behind his driver's seat. Since his upper body was closer to it, he plunged all his energy against the door. He grabbed the handle with one hand and used the other hand to thump incessantly against the door. Once I realized he was trying to create an escape, I relented my shouting and started kicking the door with my right foot. After the unceasing effort from the both of us, the door creaked open and a gush of clean air and rain poured into the car.

Up until now, I hadn't realized that it had started thundering and pouring. The dark grey clouds shrouded the city with its cruel presence. The drops of rain that crashed on the earth got stronger and pounded against the car. It battered the roof to the point where it felt as if a hundred nails were being hammered against it. Alessandro slid himself carefully over his seat so as to not add any pressure to my legs trapped below and made his way out of the car. He then proceeded to lift the seat that was strewn across my lower body.

"I'm going to try to lift this up for as long as I can, okay? I need you to crawl out quick," he said.

"I can't," I cried. The cold air from the rain filtered into car and chilled me to my bones. I couldn't tell anymore if my teeth were chattering because of the descending frigid weather or because of my shock.

"Yes, you can. You need to focus on pushing your body and nothing else," Alessandro cajoled me.

"I can't. I can't feel my leg," I cried. "I think something's happened to it." Panic started seeping in once again as I pictured myself getting out of this car wreck with a paralyzed left leg for the rest of my life.

"Nothing is wrong with you. Your leg is just pinned down. The longer you stay here, the longer it will be devoid of any blood,"  Alessandro said. He spoke calmly over the loud noise of the rain. The water had drenched his entire shirt yet he seemed unaware of the iciness. "I got you. Don't worry, okay?  Everything will be fine. But I need you to get out. NOW." 

I noticed the right side of his abdomen was bleeding as he tried to hold up the seat. I needed to act fast if we both were to make it out alive. Alessandro groaned as he lifted the seat and blood started oozing out faster from his abdomen. I started sliding myself, feet first, from the floor of the car. I scrambled haphazardly to make it out of the small space that Alessandro had created for me. The muscles and veins of his arms bulged in strenuous effort of holding up the seat and I managed to crawl out through the hole. I fell onto the street as I cradled my left leg gently in my arms. Alessandro dropped the seat with a loud whimper and collapsed right next to me. 

Despite being in exorbitant pain, he started checking my leg. 

"Can you feel this?" he asked me as he drilled his fingers into my calves.

"No," I whimpered.

He raised his finger slightly higher and closer to my knees. "What about now?"

"I don't know. I don't think so," I stuttered.

He moved his palms closer to my thighs and jabbed his fingers all the way in that caused me to yelp in pain. 

"What the fuck!" I screamed at him.

He smiled at me. "You leg is going to be just fine."

I heard those words and relief coursed through me. "I'm going to be fine?" I asked.

"You'll be just fine," he said with encouragement.

A short burst of laughter rippled through me. I flung myself into Alessandro's arms and cried in the solace of his warmth. I had never particularly paid much attention to Alessandro's presence before. He seemed to melt into the background effortlessly and existed as nothing more than Jean's shadow. He followed his Boss everywhere, never uttering a word or leaving his side. I had heard rumors that Lorenzo had recruited Alessandro from the Directorate-General for External Security, or the DGSE, which was the French equivalent of UK's MI6 and America's CIA. He was a highly trained operative who had left the DGSE in his early days because of differences in opinions between the highly specialized secret service of France and himself.

I cried in relief for having made it out alive. Alessandro pulled back from me and said, "Let's get out of here."

He reached into his pocket and tried searching for something. He patted his chest pocket and his back pocket, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

"What? What's wrong?" I asked.

"I can't find my phone. It must be in the car. Do you have yours?" he asked me.

I started checking my pockets and found no phone. I realized that I had been listening to music before our car had crashed and it was probably buried under all that debris. "Shit! Mine's in the car too."

"Let me try looking for it," he said. He slowly struggled up to his feet when a sudden burst of light blinded the both of us. Amidst the darkness of the ashy clouds and the dull street lights, tw beacons of car headlight pierced the murkiness of the thunderstorm. The searingly powerful light rendered us sightless for a few precious seconds.

"It's a car!" I screamed. "Help us!" I yelled while waving my arms frantically to catch the driver's attention who was parked 50 feet behind our vehicle. 

"Help! We're hurt!" I shouted to no avail. The thunder and pounding rain was clearly drowning out my voice yet the sight of another human consoled my battered soul.

"Ella," Alessandro's firm voice interrupted my cries.

"Alessandro, we got help!" I smiled up at him.

"Ella," Alessandro spoke from firmly this time. "We got to leave," he said.

"What?" I asked in utter disbelief.

"Get UP!" he yelled more loudly.

He grabbed my arm and hauled me up in one fluid motion. Standing on both legs put immense pressure on my left damaged leg and I howled in agony. 

"I can't walk," I cried out to Alessandro. "Why are we running? Let's just get to the car."

"I don't think that car is here to help us," he said as he tried to lift me over his shoulder but the cut in his abdomen bled more profusely every time he tried.

The car started slowly purring towards us. The sights of the headlights turned bigger and bigger as the car moved closer.

"Alessandro!" I said in fear. He looked at the approaching car and he grabbed the side of my waist which allowed me to lean into him. With half of my body weight on him, I could finally walk ahead. 

"Ella, I'm going to need you to push yourself harder!" Alessandro encouraged me.

"I'm trying," I said as I looked behind my shoulder to see the car eerily following behind us, albeit a lot closer from before. We trudged ahead like a broken toy. The pain in my leg got intense and I tried to breathe through the torment but every step felt unbearable.

The loud thud of a car door being shut behind us caused me to lose my step and falter. Alessandro grabbed me as I collapsed to the ground. 

"Ella! Get up!" Alessandro said fervently. 

"I'm trying," I said. I frantically tried to get up as I felt the presence of another figure saunter behind us. We both turned around to find a man in a leather jacket, black shirt and black jeans, stand with a casual stance. He had his hands crossed in front of his body, hands covered in black gloves and holding a loaded pistol with a silencer.

"Ella, run!" Alessandro yelled at me as he charged towards the unknown figure. 

The man had quick reflexes and aimed a strong punch straight into Alessandro's wounded abdomen. Alessandro buckled down in agony as the man laid into him again, this time with a swift kick to his shin. I stood in abject horror on the sidelines, completely mute at having one of the strongest men I had encountered getting battered mercilessly. Alessandro dropped to the ground and tried lifting himself up but kept falling. He turned sideways to see my limp body and mouthed "run" one last time before he put all his effort into one powerful punch into the assailant's abdomen. I turned around and started crawling through the wet street. I had no destination in mind, or even the fortitude to believe I could make it out alive. I simply crawled at an agonizingly slow pace. 

The sound of a loud gunshot pierce the air. I whipped my head around to watch the assailant's gun poised over Alessandro's lifeless body. Time stood still as the moment of his death filtered through my brain. I kept waiting for Alessandro to suddenly spring back into action like all the heroes did in every movie I had watched. He never woke up. He never even twitched. Realizing that he had taken care of one of his targets, the mysterious man turned his gaze towards me.

I tried to get up but slumped down embarrassingly fast. I crawled with all my might. My fingers scratched against the rough surface of the road and my nails clipped every time I clawed my way to safety. Desperation clung to every fiber of my being and the adrenaline pushed me to keep going. I wasn't fast enough for the trained assassin, who unbeknownst to me was secretly impressed by my blind optimism. He leisurely strolled towards me and walked around me. I saw the tips of his black boots in my direct line of sight and knew there was no way I could outrun him. 

"You're persistent," he said looking down on me. 

I looked up into the eyes of the last person I would see. The man had a young cupid face with the bluest eyes I had ever encountered. He had a smile on his face that was akin to a 15 year old boy getting a new bike. I peered up at him from my fallen position and he gave me a swift kick I did not see coming straight into my solar  plexus. I yelled in pain as I clutched my body and writhed in agony. 

He moved closer to me and knelt down with his right knee planted firmly onto the ground on one side of my body, while his other foot was propped on my other side. I was safely enclosed between his legs and had no way out. I stared into his eyes -- no remorse or warmth reflected in them. His gun rested in the neck of my throat and my body trembled in fear. I always assumed that when I was faced with death, my life would flash before my eyes. Instead, my mind was utterly and completely blank. Nothing existed except the stark clarity of this moment. No thought or memory drifted to my consciousness help me escape my this reality. All I knew was that this was it.

"I need you to give a message," the man said.

 He moved the gun slowly up my body -- from my navel, up to my rib cage and through the valley between my breast -- not once breaking eye contact with me. 

"This is his last warning," he said.

"Who's last warning?" I asked.

The man simply stared into my eyes with his dead expression and pistol whipped me to the temple. I was once again embraced by the peace that existed in this darkness. My last thought before I succumbed to the blankness was hoping against hope that Alessandro was alive.