I have had the first part written for several days but had a hard time deciding where to take it from there. This pulls in some from the books.


"Vic..."

"I turned my head away from the bright light breaking past my eyelids. The normal sound of blinds being raised was deafening to my ears.

"Vic sweetheart, it's your big day. Time to wake up."

This cannot be right. That voice should not be here.

"Mom?"

"Of course, who else would it be?"

Tell me this is not happening.

"What time is it? More importantly, how did you get in here?"

"It wasn't too hard to talk the manager into letting me in, especially when I told him you weren't answering your phone and that we didn't want you to be late to your own wedding."

I struggled to sit up.

"What time did you say it was again? The wedding isn't until 4."

My studio apartment allowed me a view of her puttering around in the kitchen from my bed. She was starting a pot of coffee.

"Vic, your my only daughter. God knows with the time I had getting you raised I thought this day may never come. Surely you won't deny me my proper Mother-of-the-Bride privileges including a morning at the spa with you, a relaxing manicure and pedicure followed by seeing you with an actual hairstyle."

"Mom, Shaun proposed while I was in uniform, gun at my side and my hair in a ponytail. We don't want him to think he is marrying an imposter."

"That is only because you never stopped working long enough to allow him to ask at a better time. By the way, I brought a package in for you. It was sitting outside your door. I imagine your groom didn't want to bring on any bad luck by delivering it in person before the ceremony. He is so sweet, I cannot imagine how you kept from scaring him off."

She gestured to the table where there sat a box wrapped simply in white paper with a large red bow.

She's right, Shaun is a great guy! After that whole Gorski affair, finding out he was married and crooked to boot, I am thankful to have found someone as steady as Shaun to spend the rest of my days with. No more sneaking around on company time. No more games that became progressively more dangerous. No more lies and manipulation. I walked over to the table and read the small card tied onto the ribbon. "Forever yours" was written on it in small script. I froze for a moment. The handwriting didn't belong to Shaun.

I started to become dizzy and lost my balance. Grabbing the edge of the table to keep myself from falling I heard my name from a distance as through a fog.

"Vic, are you alright?"

"Vic?"

"Vic!"

Everything went black.


I can't remember the last time my head hurt so badly. I'm not sure it ever has. Gunshot and knife wounds are bad enough but when your head feels like this it's brutal. It hurts to see, to hear, to think. I fight to remember where I am. Wasn't I just in Philly with my mother? I was getting ready to marry Shaun. I shook my head to try to clear my thoughts. It only made things more jumbled.

Once again I found my eyes fighting against the light in the room as I slowly become aware of my surroundings. The hospital. A place I have come to know well over the years.

The day starts to come back to me. The whole long, horrible day. No, I can't go through that now, though I know I will. Instead the end keeps playing over and over in my mind. Walt told me to go with Gorkski. Walt told me it was okay. Then like the man he is he stayed behind, sacrificing for others once again. What was he thinking? How could he expect me to trust that son-of-a-bitch? Then I realized Gorski is not the one Walt wanted me to trust. He expected me to trust him, which I did completely. Otherwise I would have rather taken my chances with those psychos than leave in that car. So once again I am safe and he is...

Where's Walt!?

"Walt"

"He's not here."

I forced my eyes open to see my husband sitting in the chair next to the bed. I took a long, deep breath.

"Are you okay? You should be you lying down. They beat you pretty badly with that bat."

He wouldn't look at me but kept his eyes steadily focused across my bed at the wall beyond. It was only a minute or two before he spoke again, though it seemed like hours.

"The doctor and nurses couldn't understand why you weren't waking up. They wanted me to sit and talk to you because they thought you would be able to sense I was close and it would help draw you back." He paused. "I couldn't bring myself to tell them your husband wasn't the one you were searching for."