Thank you for all the reviews, and favs and follows. I am sorry I couldn't answer you, life is a mess right now, I barely manage to find time to sit down and write, but please know each of them was appreciated, and heard. For those of you that felt a bit confused, don't worry, in due time, everything will be clear. As this is an AU, José as of the moment is our villain. :)

Chapter Three

The world is in chaos. I'm surrounded by voices that come from all directions, in different tones, and I hear the urgency and desperation in them, but my mind doesn't register the meaning. My mind only registers that moment, that fateful moment that José pulled the trigger and Grey collapsed in my embrace. He's still in my arms, and I can't let him go.

I vaguely feel strong callous fingers clawing at mine, trying to break my grip over him as my mind plays the scene in a loop... Trigger, bang, he collapses, I scream. "Ms. Steele," a soft but stern voice echoes from distance, so far away in the chaos; trigger, bang, he collapses, I scream, "Ms. Steele—" it calls again, as the fingers' pressure increases, "Ms. Steele, it's okay—" the speaker has a distinctive calmness in heavy English accent, something as trustworthy and enduring as like mountains, "everything is okay. Let him go," it commands.

Instinctively I lift my head up and see his driver, Taylor, at my side, trying to take Grey from me. Wordlessly, I shake my head, my hair plastered over my cheeks with my tears. He pulls my hand more strongly, "Ms. Steele, everything is okay," he tells me again with that gentle sternness. I stare at him. He glances back, toward the medics just have come to our side. Sudden hands grab me then whisk me away, so suddenly I feel like something has ripped out of me. I scream more. "Someone gets her a sedative," someone yells, as Taylor catches me.

His grip is tighter than I imagine, and I fight it back as medics turn Grey's back, then I see his wound, blood sputtering down the payment. "Male, early 30s, shot at his back," the medic yells over to her co-worker starts a tourniquet on the wound immediately as the other continues checking his vitals, "B.P 140 over 90," her pen-light flashes over his eyes as she opens his eyelids, "Pulse 100. Temp 102.5," she yells once again, "B Rh-," she lifts her head, and commands, as another medic grabs me again at my shoulders and starts dragging me away from the scene. "I need blood."

Shaking my head, I resist. "No, no—" I say, craning my head aside to see Grey as they load him on a stretcher, his body already covered with a red blanket, his nose closed with air regulator, three medics leaned all over him as tying a blood bag in his vein with IV. Taylor stands over the stretcher, too, towering over all of them. "No—no," I yank myself back as the medic hauls me to the opposite direction from the ambulance, "No, I need to be there. I need to—"

"Let me go!" I scream, pulling my arm back, "Taylor!" I shout. He turns toward me, and over the sea of people his eyes find me, black eyes burning with dangerous fire. I run to him, "Taylor," I remember suddenly I even don't know his first name, but it makes no little difference, not now. "I have to be there," I say, almost in a whisper, and beg, "please, I need to be there." I need to see it, I need to be sure; the loop is continuous, tortuous, and timeless; a snapshot of a second frozen in time; trigger, bang, he collapses, I scream...

As if he understands, the driver nods at me, then catches my elbow, and lifts me up in the ambulance like I weigh less than a feather. Then I notice how he looks nothing like a driver. He's a taciturn, dark haired man of strong muscles and deft movements, as gentle as a sleek panther. Not a driver. I look at the stern look over his face, the unreadable expression over his face as he sits across me, collected as I'm a heap of tears and sobs. He has the looks of someone who have already seen something like this, experienced blood and panic, though I can still see the anger beneath the calm exterior, lightened in his eyes; not his driver but his bodyguard, I understand. "I'm sorry," I shake my head, my eyes drawing toward Grey, "I'm so sorry, I don't understand how—" I whimper, "I—I even didn't—"

He lifts his head up. "We will talk about it later, Ms. Steele," he tells me, looking at me, and I see that he has meant it. The anger is more vivid now in his eyes, for what happened, I stumble back in my bench, nodding. My eyes find Grey again, lying over his shoulder as medics continue to check his vitals. "Don't worry, he aimed for your heart," Taylor tells me suddenly, "but missed the main artery in his neck," he remarks, "He's lost blood, but he's going to make it." The medic that is with us in the ambulance lifts her head up from Grey and stares at the man like me. He looks back at us, "I know what a gunshot does to a body," he explains.

The medic turns back to Grey, I continue staring at him, his words turning in my mind, replacing the scene; he's going to make it...he's going to make it. He's not going to die because of you, Ana.

It echoes in my mind like a chant, like a pray, and if only I could believe it, if only I could. I open my mouth again, to say something, anything, but before I can form any voice out, the ambulance has stopped. A cluster of people open the doors as they pull out the stretcher with hasty but steady hands. In the middle of the crowd I see a doctor in early fifties running toward us, her eyes bloodshed. "Jason!" she screams as she launches forward, "Where is he? God, where is he?" then her eyes catch a look of Grey and she stands there as if she's suddenly cast off stone, then starts shouting, "Get him ready for the operation, prepare the room 1, and get me Doctor Steven," she fires orders rapidly, then leans over him. She lifts his eyelids and sheds light into his pupils like other medics did, "Christian, darling, can you hear me?" I hear her whisper into his ear before someone grabs me and pulls me under an alcove in front of the hospital.

I lift my head up and see Taylor—no, what was the woman called him? I try to make all things straighten in my head, but it was impossible... "Who is she?" I ask, watching their retreating backs as they hurry Grey into the hospital.

"Doctor Grey," Taylor answers, "She's Mr. Grey's mother."

My mouth hangs in open. I feel once again the world slip off me, my knees starting to give away. God, I have brought a mother her bleeding son, God! "Ms. Steele," Taylor calls my attention commandingly, "the police will be here shortly and before they come, I need to ask you a few questions."

I nod, tears starting to run again over my cheek, the images plastered over my eyes, no mother should have lived through this, no one... "That boy—how do you know him?" Taylor asks.

"He's—" I answer, but my voice creaks too much, I stop, then begin again, "We were in the same class at Colombia—" I try another time, "He was raping my classmates with roofies, tried to hurt Kat—" Then I stop, so suddenly like someone has really shot me in the heart, then I scream, "KATHERINE!" I jerk violently, "Oh my god, Katherine!" I start searching for my bag, to find my phone, I need to warn her, oh my god, Katherine, god, please don't let anything happen to her, oh please, please! "Where is my bag?" I wail and grab his shirt with my fists, "Your phone!" I bark out wildly, "gimme your phone!"

He clutches my hands in his chest, "Ms. Steele," he says sternly, "What's happening?"

"Katherine!" I shout again, "I need to warn her," my hands start lowering to his pockets, "Gimme your phone, goddammit!"

My panic finally registers to him, and he obliges. He hands me the phone. Frantically I call Katherine, only to hear a voice informing me that I can't reach to her at the moment. I call her father then, my whole body trembling, "Mr. Kavanagh," I cry over as soon as the line is picked.

"Ana," he replies with a frown in his voice, and I understand he hasn't heard anything... My cries turn heavier. "Ana, what happened?" Mr. Kavanagh demands, "Are you hurt?"

I shook my head. "Not me," I cry with each word, "José—" then whisper between my sobs, "He's—out, he—he's fo—und—m-ee!" My words turn to weeps, unrecognizable, my hand now clutching Taylor's arm, "Katherine—" I whisper for the last time before I crumple into desperation as a heap of tears, then there is nothing but fear, pain, and dark.

As soon as I crack my eyes open an inch, a bright white light assaults me, my head is a mesh, my brain mushed up like a potato puree. Letting out a low noncommittal sound, I cringe, or at least try to, and shutter my eyes close. Even with close eyelids though I can sense other presences in the room, as if ghosts hanging in the corners. I open my mouth, try to ask about Katherine, but my dry throat doesn't let me. "Kaaghhr—" I try second time, my eyes still closed.

A wet cotton ball passes over my dehydrated lips, a few sips of water slip through my mouth, "She's fine," a motherly, comforting voice says, "Mr. Kavanagh has sent her out of the country."

I open my mouth, and mumble again. "We sedated you," the woman tells me, "You were having a break down," she pauses for a second before she continues; "Jason told me you were very brave though."

Me...brave? I don't remember anything brave, but Jason... who is Jason...? I try to open my eyes, and at the second attempt, I manage, I flutter them open, then over my eyes the black-haired figure I saw earlier slowly appears... Grey's mother! I start straightening back, but the woman doesn't let me. Her strong hands catch me and force me back to the bed. Despite her little lithe figure, she has an incredible strength, like I weight nothing as she eases me back on the pillows. "Mr. Grey?" I ask her, my eyes fixed at hers.

"He's fine," she replies, His operation has finished. He's sleeping now." I rest myself further back on the pillows. I want to ask more, questions turning in the cobwebs of my mind, so many questions, but I'm out of focus, and my sore throat doesn't let me speak a lot. But I know he will be fine. Otherwise the good doctor wouldn't be here sitting with me this serenely. She wouldn't. "We try to reach out to your family—" the woman starts talking again and I wish she didn't, "But we couldn't reach to your mother."

My eyes this time deliberately closed, I nod. Mother is still on her honeymoon with her new—latest husband, in their fourth—month. The last time we talked, they were about to leave for Cambodia and who knows where they are now. I certainly don't. "You must know, Ms. Steele," the woman remarks suddenly, breaking the brief silence in the room, "No one blames you for what happened today."

I nod again, my eyes still closed. Somehow it makes me feel a bit better hearing those words from his mother. I know of course they wouldn't blame for anything, I mean, my logical part knows it, I'm a victim of the event as much as Grey himself, but still it makes the weight on my chest has lift off a bit further up, as if someone just set me free of guilt. "You will pass the night here, and Jason will be staying with you," she says, and I notice another in the room with us, a subtle presence that is barely there. I feel a hand touch me briefly, "Sleep well, Ms. Steele," she says for the last before she leaves the room, "You have nothing to fear."

When I wake up again, it was night. I crane my head aside, my eyes searching the room to find a clock to check the time. A second later I see the white clock at the wall, presenting the hour as almost midnight. Knitting my eyebrows, I shake my head. I must have been sleeping for hours.

But I already feel better, only hungrier and thirstier. I stir in the bed, and the gentle stern, familiar voice remarks from my left side, "Good, you've wake up."

I turn to left, and see Taylor sitting on an armchair next to the bed, his legs propped over a foot couch. A faint smile slowly appears over my lips upon seeing the bodyguard, as a feeling of safety registers at me, and I don't know when it has happened, but his presence—the stern softness is comforting. Nodding, I straighten up, "Yeah," I say, "Sorry for this—" I continue, looking at him, ashamed, "I've caused so much trouble—"

His face suddenly thunderous, he leans forward, "You have nothing to apologize for," he says, shaking his head, "It's me who has to apologize. My job is to protect Mr. Grey and people is close to him," he says, "and I've failed."

I shake my head. "You wouldn't know," I object, "And I'm not close to Mr. Grey." He gives me a look. I shake my head again, and correct, "I was just—near to him."

He shakes his back at me. "It's my job to protect who is near to him, too," he says, then his face turns sterner, "But I guarantee you it won't happen again." I give him a questioning look, but he acts like he doesn't notice it. "You must be hungry," he says instead and stands up from the armchair, "Let me find you something to eat."

Then he leaves the room, as I look at his retreating back as he vanishes through the door. Suddenly I feel like I've fallen into something I can barely make sense then I realize the situation. Christian Grey—Christian Grey was shot, was shot while protecting me from a rapist's bullet. There will be severe consequences of an event like this, both personal and business.

I jerk off the bed, and turn on the TV on the bed stand. I survey the channels, jumping one to another quickly, but each is the same, like I have thought—flash news: Christian Grey is shot.

"How the events occurred still maintains its mystery as the police refuse making a statement as well as the Grey House," the host of CNN remarks in professional tones, "but our sources say it might be a crime of passion—"

I look at the screen, my mind suddenly numb... Crime of passion? Goodness... crime of passion? Though, looking at it from a certain view of point, one would say that it was...though it would be an exaggeration. Shaking my head, I stare at the host as she keeps retelling Grey's history, and how his love life, or the lack of it, has been always a point of keen interest in the media as the man has never presented himself with a girlfriend or anything like this in public.

I've noticed that, too, of course, but it's never crossed my mind before, as I was more interested with his other stuff than his lack of romance. I can clearly see now what they would turn this into—how glamourous a crime of passion would be coming to their ears, I can even see the glint in their eyes.

Shaking my head, I turn off the TV, my nerves getting on edge. Just the thing I need. "Don't listen to them," Taylor suddenly appears back into room, holding a sandwich bag. He hands it out to me. "They're just—"

Cutting his sentence, I accept the bag. "I know." I open it, and take out the sandwich, "Believe me, I know. " I take a bit, and shake my head, "But I don't like it."

He smiles a bitter smile. "I figured out you wouldn't, Ms. Steele."

"Please, Ana," I say back, and he nods, but doesn't offer me the same courtesy. I shrug mentally. "The police—" I look at him, "Where are the police? Why they didn't come to take my deposition?"

"They came, but you were sleeping," he replies, "Doctor Grey said you weren't in a position to answer questions."

I frown. "I'm fine."

"Now, yes," he shoots back, then his eyes find mine, "which reminds me our talk before it's—interrupted."

I look back at him straight in the eyes. "What do you want to know?"

"Everything," he answers without hesitantly, "When he wakes up, Ana," he says pointedly, "Mr. Grey will want to know everything. Everything." He gives me a look. "You must understand we're involved now, too."

The sandwich forgotten in my hands, I stare at him, the situation finally settles in me. My life is saved by Christian Grey, and the consequences have already started showing their impacts on our lives.

Next time Grey wakes up, and will see what happened. Wonder how he would react, eh?