Chapter 4 - Under the Wreckage
A chilling silence seemed to fall over Valeria's immediate surroundings, isolating her from the panicked screams of the fleeing crowd. Then, through the settling dust, she heard it—a low, agonizing groan of pain. She whipped her head around, her eyes adjusting to the dim, flickering emergency lights. The sight that met her eyes made her blood run entirely cold.
Daniel was trapped. He lay pinned beneath a massive, twisted section of the chandelier’s central iron frame. The heavy metal structure had caught him as he dove to push her clear. One of his arms was brutally wedged between jagged, shattered pieces of thick crystal and bent brass. Worse still, a deep, horrifying laceration ran down the entire length of his side, where a sharp piece of the fixture had sliced through his tailored suit jacket and deep into his flesh.
His breathing was shallow and ragged, and a thin, terrifying trickle of dark blood stained his lips. Despite the unimaginable agony he was clearly enduring, he painfully turned his head and looked up at her, his eyes searching her face in the gloom.
"Are you... okay?" he rasped, his voice barely a whisper above the ambient chaos of the ruined hall.
Valeria burst into uncontrollable, racking sobs. Disregarding the sharp shards of glass littering the floor, she crawled desperately toward him, ignoring the cuts scraping her knees and palms. She reached his side, her trembling hands hovering over his crushed form, terrified that touching him might cause him more pain.
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"Why would you do that?" she cried out, tears streaming down her dust-covered face. "Why didn't you just jump clear?"
Daniel gritted his teeth, taking a wet, shuddering breath. "Because," he whispered fiercely, "you are my family."
