Let them bury her

Aysha POV

I woke up to white ceiling tiles and a pain so deep in my chest that I couldn't tell where my body ended and the ache began.

For a moment I didn't know where I was. The room smelled like antiseptic and something faintly floral, lavender maybe, coming from somewhere I couldn't place. Machines hummed quietly beside me. A drip line ran into the back of my hand.

I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it.

"Hey, hey, easy." A voice I hadn't heard in years, low and familiar, cut through the fog. "Don't move too fast."

I turned my head slowly and found Diego sitting beside the bed, elbows on his knees, looking like he hadn't slept in days.

"Diego." My voice came out cracked and strange.

"You're safe," he said, before I could ask anything else. "You're safe. I've got you."

"What happened." I tried to remember, tried to pull the pieces together. Adrian. Mira. The divorce papers. My car. Headlights closing in fast in the mirror. "The car. Someone hit me."

"Someone tried to kill you," Diego said quietly. "Cause the moment I got there, the truck that hit you zoomed off."

The words didn't fully land at first. My body was too heavy, my thoughts too slow, everything happening several seconds behind where it should be.

"Tried to kill me," I repeated.

"Yes."

"Who."

"I don't know yet. But I'm going to find out."

I closed my eyes, trying to hold onto something solid, anything that made sense in a night that had already broken everything I thought I knew.

"Adrian," I whispered. "Does he know I'm here? Does he know I'm alive?"

Diego went quiet for a beat too long.

"Diego."

"No," he said. "Nobody knows you're alive. And right now, that's the only reason you still are."

I opened my eyes and stared at him.

"What are you talking about?"

He reached for the remote sitting on the small table beside the bed and turned on the television mounted in the corner of the room, muting it immediately after, letting the picture speak instead.

My own face filled the screen.

A photograph from a charity gala two years ago, me in a blue gown, smiling at a camera I didn't remember posing for that carefully. Beneath it, white letters scrolled across a black news banner.

Young Billionaire's Wife, Aysha Hayes, Dies In Tragic Car Accident.

I stared at it, unable to breathe, unable to speak, my chest tightening around something that had nothing to do with my broken ribs.

"They think I'm dead."

"Yes."

"They buried me?"

"There's a funeral scheduled for tomorrow," Diego said carefully, watching my face like he was bracing for it to break. "Aysha, listen to me. Whoever did this to you thinks they succeeded. That's the only thing keeping you alive right now. If you show up anywhere, if a single record puts your name back into the world, they will try again, and next time I might not get to you in time."

I looked back at the screen, at my own smiling photograph sitting beside the word died like it belonged there.

"Who's going to cry for me tomorrow," I whispered, more to myself than to him. "Martha, maybe. My mother, if she even gets the news in time to fly in. And Adrian will stand there in a perfectly tailored suit holding Mira's hand for the cameras and call it grief."

"Aysha."

"No, let me say it." My voice cracked but I kept going anyway, something bitter and clear rising up through the fog of painkillers and shock. "I spent twelve years trying to be someone worth loving in that house. And the one time I actually mattered to anyone, it's because somebody wanted me erased."

Diego reached over and took my hand carefully, mindful of the IV taped into the back of it.

"You matter to me," he said quietly. "You've always mattered to me. That's the entire reason you're still breathing right now instead of lying in a morgue somewhere with your name on a tag."

I turned my head to look at him properly for the first time since waking up, taking in the exhaustion carved into his face, the blood still dried faintly along his collar that I hadn't noticed before.

"You saved my life."

"I did what anyone would have done."

"No," I said. "You didn't call an ambulance. You didn't take me somewhere official. You brought me here, to a clinic that doesn't exist on paper, to a doctor who's clearly willing to break every rule in the book for you. That's not what anyone would have done, Diego. That's what someone does when they've already decided they're not losing you."

He didn't answer right away, his jaw working like he was choosing his words carefully.

“How did you know all this.” He asked.

"Cause I heard you guys talking while I was unconscious.” I said looking at him, “So what am I supposed to do," I asked, my voice barely holding together. "Just disappear? Let them bury an empty coffin and pretend I never existed?"

"For now, yes."

"For how long, Diego?"

"For as long as it takes."

I pressed the back of my good hand against my mouth, tears finally breaking through everything I'd been holding back since I opened my eyes in this room.

"He's going to stand there tomorrow," I whispered. "In front of everyone. Pretending to grieve a wife he was already divorcing. Holding Mira's hand while they bury me."

Diego's jaw tightened.

"I know."

"And there's nothing I can do about it."

"Not yet," he said. "But Aysha, I need you to hear me on this. Whoever ordered that hit is going to keep watching, keep waiting to make sure the job stuck. The only way you get justice, the only way you get to walk back into that world and make them answer for what they did, is if you let them believe they won. For now."

I stared down at the thin hospital blanket covering my legs, at the IV taped into the back of my hand, at a body that felt like it belonged to a stranger.

Aysha Hayes had died on that highway.

Whoever survived this bed was going to have to become someone else entirely.

"Diego." I looked up at him, my voice steadier than I expected it to be. "Whoever did this. I need you to help me find them."

"I will."

"No. I need more than that." Something cold and clear was settling into place behind my eyes, replacing the panic with something sharper. "I need you to help me become someone they'll never see coming."

He studied me for a long moment, something unreadable passing behind his expression.

"You sure that's what you want?"

"I watched my husband tell another woman he loved her while I bled on our living room floor," I said. "I signed my own divorce papers under his signature because I was too broken to fight him on it. And now someone tried to have me killed for it. So no, Diego. I'm not sure that's what I want."

I sat up slowly, ignoring the pain screaming through my ribs, and met his eyes.

"I'm certain of it."

Diego leaned back in his chair, studying me like he was seeing something new take shape right in front of him.

"Then get some rest," he said quietly. "Because starting tomorrow, Aysha Hayes doesn't exist anymore."

I swallowed hard, my eyes drifting back to the muted television, to the funeral coverage already beginning to play beneath my photograph.

"Good," I said. "Let them bury her."