All Chapters of Too Strong to Save: Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

"Doctor! Please, save Miss Anna! She's been shot!"Warren, my father's consigliere, found me lying alone on the ground, my face drained of color. He scooped me up and rushed me to the hospital."She's been hit multiple times. She's barely conscious. She needs surgery right now!"The only person at the entrance was a nurse."Stop! You'd better take her somewhere else," she warned. "The Don and Donna DeMarco are upstairs with their daughter. They've brought in every top surgeon in the hospital. Nobody's free to see anyone else!""This is their daughter!" Warren shouted. "Their biological daughter!"He pushed past her and carried me straight to the second floor.My younger sister, Lillian, was on an operating table, waiting for a wound to be dressed. Doctors crowded around her. The moment my parents, Ryder and Christine DeMarco, saw Warren carrying me in, their faces darkened."Warren," Dad snapped, "you're supposed to be my consigliere. Instead of helping me, you're bringing Anna

I followed a terrified Becca straight through the operating room ceiling and drifted up to the VIP suites.The door to Lillian's room stood slightly open. Cheerful laughter floated into the hall.Lillian was propped against a mountain of pillows in brand-new silk pajamas, watching television. Her arm had been wrapped in the finest dressing the hospital could offer. Mom had even ordered a calming diffuser for the room so Lillian wouldn't get worked up again.Dad sat beside the bed with a small, elegant fruit knife, painstakingly picking every seed out of a bowl of watermelon."Daddy, this isn't sweet enough. I don't want it."Lillian pushed the bowl away with a pout.Dad set it aside immediately and went to wash his hands."Then you don't have to eat it, sweetheart. What would you like instead? I'll have someone bring it up."Lillian's eyes darted around. Then her expression turned worried."I want Anna's lemon-pepper wings. But she still hasn't come to see me. Do you think she

Dad's fury froze on his face, as if someone had hit pause.He stared at the name printed on the death certificate, his eyes widening in disbelief."Alan, this isn't something you joke about. You're a doctor. How can you make a patient's life the punch line?"Alan held the paper closer."Don DeMarco, it isn't a joke. I'm informing you officially."Dad snatched the certificate from his hand. His fingers trembled so badly that he crumpled the page."No. That's impossible. How could this happen?"Anna has always been strong. It was only a gunshot wound. How could she not pull through?"He shoved past Alan and ran for the operating room downstairs.Mom let go of Lillian and hurried after him, muttering in panic."Nothing vital was hit. I checked. How could she...? How could she...?"I drifted after them down the stairwell.Mom was so unsteady that she nearly fell down the stairs.Lillian, whose arm suddenly didn't appear to hurt anymore, followed them downstairs too.Dad stopp

Dad was so worried that Mom would make herself ill with grief that he finally insisted she leave my bedroom.Nora, who'd always looked after me, hurried after them with a folder."Don DeMarco, Miss Anna treasured this for a very long time."I think you ought to see it."It was the business proposal I'd written when I was preparing to move to Port Calloway.Dad read it carefully, page by page. Tears kept slipping down his cheeks.He'd cried more in the last two days than I'd seen him cry in all my eighteen years.Mom sat beside him."Ryder," she whispered, "our daughter was so talented. We never knew.""She was," he said. "Look at this plan. It's better than anything I've ever planned."He pointed to a passage."She even accounted for this. Every detail."She was careful and brilliant. How did we never notice?"The fragile calm Mom had managed to regain collapsed again.Her voice grew hoarse as she cried my name over and over."Anna... Anna..."Please come back. If you c