Chapter 8

Two iron grips locked onto Ainsley's arms. The bodyguards dragged her out without expression, without hesitation.

Their heavy footsteps ground against the marble floor. Each echoing step crushed another piece of her heart.

The slap from moments ago had been vicious. Half her face still burned, her lip split at the corner, her mouth full of the metallic tang of blood.

Her hands. Her legs. The suffocating pressure in her chest. Pain layered upon pain, drilling into every nerve, every joint, every bone.

This was only the beginning.

The real nightmare was yet to come.

The basement was pitch-black. Dust coated the corners in thick layers, and the air hung damp and stale.

No light. Nothing but impenetrable darkness. She had no sense of time—didn't know if it was day or night, didn't know how many hours had passed.

Ainsley huddled in the corner, forehead pressed to her knees, every sense magnified in the void. The only sound was her own heartbeat.

She sat with her eyes wide open, watching nothing, as minutes bled into hours bled into days. Hunger hollowed out whatever strength remained.

Her tears had long since dried. Only a flat, ashen blankness filled her eyes.

Was she finally reaching the end?

Just as consciousness flickered and began to fade, the iron door screeched open from outside.

A tall figure stepped through, backlit, his familiar oppressive presence flooding the basement in an instant.

Elijah.

The vicious edge from that day was gone. The cold aura surrounding him had softened—slightly.

His expression was unreadable, his eyes heavy with something she couldn't decipher.

A servant trailed behind him carrying a bowl. Steam curled from the soup inside.

Elijah tilted his head. The servant placed the bowl in his hands and retreated with a bow.

In the sealed space, only he and Ainsley remained.

He walked to her slowly and looked down at her crumpled form on the ground.

Ainsley's eyelids fluttered. Her unfocused gaze struggled to sharpen, finally landing on his long fingers wrapped around the warm bowl.

Her clouded mind went blank. It took a long moment before a dim flicker of surprise surfaced.

No escape this time either?

She thought she was finally going to die.

She'd been so close. Why did Elijah have to appear now, holding a bowl of soup? Was she hallucinating at the edge of death?

In the dim light, the hard angles of his face had lost their usual cruelty. Something almost gentle showed through—something she couldn't name.

He crouched beside her and brought the bowl to her lips. His voice was low, flat, emotionless.

"Drink the soup."

"Get your strength back."

Warm breath grazed her frozen cheek. Ainsley's heart lurched.

It wasn't a hallucination.

Had he finally seen through Sabrina's lies? Did some trace of guilt stir inside him?

Even the smallest trace would be enough.

She lifted her bloodshot eyes and stared at the man before her, every wound and every wave of despair suspended for one fragile moment.

Then Elijah's lips parted, and the words that followed obliterated every last desperate fantasy.

"Sabrina collapsed with severe abdominal pain. They rushed her to the hospital. Tests show acute kidney failure."

"Her constitution is weak. They can't find a matching donor."

"Except you. Your kidney is a perfect match."

"Ainsley, drink the soup. Build your strength back up."

"You're going to donate a kidney to her."

Each sentence—light, casual, offhand—cut through her like a blade forged in ice, shredding the last flicker of life inside her.

It was never guilt. Never a softened heart.

He had appeared just as she was about to slip away. He was forcing food down her throat, keeping her body alive—never for her sake.

Only to preserve a healthy kidney. Only to save the woman who had framed her, deceived him, destroyed her over and over again.

To keep her alive and well enough to be carved open on an operating table.

Ainsley's entire body shook uncontrollably. Her drifting consciousness snapped into razor-sharp clarity for one searing instant. The last dim light in her eyes died. Nothing remained but hatred so dense it was suffocating.

She stared at the face she had loved for eight years and saw only a stranger. Grotesque. Revolting.

What kind of vendetta justified killing her child, torturing her in every way imaginable—and now cutting a kidney from her living body to ensure her enemy's comfort?

How absurd. How unspeakably cruel.

Ainsley's cracked, bleeding lips trembled. She scraped together every remaining ounce of strength and forced out a whisper of defiance.

"I won't drink it."

"Elijah, I won't donate."

"She will never get a single part of me."

She turned her head away, clamped her jaw shut, teeth grinding white. She would not open her mouth.

Even if she froze to death, starved to death in this basement—she would not give him what he wanted.

After everything Sabrina had done to her, they expected her to offer her own flesh and blood so that woman could walk away healthy and whole?

Never.

Elijah's hand paused on the bowl. A layer of lethal frost swept across his eyes.

The manufactured gentleness vanished, replaced by absolute, unchallengeable authority.

He had expected her resistance.

A woman who didn't know what was good for her, even when offered a chance at redemption.

He rose slowly to his full height and looked down at Ainsley on the ground, defiant to the last.

"You don't get a choice."

He turned toward the door and spoke in a voice like cold steel. "Come in."

The iron door swung open again. Two medical workers strode in carrying a nasogastric tube, restraint bandages, and bags of liquid nutrition.

The soft clink of instruments echoed through the basement like a death knell.

Ainsley's pupils contracted sharply. Panic clawed up from her gut as she curled tighter, scrambling backward.

She knew what those were.

A feeding tube.

They were going to force a tube down her throat.

They would override her will, keep her body alive against every wish, and wait for the day they could strap her to a table and cut out her kidney.

"No... don't touch me! Elijah, let me go!"

Her resistance was nothing against trained hands.

The two workers moved in, one on each side, pinning her thrashing body to the ground. Their palms clamped down on her trembling limbs with a force that made her bones scream.

She was already covered in wounds, weakened by days without food. She had no strength left to fight—only the futile twisting of her body and eyes brimming with bloody, desperate tears.

Elijah stood to the side, watching with cold detachment—as though observing an object.