Chapter 2

The hired actor who had fled must have ultimately called the cops. Sirens had pierced the night as police and paramedics swarmed the abandoned warehouse half an hour later.

"Move! Penetrating trauma to the chest, hemorrhagic shock! She already flatlined once! Prep for immediate intubation and page the Chief of Thoracic Surgery downstairs right now!"

The ER doctor was drenched in sweat. He kept both hands pressed frantically against the gaping hole in my chest, but the crimson tide still seeped stubbornly through his clamped fingers.

A flurry of hurried footsteps echoed from the far end of the corridor.

Alistair came striding into view, leading the charge. Robert, Martha, and Sloane followed closely on his heels.

"Which one of you is the patient's family?" A nurse rushed toward them, frantically waving a clipboard. "Her condition is extremely critical! The bullet is lodged less than a centimeter from her heart. She needs an emergency thoracotomy right away! I need a family member to sign the consent form here, now!"

Alistair glanced down at the blood-speckled consent form in the nurse's trembling hands, deeply furrowing his brows in distaste. He didn't take the pen. Instead, he let out a cold scoff and shifted his gaze toward the closed doors of the operating room.

"I must say, Elara's really outdone herself this time." Alistair's voice cut through the chaotic din of the ER—chillingly calm, dripping with derision. "She's bribing hospital doctors to put on a show now? Tell me, how much is she paying you people to play along with this little stunt?"

The nurse froze, staring at the impeccably dressed man in utter disbelief. "Sir, what are you talking about? Your wife is dying! That is a real bullet wound in her chest! If we don't operate immediately, she is going to bleed to death!"

"Drop the act." Martha stepped forward, waving her hand in annoyance. "We are her parents; we know exactly how she is. She's a lunatic who will pull any stunt for a shred of attention. Last time, just to keep Sloane from going to a party, she deliberately jumped into a freezing river to catch a cold. Now she thinks this charade will force us to cave?"

"Are you people out of your minds?!" The nurse shouted, her eyes red with frustration and panic. "There is a woman bleeding out in that room right now! Instead of caring about whether she lives or dies, you're standing here accusing us of acting?!"

The trauma bay doors violently swung open. Dr. Evans, the Chief of Thoracic Surgery, barged out in scrubs completely coated in my blood. He grabbed Alistair vehemently by the lapels of his suit and roared, "Sign the damn paper! Sign it now! Her systolic pressure just plummeted to thirty! If you delay this, God Himself won't be able to save her!"

Alistair shoved Dr. Evans's hands off him.

"Who authorized you to save her?" Alistair swept his gaze over the horrified medical staff, his voice dropping to a meticulous, menacing cadence. "I am her legal husband. Without my signature, if any of you so much as hold a scalpel to her skin, I will drag you through court for medical malpractice so thoroughly that this hospital will be shut down for good."

The chaotic corridor was instantly plunged into a dead, suffocating silence.

This man—the man I had once loved so deeply—was personally severing my final lifeline in the most unimaginably cruel way.

"Alistair..." Sloane's voice quivered violently. "Maybe... maybe you should just sign it? What if Elara is actually..."

"Shut your mouth!" Alistair whipped his head around, shooting daggers at Sloane. "Why do you think she's lying in there? Because of you! If you hadn't gone gambling, if you hadn't racked up a mountain of debt, would she have to suffer like this?"

"She's lying on that table right now to atone for your sins! That is the rule! You gamble, she takes the punishment. Every single drop of blood she sheds today is to pay off your debts!"

He marched over to Sloane and yanked her right up to the trauma room doors.

Terrified, Sloane's legs gave out, dropping her to her knees.

"Alistair, what are you doing?! You're terrifying Sloane!" Martha cried out, her heart breaking for her precious adopted daughter.

She rushed forward to help her, but Robert held her back.

"Let him teach her a lesson! If Elara is willing to go to such extreme, dramatic lengths to educate her sister, then we'll honor her efforts. Sloane, you need to learn from this today!"

Alistair stared down at the trembling, sobbing girl. Pointing at the consent form in the nurse's hand, he issued an instruction so profoundly absurd it bordered on madness.

"Sloane, you are going to stay right here and kowtow on this floor one hundred times facing these doors. With every single bow, you are going to shout, 'I swear I will never gamble again, and if I do, may Elara die in my place.' Once you've done that a hundred times, I will sign the form."

"You absolute psychopath!" Dr. Evans shook with unadulterated rage. He lunged forward to grab the clipboard from the nurse, intending to sign it himself, but Alistair easily shoved him back.

"This is our preferred method of family discipline, Doctor." Alistair eyed him with chilling indifference. "If you want my wife to live, I suggest you shut your mouth and watch quietly."

Sobbing and shaking violently under the watchful eyes of my parents and my husband's tyranny, Sloane pressed her forehead against the cold tile floor.

"I swear... I'll never gamble again..."

"And if I do... may Elara... die in my place..."

The sickening, dull sound of Sloane's head striking the floor and her tearful vows echoed down the sterile corridor.

The medical staff stood paralyzed in a mix of fury and helplessness. Some of the nurses simply turned their heads away, covertly wiping away tears of sheer disbelief and pity.

Sloane's forehead broke open, smearing her own blood across the hospital floor.

Martha shed tears of heartache for her, yet without making a single move to stop the punishment.

One hundred bows.

Such an agonizing eternity for someone bleeding to death on the operating table on the other side of those doors.

The steady rhythms of the EKG monitor surrendered, flattening into a desolately straight line.

"Push epinephrine! Give her another milligram!"

"Defibrillator ready! Two hundred joules! Clear!"

The electric shock jolted my physical body, propelling it violently off the metal table before it slammed down again, heavy and lifeless.

It was useless.

The fragile chain tethering me to this world—the pathetic delusion I had once called "love"—was snapping, link by link, into nothingness.

I floated beneath the blinding glare of the surgical lights, staring down at my own gray, lifeless face. I no longer felt the agonizing physical pain. I no longer felt the crushing sorrow of betrayal.