Chapter 4
Chloe's POV
My parents' faces instantly darkened.
"Are you out of your mind, Chloe?" my mother snapped. She adjusted her designer scarf, glaring at me with sheer disgust.
"Don't jinx your sister with your sick, unlucky nonsense!" my father hissed, his face red with anger.
Alexander’s jaw tightened. He looked at me with cold impatience.
"Stop being so dramatic, Chloe," he ordered, his voice flat. "When this is over, I'll buy you that diamond necklace you wanted."
He spoke to me like I was a beggar on the street.
A stray dog he could buy off with a shiny toy.
I looked at the three people I loved most in this world.
I let out a low, bitter laugh.
"Keep the necklace," I whispered. "I don't want anything anymore."
I turned around and walked into the freezing darkness.
The heavy iron door slammed shut behind me.
It wasn't a clinic. It was a slaughterhouse.
Nick Sloane, the disgraced underground doctor, strapped me to a rusted, blood-stained operating table.
He didn't give me any anesthesia.
"Painkillers cut into my profit margin," Nick grunted. He picked up a massive, terrifyingly thick extraction needle.
Then, the nightmare began.
It wasn't a surgery. It was a live bone marrow extraction.
A slow, agonizing execution.
The needle violently pierced my lower back, drilling straight into my spine.
I screamed until my vocal cords tore.
My body was already hollowed out by late-stage bone cancer.
It simply couldn't take the trauma.
It felt like my bones were being crushed into powder. Millions of fire ants chewed through my veins.
The torture lasted for days.
They kept me barely alive, just to siphon every last drop of marrow out of me.
Through the blinding pain, I wondered what my family was doing.
Were they eating Wagyu beef? Was Alexander holding Vivian's hand?
Finally, my shattered heart gave out.
My cancer-ridden body collapsed under the extreme agony.
With one last, suffocating gasp, the pain abruptly stopped.
I died alone on that filthy, blood-soaked table.
"Hey! Wake up!" Nick barked, slapping my cold face.
He checked my pulse. He froze.
Panic washed over the black-market doctor's greedy face.
His hands shook as he grabbed his burner phone and dialed the emergency number.
Alexander answered on the third ring.
"Mr. Sinclair... there's a problem," Nick stammered, sweating profusely. "Chloe... she's dead!"
Silence on the other end.
Then, Alexander's furious scoff echoed through the phone.
At that exact moment, he was in a VIP boutique, watching Vivian try on a million-dollar tiara.
"Tell Chloe to stop playing dead," Alexander snarled, his voice dripping with venom.
"I'm sick of her pathetic, attention-seeking tricks!"
"But Mr. Sinclair, I'm serious! She has no pulse!"
"Tell her if she doesn't finish the procedure, I'll bankrupt her family tonight."
Click.
Alexander hung up.
He immediately blocked the doctor's number.
Nick stared at the phone in pure disbelief.
"You psycho billionaires," he muttered, spitting on the floor.
Terrified of a murder charge, Nick dragged my stiffening corpse off the table.
He wrapped my body in a filthy, rotting canvas tarp.
He hauled me down a dark, narrow hallway.
He tossed me into an abandoned cold storage room filled with trash.
The stench of decay was unbearable.
He locked the heavy steel door and ran.
But I didn't leave.
My soul drifted out of my broken body, hovering in the freezing air.
I was trapped. Bound to my rotting corpse.
I had to watch in horror as my own flesh began to decay in the darkness.
My entire life was a joke.
And even in death, I was treated like literal garbage.
Seven days passed. Seven days of suffocating silence.
Then, the heavy sound of footsteps broke the quiet.
Familiar, cheerful laughter echoed outside the cold storage door.
My mother's eager, excited voice rang out clearly through the steel.
"Doctor, was the experiment successful?" she asked, practically vibrating with joy.
"Is it absolutely safe for my youngest daughter to have the surgery now?"
