---- Chapter 2 The fluorescent lights of the hospital bathroom hummed, casting a sterile, unforgiving glow on my reflection in the mirror. The face staring back at me was a stranger' s-deathly pale, eyes wide with a horror so deep it felt bottomless. My hand, still trembling, came up to touch the glass. It was cold. Everything was so cold. Their voices echoed in my head, a cruel chorus on a loop. "| can't believe she actually did it. Sold a kidney!" "The heir to the Blackwood Corporation." "It was Tiffany' s idea... to teach the little orphan a lesson." The words dismantled my reality piece by piece. Two years. Two years of my life, built on a foundation of lies. ---- | thought back to the beginning, to the day | met him. | was working two part-time jobs, barely making rent on my tiny apartment, desperately trying to save for college. He had a small art stall at a local market, his paintings full of a beautiful, melancholic light. He told me he was an orphan, too, that he understood the struggle, the loneliness. That was the hook. For the first time, | felt seen. | felt like | had found not just a partner, but a family. The only family |' d ever known. We were two lost souls who had found each other in a harsh world. | cherished him. | cooked for him, cleaned his small, rented studio-a studio that was just a prop, | now realized-and | poured every ounce of love | had into him. When he got "sick," it felt like my world was ending. The diagnosis, the rapid decline, the doctor' s grave face-it was all a performance. ---- A meticulously staged play, and | was the unwitting, tragic lead. The fifty thousand dollars | got for my kidney, the money | handed over to him with tears in my eyes, telling him we would get through this together... where was it now? Probably spent on a single bottle of champagne for their victory celebration. The thought made a fresh wave of nausea roll through me. Everything was fake. His story was fake. The cancer was fake. His love was fake. Was our meeting even real? Or was that staged, too? A memory surfaced, sharp and sudden. A university speech competition, a year before | met Liam. | had won first place. Tiffany Hayes had won second. | remembered her standing backstage, her smile tight, her ---- eyes like chips of ice. | remembered her whispering to a friend as | passed, "No one gets to steal my spotlight. No one." At the time, I'd dismissed it as the sour grapes of a sore loser. Now, it felt like a declaration of war. She had been watching me, waiting for a chance to tear me down. And Liam was her willing weapon. The sheer, calculated cruelty of it all was breathtaking. It wasn't just a prank. It was a targeted, systematic destruction of a person she deemed beneath her. A hot, bitter feeling rose in my throat. It wasn't just sadness anymore. It was rage. A cold, quiet rage that burned away the tears. They thought they had broken me. They thought | was just some pathetic little orphan they could ---- play with and discard. They were wrong. | pulled out my phone, my fingers still clumsy but now driven by a new purpose. | found the number for Professor Davies, my old mentor from community college. He had always believed in me, had told me about a scholarship to a prestigious university abroad, a path |' d abandoned because | couldn't bear to leave Liam. He answered on the second ring. "Sarah? Is everything alright?" My voice was hoarse, but steady. "Professor Davies. Is that scholarship opportunity... is it still available?" There was a pause. "It is," he said, his voice full of warmth and concern. "But Sarah, are you sure? | thought-" ---- "I'm sure," | interrupted, my resolve hardening with every word. "| don't want to stay here anymore. | want to leave. | want to study." This game they were playing, this sick cat-and-mouse chase, | was done. | wouldn't be their mouse anymore. After hanging up, | looked at my bank account. The payment for the kidney had been split. Part of it had gone directly to the fake "medical bills." The rest, a substantial sum |' d been saving for our "future," was still there. A bitter laugh escaped my lips. This money, bought with a piece of my own body, was now my escape fund. It was a grim irony. | was glad, in a twisted way, that Liam hadn't taken all of it. Maybe that was the one small mercy in this whole nightmare. | walked out of that bathroom and straight to the nearest ---- bank. | transferred the funds for the tuition deposit. | went online and bought a one-way ticket to London The confirmation email felt like a gasp of fresh air after drowning. | had fifty thousand dollars left. It wasn't much to start a new life in a new country, but it was a start. It was mine.