"Come to the hospital immediately Aria, we have a new client who needs blood. He's willing to pay $5 Million."

My chest felt heavy just by reading it.

Another client needs blood when I haven't healed from the previous blood donation.

I typed back in anger. "I won't come, I'm sick."

He only remembers how to text me when he needs a blood donor, not when he needs me.

If I knew being a RH NULL would make me an ATM machine, I wouldn't have let him know in the first place.

Another alert dropped, and checking it, it was from the bank.

"Dear customer, your loan remains..."

Arrgh!! When will I ever be free from this loan!

Three years ago, people envied me for being the most pampered wife. How did that change?

Marrying a doctor was a blessing, and I thought I was lucky. How come I never knew?

If I obeyed him this time, then it would be the fifth blood donation this month, more than my body could take, yet Frank never cared!

"Aria, stop fooling around and come right now!" His text reads through the popup.

I felt suffocated even though the air conditioner was on.

Frank Armstrong has turned himself into the Miracle RH blood doctor all over the country by using me as his blood bank, yet I pay the bills!

He would always use surgeries as the excuse for sleeping out, never took me out to get me things, or ever showed me off as his wife.

"Aria!" I could imagine his fury through the new text, and I clicked the messaging app to block him temporarily when another message popped in from an unfamiliar number.

[Hi bestie..... Oops Mrs. Armstrong. I heard you're now a blood bank? Well that suits someone that clings to a man like a leech. I even heard that you and Frank haven't consummated your marriage. Did he hate you that much? Sighs, If I were you, I'd find a rope to hang myself. You're just like a piece of furniture.]

A piece of furniture?

I could imagine who this was without thinking much. Dorcas!

[How did you get my contact?]

She used to be my rival back at school and somehow became friends but not too close, and after marriage we lost contact, so how did she get my contact and even know about the blood donation...

[Enjoy, don't cry much.] Her message entered again following a photo that set my heart on fire.

It was Frank's calm sleeping face. His handsome sculpted features were like an intricate art piece that made me fall in love with him at first sight.

The woman nestled on Frank's shoulder was indeed Dorcas!

My hand started shaking and I could not look away from the screen. They looked peaceful together. They looked like I never existed.

"How did…." My text was interrupted by a call from the Armstrong Villa.

Still in a trance, I picked the call and my mother-in-law's loud and annoying voice boomed: "Did you forget what day it is today? The servants are off today, so hurry up and come over to cook for us!"

Anger surged from my belly like a tornado. She doesn't even know I am her son's ATM card!

To satisfy her and be a good daughter-in-law, I volunteered to always replace the servants whenever they are not around.

But why now!

Tears stung my face.

Nothing qualified me as the young madam of a medical family.

Was Dorcas right?

"Have you gone dumb?" Old Madam Armstrong yelled.

I flinched and my fingers tightened around the phone until my knuckles turned white.

I snapped back and let my heart do the work. "Em, Mother?"

"What!?"

"I…." This would be the first time I would do this, and I was really scared, but Frank is fucking Dorcas of all people when he knew the kind of shit I passed through at college in the hands of Dorcas.

"Are you messing with me right now?"

I snapped back awake, a strange resolve unfurling. "I will not come, Mother… I mean Old Madam Armstrong."

She gasped in horror. "Is..Is this Ariadne!?"

"Do not call me to serve as your servant anymore, Madam Armstrong. I'm the young madam, not a slave."

Then I ended the call before she could gasp.

Perhaps this would be the end of this mad imprisonment!

I had been a fool all these while. I got up and grabbed my coat, texting Frank as the tears flowed. [Let's get a divorce Frank. I want freedom]

Frank called immediately. I was already on my way out, unable to contain myself. "Aria, what is wrong with you? Asking for a divorce at this critical moment? My patient is in critical condition..."

"Let's meet up at the restaurant opposite the hospital."

I hung up after that sentence. I need not say much.

My family didn't sell me to him, nor were they happy that I cut them off.

Why imprison myself any longer?

Standing before the house, waiting for a cab, a bank alert dropped.

[$5 million has been paid off from your loan. The remaining is.....]

I stared at the screen and my breath caught in my throat. All this time, he had the money to pay it off. He just chose not to. He wanted me trapped.

I laughed but no sound came out. Just tears.

[I'm no longer foolish, hubby. Let's meet up and discuss the divorce.]

Suppressing the pain in my heart and the burning sensation, I took a cab toward the hospital.

I have to end this imprisonment called marriage even if I have to go back crawling to Dad

I chose to ignore his calls as they dropped every minute and his mother's furious text.

They never know my worth, or what I left behind at my father's house to be here with them.

Three fucking years!

"Madam, your soy milk..." the waiter offered upon my arrival.

They knew me here as a regular customer after blood donation, to get some milk before going home.

This was also my meeting place with Frank to prevent anyone knowing our relationship.

But today, I wasn't here to replenish energy or wait for him. "A shot of tequila instead, mixed but not much."

"You changed your taste..."

I smiled at him, shaking my head. "No. I'm no longer foolish. My taste didn't change; I did."

He looked at me like I was mad but left anyway.

Frank arrived before the waiter was back, stern, expressionless, and his gaze cold.

"All thanks to you. I lost that patient; now I have to refund that 5 million that I have used to pay part of the loan."

"You took the loan, not me," I said, lifting my eyebrows to remind him, my drink now here. "Why do you feel bad because you paid it?"

Frank, but his lips, the first time I would see him so frustrated. "You're drinking tequilla now?"

I took a sip. "What is wrong if I do? I'm not pregnant, right?"

"But the blood..."

"...is none of your business anymore, Frank."

His jaw tightened but he didn't raise his voice because he never did. He was an expert at manipulation. "Aria, don't be ridiculous. Your blood is RH NULL, and one drink will crash your immune system further, and you know this."

"I know a lot of things now," I said and took another sip so the burn could match the one in my chest. "Like how you had the money to pay off that loan all along and like how Dorcas got my contact and like how she ended up in your bed."

He looked frozen but didn't show it.

"Dorcas is a colleague, and she was tired, so she rested," he said flatly.

"On your shoulder with no shirt?"

He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "You're being dramatic, and you know..."

"Three years, Frank!" I interrupted him. "Three years of bleeding for you and cooking for your mother and paying bills you said were 'ours,' and I'm the dramatic one?"

"Where is this coming from?" He ran a hand through his hair like he was tired of me. "Is it because I paid the loan? I was saving for something important—"

"Me?" I cut in because I needed to know. "Were you saving for me?"

Silence.

"Frank, did you ever care for me like I was your wife?"

He said nothing again, but I continued. "The reason why you care for me was because I donate blood. Your caring for me was like a patient, not a wife!"

Then the restaurant door swung open, just as I concluded my words. Dorcas entered.

"Frank, darling, you left so suddenly—" She stopped when she saw me, but her smile didn't fall, like she was expecting this. " Oh. Ary is here..."

Frank's head snapped toward her. "What are you doing here?"

"You weren't answering your phone," she said and draped herself over his shoulder like a scarf. "So I got worried."

I watched them and waited for the knife in my chest to twist, but something strange happened instead. Nothing twisted because the knife was gone and there was just an empty hole where it used to be.

"Get off me," Frank muttered and shrugged her away. "You're making things worse."

Dorcas pouted, but it was fake. "Me? I didn't ask her for a divorce because you did that yourself by being..."

"Enough." Frank's voice cracked with shame. "Aria is emotional right now, so she doesn't mean any of this."

I set down the tequila and looked at him sharply. "I mean every word."

He turned to me, and for the first time, I saw something real in his eyes—FEAR.

"You can't leave," he said quietly. "The hospital and my reputation and the RH NULL program..."

"Your reputation," I repeated because I wanted him to hear it. "Not mine."

"Aria....."

"I said no."

I stood up, and the room tilted slightly because the tequila was working faster than it should, and my body was weak from too many donations and not enough food. But my legs held.

"Where are you going?" Frank stood too.

"Away from you."

Dorcas laughed, and it bounced off the walls. "Let her go, Frank, because she'll come crawling back like she always does."

I looked at her and really looked. "You can have him and the loan and the blood debt and his mother's cooking demands. All of it."

Her smile flickered, but she didn't speak.

Frank grabbed my wrist, and his fingers dug in. "You're not thinking straight, so sit down."

I pulled back. "Don't touch me."

"Don't be stupid, Aria, because you have nowhere to go."

I wanted to tell him about my father and the company and the life I threw away for him, but my head was spinning and the words wouldn't line up, so I just said, "Watch me."

Then I walked out.

The cold air hit my face like a slap and I didn't have my coat because I left it at the Armstrong house but it didn't matter since I wasn't going back there.

The subway entrance was two blocks away, and I had enough change for a ticket, and my father's number was still memorized even after three years of not dialing it.

Taking one step at a time, my breath hitched.

The stairs down to the platform felt endless, and each step was heavier than the last because the tequila burned in my stomach, and my vision blurred at the edges.

"Just a little further," I whispered, walking slowly, ignoring strange stares.

I finally reached the bottom, and, thankfully, it was empty, and I could have the whole bench to myself to sit and get my head straight.

I took the first two steps, but my eyes shook. Then the floor rushed up to meet me before I could hold myself back, and I crashed to the floor.

I heard someone shout and felt hands catch me before my head hit the ground. Strong arms, war, and nothing like Frank's cold grip.

"Hey...hey, miss? Can you hear me?" A deep masculine voice yelled.

I tried to open my eyes, but everything was watercolors and shadows.

"Call an ambulance," the voice said to someone else.

I wanted to yell NO.

Frank has connections with all the hospitals in town; he could always find me.

~~~

I woke to white ceiling, white sheets, and white light all over me.

Then the sharp, antiseptic scent of the hospital followed.

Panic clawed up my throat, but then I saw the door, and the nameplate "Dr. Frank Armstrong" popped up on my face like an unwanted advert.

No!

I tried to sit up, but my body was still weak. Every muscle ached like I'd been drained completely—which I almost had.

"Don't."

That voice....

Frank walked in with a clipboard in his hand and a white coat around his shoulders and a stethoscope around his neck, like the picture of professionalism.

"You collapsed at the subway," he said without looking at me because he was reading the chart instead. "Severe anemia and dehydration and alcohol in a compromised system, so you could have died."

"I didn't ask you to save me!"

He finally looked up, and something flickered across his face, but it was too fast to name.

"Your divorce papers," he said quietly. "I won't sign it."

My heart stopped, but it was still beating somehow.

"You heard me." He set down the clipboard. "You're my wife and my blood bank, and you're not going anywhere."

The door opened and a nurse stepped in. "Dr. Armstrong, the family is here."

Family?

Frank's expression shifted from cold to something almost smug.

"Good. Let them in."

The door swung wider.

And my father walked through.

The man who walked through the door wasn't the father I remembered.

Harold Cole stood taller than Frank, silver at his temples, a watch on his wrist that probably cost more than the Armstrongs' whole house. His suit was dark gray and looked expensive, the kind of expensive I used to wear before I threw it all away for a man who sees me as a juice box.

His eyes met mine, and I was expecting a warm smile at least, but he looked away with sharp disappointment.

"Dad..." I stopped when he raised his hand and sat beside me.

"Ariadne..." he began coldly.

Not Ary. Not Aria. Ariadne. The name he gave me when I was born, the name I stopped using when I ran off with Frank because Frank said it sounded too snobby, too rich-girl, and too much like my father.

I swallowed hard.

"Dad," I whispered again, and my voice cracked because three years had passed since I last said that word out loud, and it felt foreign in my mouth, like a language I'd forgotten how to speak.

He sat on the edge of my bed and looked at Frank with a cold and hard glare. "You're the doctor in charge of my daughter?"

Frank nodded fast. "Y...Yes, sir. Dr. Frank Armstrong. I've been monitoring her condition closely, and..."

"Monitoring her." My father snapped. "For three years. Has she improved or worsened?"

Frank opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

I watched him struggle; perhaps he was expecting me to help him, but I smirked instead and shook my head in denial.

Either it's love or foolishness; whatever it is that I had for him in the past is gone. Just that empty hole where my heart used to be, the one that opened up when I saw Dorcas on his shoulder, when I realized he'd been using me this whole time.

"You've been letting my daughter bleed for you, and you can't even keep her healthy enough to walk down a flight of stairs."

"With respect, Mr. Cole, Aria's blood type is rare, and the donations were necessary for—"

"She has a name." My father stood up, and even though Frank was taller, he looked smaller now. I'd never seen Frank so small before. "Her name is Ariadne. Use it, or don't speak at all."

Frank stepped back respectfully. "I'm sorry, sir."

The door creaked open, and a nurse poked her head in. "Dr. Armstrong, the board meeting is starting—"

"Tell them I'll be late."

"Actually." My father straightened his cuffs, slow and deliberate, like he had all the time in the world. "You'll go to your meeting. I'll stay with my daughter."

Frank looked between us, dejectedly. But the hospital funding came from Cole Industries, and Cole Industries answered to Harold Cole, my father.

Frank swallowed his pride and walked out.

The machines beeping around me were the only thing that conquered the silence.

"You ran away from home to marry that man?" he finally said.

I didn't answer. What was I supposed to say? Yes, Daddy, I threw away everything for a man who sees me as a blood bag. Yes, I was so stupid I couldn't see what was right in front of my face.

"I was in love," I said, and even to my own ears, the words sounded stupid and small and pathetic.

My father laughed, but there wasn't any happiness in it. Just bitterness. Just pain. "Love." He spit the word out like it was poison. "You threw away your inheritance, your future, your health for love. And look where love has put you. In a hospital bed with nothing to show except a failing body and a husband who looks at you like a vending machine."

He wasn't wrong.

That was the worst part.

He wasn't wrong at all.

I wanted to argue. I wanted to scream that he didn't understand, that Frank was different in the beginning, that Frank used to hold my hand and look at me like I was something special. But the words wouldn't come, because even I didn't believe them anymore.

Frank had never looked at me like I was special. He'd looked at me like I was useful.

There's a difference.

I just hadn't wanted to see it.

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded document.

"What's that?"

"A marriage contract." His voice was flat, like he always did whenever he had already decided on something. "You'll marry the man I've chosen for you, and I'll take you back. You'll return to the family and take your place in the company."

My chest went tight again, the same tightness I felt when I read Frank's text about the blood donation and the same tightness I felt when I saw Dorcas's photo. "You want me to marry someone else, Dad?" My voice came out higher than I meant it to. "I just got out of one marriage; we haven't signed the papers yet!"

"I want you to stop making foolish decisions and want you to be safe." His voice cracked on the last word, and for a second, I felt guilty. Dad was all I had, yet I left him for a scumbag.

"So you want to control me instead?"

"I want to protect you from yourself."

That stung more than I wanted to admit, because he was right. I had been my own worst enemy. I had chosen Frank and cut off my family. I had signed up for this life, and now I was paying for it with my blood and my tears and my dignity.

But I couldn't do it again.

I wouldn't.

I pushed the contract back at him, shoving it across the bedsheet like it was on fire. "No. I'm done being owned by men who see me as something to use. Frank used my blood. You want to use my future. I'm not signing anything."

"You've got nowhere to go."

"I'll find somewhere."

"With what money? With what health?" His voice rose for the first time, and the sound echoed off the hospital walls. "You can't even stand up without falling, Ariadne. You collapsed in a subway station. A stranger had to catch you before you cracked your head open on the concrete. Where exactly do you think you're going?"

He was right, and I hated him for it.

My fingers gripped the bedsheet so hard my knuckles went white. The tears were building behind my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. I had cried enough for Frank Armstrong.

The door opened again.

I didn't look up at first, but then I heard footsteps very different from Frank's.

I looked up.

A tall man walked in. Dark hair falling across his forehead like he'd been running his hands through it.

His eyes were the color of whiskey, warm and sharp at the same time, and they landed on me like he'd been looking for me his whole life.

Black shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. I could see the muscles in his forearms, the veins, the strength.

He was the most beautiful man I'd ever seen, and I hated that too.

Because why now? Why when I'm pale and weak and hooked up to machines, when I look like death warmed over?

"You...." I whispered.

A dimple appeared on his face as he smiled. "Yes, Me."

"Draven." My father introduced him. . "You're the one who saved her?"

"I was at the station," Draven said, walking closer. "She collapsed. I couldn't just walk away."

What a coincidence!

My arms crossed tight across my chest. "You just happened to be there?"

"I don't know what you think I planned, but I don't usually spend my evenings waiting for random women to faint at my feet."

"You could've followed me."

"From where?"

"From the restaurant."

He tilted his head. "I don't know what restaurant you're talking about. I was coming from my office. Ask your father."

My father nodded. "Draven's telling the truth."

Everyone schemes. I learned that the hard way. But something about the way he looked at me made me want to believe him, and that scared me more than anything.

"Your father wants you to marry me," he said.

"I know."

He pulled up a chair and sat down. "I didn't ask for this contract. He approached me."

"So you're saying no?"

He paused. "I'm saying I didn't arrange for you to collapse so I could play hero. But now that we're here, I'd like to get to know you."

I laughed, bitter and broken. "I just left my husband. My blood's poison to my own body. I've got no money, no home, no future. Why would you want to get to know me?"

He leaned closer, and his voice went quiet. "Because you walked out of that restaurant like a woman who had nothing left to lose. And you made it two blocks before your body gave out. That's not weakness, Ariadne. That's a woman who doesn't know how to stop fighting."

My throat closed up.

He used my real name. No one calls me that except my father.

I couldn't look at him anymore. Because if I did, I might do something stupid. Like believe him.

My father cleared his throat. "I'm not asking you to marry him tomorrow. Come home. Take over the company. Prove to me you're not the same girl who ran away. The contract can wait."

I looked at the contract on my lap. Then at my father, who looked older than I remembered. Then there was Draven, who was still watching me like I was something worth watching.

I was nobody. A broken, anemic mess who collapsed in subways and let herself be used as a blood bank for three years.

But the way he looked at me made me feel like somebody.

"I'll come home," I said slowly. "I'll take over the company. But I won't sign anything that gives another man ownership of me. Not ever again."

My father nodded. "Fair."

Draven stood and held out his hand. Strong. Warm. Not cold like Frank's.

"Then let me help you. You'll need allies, and I'd like to be one."

I looked at his hand. Then at his face.

"I'm done with men."

He didn't pull back. "I'm not asking you to be with me. I'm asking you to let me help you get back on your feet. That's all."

I stared at him.

Everything in me screamed no. Don't trust him. Don't let another man get close enough to hurt you.

But my hand moved anyway.

I took his. His grip was firm but gentle. When he let go, the warmth stayed on my skin longer than it should have.

"One step at a time," he said.

I nodded, but I didn't trust him. Trust is a bsiness i inested onbut went bankrupt.

But for the first time in three years, I was going home.