Her Heart, His Life: A Final Exchange

My artificial heart was failing, a ticking bomb in my chest, bought for the woman on the screen, my brilliant ex-fiancée, now a CEO accepting awards. She called, her voice cold, asking if I regretted abandoning her for money, an accusation that felt like a knife twisting in my chest, a wound from a lie I'd told to save her life. Despite my desperate pleas for $50,000 to survive, she and her ruthless boyfriend, Liam, twisted my struggles into elaborate scams, publicly shaming me, and branding me a despicable liar. How do you tell the woman you gave your heart to that the machine keeping you alive is dying, when she believes you wickedly abandoned her, a lie you nurtured for her sake? Just as I had made peace with buying my own grave, a long-buried secret about my anonymous heart donation began to surface, forcing a final, desperate confrontation that would either expose the truth or bury it forever.