The Gambler's Wife: A Blood Betrayal

The delivery room was cold, the sterile white walls closing in on me as my newborn son, Leo, fought for every breath down the hall. Then my husband, Liam, called, his voice a panicked whisper: "Ava, I'm in big trouble. I owe six point sixty-six million dollars to 'The Gambler.' If I don't pay, he'll kill me." I emptied our savings, sold my father's cherished comic collection, maxed out high-interest loans, and worked myself to the bone for four agonizing years while Leo battled his own health issues. I even sold my blood, twice a week, because Liam said it was the only thing keeping him alive, that we shared a rare blood type. Finally, I had the money. But when I delivered the duffel bag of cash, "The Gambler's" henchman told me the price had gone up to sixteen point sixty-six million, showing me video proof of Liam being tortured, screaming in agony. Then I walked into a lavish VIP room, ready to beg for his life, only to find Liam, unbruised and in an expensive suit, draped around a stunning woman who looked eerily like me. He wasn't tortured. He was The Gambler. "The blood wasn't for him, darling," his mistress, Scarlett, purred, "It was for me. I needed a little 'top-up.' You were a walking blood bank." My sacrifices, my love, my life-all a lie. He looked at me, a hollowed-out wreck, and called me a failed "evaluation." Then, he threw a pittance of my own money on the floor: "Now get out. You're not welcome here anymore." My world shattered. My son was sick, fighting for his life, and my husband didn't just not care, he was the monster who had profited from our agony. But when he demanded I continue to be his mistress's blood bank, even as Leo lay dying in the hospital, something inside me snapped. "The blood bank is closed. Permanently," I told him, hanging up the phone. He sent his thugs to the hospital to take Leo. My son, my dying son, was just another resource to him. "Mommy?" Leo's tiny voice echoed over the walkie-talkie, Liam's phone still connected to the thugs. "Is... is Daddy there?" That pure, innocent question, crashing through Liam's carefully constructed lie, was all the opening I needed. My son was gone, taken by the man who was supposed to protect him. Now, I would watch Liam's world burn.