Chapter 2

Two years. Two years since Olivia vanished.

Ethan never believed my story. He never believed I knew nothing.

We were at a corporate retreat, high in the mountains. Olivia had been agitated, talking about things she' d uncovered at her father' s company, things that scared her.

Then, she was gone. Her car found abandoned near a ravine. No note. No trace.

Ethan found me hours later, searching, frantic. He saw my distress, my torn clothes from scrambling through the woods, and twisted it into guilt.

"You were always jealous of her," he' d spat at me then, his face a mask of grief and rage. "You wanted her out of the way."

It was the beginning of the end for us, and the start of this nightmare.

He cut me off, smeared my name. My career as a legal aid lawyer crumbled. Friends disappeared.

Then Leo got sick. Aplastic anemia, rare, aggressive. The doctors gave him months without a miracle.

The miracle had a name: experimental gene therapy. And a price tag only someone like Ethan could afford.

So I crawled back. Begged.

He saw his chance for revenge. He controlled Leo' s life, and by extension, mine.

"You' ll pay for what you did to Olivia, Sarah. Every single day." That was his promise.

And he kept it.

The guest house, the servitude, the constant reminders of my supposed crime.

He didn't know the biggest secret of all. The one that connected me to Leo in a way no one could understand. If Leo died, I would follow within seven days. Our bodies were inexplicably, fatally linked. A rare family curse, whispered down through generations, never proven until my great-aunt and her twin. Now, it was my ticking clock.

He also didn't know that years ago, when he himself had faced a rare blood disorder, when we were in love and the world seemed bright, I was the anonymous bone marrow donor who saved his life.

I never told him. It was a gift, freely given. Now, the irony was a bitter pill. He held my life, and Leo's, in his hands, never knowing I'd once held his.

I kept these truths locked away. Revealing the co-dependency would only give him another weapon. Revealing the donation felt... pointless. It wouldn't change his hatred.

My phone buzzed. A text from Chloe.

"Main house. Now. And wear the gray uniform. The shapeless one."

I closed my eyes for a moment. The ticking clock for Leo's treatment payment was loud in my head.

I had to go.