Chapter 4

A few weeks later, I was staying in a cheap motel on the outskirts of the city, the kind with flickering neon signs and stained carpets. My bank account was nearly empty. Chloe had controlled all our finances, and she'd locked me out of everything. All I had were the clothes on my back and a few hundred dollars in cash. I spent my days trying to find work, but without my portfolio, which was still locked in Chloe's storage unit, no gallery would even look at me.

One evening, there was a knock on my flimsy motel room door. It was Chloe. She looked out of place in the dingy hallway, her expensive coat and perfect hair a stark contrast to the peeling paint.

"We need to talk," she said, pushing past me into the room. She looked around with a curled lip, her disgust obvious.

Before I could say anything, her phone rang. It was Mark. Her face immediately softened. "Mark, honey, what's wrong?" Her voice was filled with panic. "You're having trouble breathing? Okay, just stay calm. I'm on my way."

She hung up and turned to me, her eyes blazing with accusation. "What did you do?"

"What are you talking about?" I asked, completely bewildered. "I haven't seen him in weeks."

"Don't lie to me, Liam," she hissed. "His doctors can't figure out what's wrong with him. It's some kind of allergic reaction, but they can't find the source. It only started after you attacked him." She pointed a finger at me. "This is your fault. You did something to him, some kind of... of your freakish energy poisoning."

It was insane. She was twisting reality to fit her narrative, the one where I was the villain. "Chloe, that's crazy. I can't do that. You know I can't."

She ignored me, her mind already made up. "He's at the Westside Clinic. We're going there now. You're going to fix this."

At the clinic, we found Mark in a private room, looking pale and breathing with a slight wheeze. He had an IV in his arm. He gave me a weak, triumphant smirk when Chloe wasn't looking. He was faking. The whole thing was a setup.

He started coughing dramatically as we walked in. "Chloe," he rasped, reaching for her hand. "It's getting worse." Then he looked at me. "Keep him away from me."

Chloe rounded on me. "See? You're making it worse just by being here. You need to reverse it."

"There's nothing to reverse!" I insisted, my voice rising in frustration. "He's faking it!"

Just then, Mark let out a pained gasp and knocked his IV stand over. The bag of saline solution crashed to the floor, spilling across the clean, white tiles. A nurse rushed in, alerted by the noise.

"What happened?" the nurse asked, her eyes scanning the scene.

"It was him!" Mark said, pointing a trembling finger at me. "He pushed it over! I think he put something in the bag."

It was happening again. Another perfectly timed lie, another scene where I was the aggressor. Chloe's face was a mask of cold fury.

The nurse, following protocol, took a sample of the spilled liquid to test it. A few minutes later, a doctor came in, his face grim. "We found a mild organic irritant in the IV fluid," he said, looking at me with suspicion. "It's not life-threatening, but it matches the substance we found in Mr. Davis's bloodwork. It's the cause of his allergic reaction."

Mark had planned this. He must have injected something into his own IV bag before we even got there. There was no way to prove it. The "evidence" was right there on the floor.

"I'm calling security," the doctor said.

But Chloe stopped him. "No," she said, her voice dangerously calm. "I'll handle this." She turned to me, and the look in her eyes terrified me. It was a look of utter betrayal, but not because she thought I had hurt Mark. It was something else, something colder. "There's only one way to be sure."

She grabbed my arm, her grip like steel. "You're coming with me." Two hospital orderlies flanked us, and they dragged me down the hall to a different wing of the hospital, a research lab. The air was cold and sterile.

They forced me into a chair and strapped my arms down. "What are you doing?" I yelled, struggling against the restraints.

Chloe stood over me, her face unreadable. "Mark's doctors need a pure, uncontaminated sample to create an antidote. From a... a related source." She looked at the doctor. "He has a unique physiology. His blood cells produce a low-level bioluminescence. You can use it as a baseline to counteract the contaminant."

I stared at her in horror. She was telling them. She was exposing my deepest secret, the very essence of my being, to strangers. Not to save Mark, because he wasn't in danger. But to use me, to harvest a part of me like I was some kind of lab animal. This was the ultimate betrayal. All those years, she hadn't been protecting my secret. She had been keeping it as a weapon.

A technician approached me with a large needle. I thrashed against the straps, a raw, desperate fear clawing at my throat. "Chloe, please," I begged, the tears finally coming. "Don't do this. After ten years... please."

She didn't even look at me. She just looked at the technician and nodded. "Take as much as you need."

As the needle slid into my arm, I felt a pain that had nothing to do with the sharp point. It was the pain of a decade of love and trust turning to ash in an instant. It was all a lie. She had never loved me. She had only owned me. And now, she was breaking me down for spare parts. I closed my eyes and let out a scream of pure, agonizing despair.