Chapter 2

Aurora Hinton POV:

"No."

The word was quiet, but it hung in the air between us, heavy and final. Everyone in the Hinton family expected me to donate my kidney. They saw it as my duty, my penance.

They didn't know I only had one left.

The secret was a cold, hard stone in my gut. A truth I had carried alone for five years, ever since I secretly saved our father's life, only to have Annabell steal the credit, the glory, and all the love that came with it.

Abel's face crumpled. It wasn't anger, not yet. It was a deep, profound disappointment, the look of a man whose last hope had just been extinguished.

My family' s reaction was far less gentle.

"After everything we've done for you?" my mother shrieked when Abel delivered the news. Her face, usually composed, was twisted with fury. "Annabell saved your father's life! She gave him a piece of herself! And you can't do the same for her? You selfish, ungrateful child!"

I tried to speak, to tell them the truth, but they wouldn't listen. My father stood beside her, his expression grim. The kidney humming inside him, the one I had given him, was a silent testament to a sacrifice they refused to see.

"Get out," my father said, his voice flat and devoid of any warmth. "If you won't be a part of this family, then you don't belong in this house."

I was cast out. Again.

Later that night, Abel found me on the steps of my empty apartment building. The chill of the evening had seeped into my bones, but I barely felt it. I was already numb.

"Choose, Aurora," he said, his voice ragged with exhaustion. There were no more promises, no more declarations of love. Just the raw, ugly ultimatum. "Her, or you."

A strange sense of calm washed over me. I was dying. The rare degenerative disease that had been silently ravaging my body was accelerating. The doctors had given me months, maybe a year. What did it matter anymore?

"Fine," I said, my voice as empty as my future. "I'll do it."

Abel's head snapped up. Shock, then a flood of overwhelming relief, washed over his features. "You will? Rory, you mean it?"

He tore the annulment papers into pieces, letting the confetti of our broken promises flutter to the ground. "Come on," he said, pulling me to my feet, his grip urgent. "Let's go to the hospital. Now."

My parents were already there, hovering around Annabell's bed like sentinels. When they saw me, their faces were a mixture of suspicion and desperate hope.

"Sign the consent forms," my father demanded, shoving a clipboard into my hands. His fingers were trembling. He didn't trust me. He thought I would back out.

I signed my name without reading a word. Only then did the tension in their shoulders begin to ease.

"You've finally grown up, Aurora," my father said, patting my shoulder with an awkward, unfamiliar affection. "Doing the right thing. Don't worry, your mother and I have already spoken to the lawyers. Annabell will get the majority of the inheritance, of course, for her sacrifice. But we'll make sure you're taken care of."

"I don't need it," I said quietly. "Give it all to her."

My mother scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous. What nonsense are you talking about?"

I didn't answer. A wave of dizziness washed over me, and the edges of the brightly lit hospital corridor blurred. My mind drifted back five years, to another hospital, another surgery. The day Annabell drugged my morning coffee, causing me to oversleep and miss the scheduled transplant for our father. She' d gone in my place, they said. She' d emerged a hero, bearing a surgically-made, superficial scar on her abdomen as proof of her sacrifice.

When I woke up hours later, groggy and confused in a cheap motel room she had booked for me, the narrative was already set in stone. I was the selfish daughter who had abandoned her dying father in his hour of need.

She had poisoned them against me, drip by insidious drip, for years. Every small act of kindness I offered was twisted into a ploy for attention. Every achievement was downplayed. I became a ghost in my own family, a constant, disappointing reminder of a betrayal that never happened.

And now, they were all gathered around her. My mother, stroking her hair. My father, holding her hand. Abel, my Abel, looking at her with a tenderness that used to be reserved for me.

I stood alone in the corner of the room, an outsider, a means to an end. They didn't see me. They only saw the organ I carried, the key to saving the daughter they truly loved.