Chapter 5

The phone call came that night. It was Adrian. His voice was sharp, cold, and laced with an urgency that made the hair on my arms stand up.

"Get to the hospital. Burn unit. Now."

He hung up before I could ask any questions.

I ran, my heart pounding a frantic tattoo against my ribs. When I burst through the doors of the burn unit, Adrian was there waiting. He grabbed my arm, his grip like steel.

"It's Ashley," he said, his face a grim, stony mask. "There was an accident with some chemicals. She needs skin grafts. Extensive ones."

He started dragging me down the hall.

"Her skin type is rare," he continued, his voice devoid of any emotion. "We ran the database. You're a match."

He pulled me into a pre-op room and shoved me towards a surgical table. Nurses were already there, prepping instruments.

"What are you doing?" I stammered, my mind struggling to catch up.

"You're going to be the donor," he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

He and another male nurse forced me onto the table, holding me down as a third came at me with a syringe. I felt the sharp sting of the needle in my arm. Anesthesia.

"Wait," I begged, my words starting to slur as the drug took hold. "You can't-"

The attending surgeon stepped forward. "Adrian, we have enough. We've taken a significant amount from her thigh and abdomen. Any more from her back, and we risk damaging the nerve bundles along the spinal column."

"I don't care," Adrian said, his eyes fixed on something over my head. "Take more. I want enough for revisions. I want her to be perfect."

The surgeon hesitated. "It could affect Dr. Goodwin's mobility. Permanently."

"I said, take it."

The last thing I felt before the darkness consumed me was the cold, slicing path of the scalpel across the skin of my back.

When I woke up, I was in a standard recovery room. My back was a universe of pain.

Adrian was sitting in a chair by the bed. He didn't ask how I was.

He looked at me, his eyes as sharp and cold as the surgical steel that had just carved up my body, and said, "You did this to her."

I stared at him, my pain-fogged brain struggling to comprehend.

"We found corrosive liquid in her facial moisturizer," he said, his voice a low, accusatory growl. "She said you were the only other person who had access to her locker. She said you've been jealous of her for years."

"No," I whispered, my voice trembling. "I would never."

He didn't believe me. "Her face is ruined. Because of you."

In that moment, I understood. Ashley had done this to herself. She had intentionally disfigured herself to frame me, to create a situation so horrific that Adrian would have no choice but to destroy me completely.

Two military police officers came into the room. They read me my rights as they handcuffed my wrists to the bed frame.

I was under arrest for assault.