He Thought I Was A Doormat, Until I Ruined Him

No.1

The sound was not a bang, but a steady, high-pitched whine. It was the sound of a heart monitor flatlining.

Skye Sterling could feel the cold seeping into her marrow, starting from her fingertips and clawing its way up toward her chest. The operating theater was blindingly white, a sterile purgatory where she was currently bleeding out. Her uterus had been removed, a desperate attempt to stop the hemorrhaging caused by stress-induced organ failure, but the blood wouldn't clot. It just kept flowing, warm and sticky, pooling beneath her on the steel table.

She couldn't move her head, but her eyes, heavy with the weight of death, drifted to the phone held by the trembling nurse. The nurse had put it on speaker.

Mr. Kensington, the nurse's voice cracked, thick with panic. "Please, your wife... the surgery... she's critical. We need you to come."

There was a pause on the other end. A silence that stretched longer than Skye's remaining lifespan. Then, a giggle. It was a light, airy sound, like wind chimes in a summer breeze. Seraphina Miller.

Liam is in the shower, Seraphina's voice came through, sweet and poisonous. "Stop calling, Skye. It's pathetic. Faking a medical emergency on our anniversary? Even for you, that's low."

Skye wanted to scream, but her throat was full of fluid. She wanted to say she wasn't faking, that she was dying, that the stress of five years of neglect and three years of watching her husband parade his mistress around had finally broken her body.

Then, a deeper voice mumbled in the background. Liam.

Who is it? he asked, sounding bored.

Just the hospital again, Seraphina laughed. "She's probably having a panic attack because you didn't buy her a gift."

Hang up, Liam said. His voice was cold. Detached. "If she dies, call the funeral home. I have a meeting in the morning."

Click.

The line went dead. And a second later, so did Skye.

The darkness was absolute. It was not peaceful; it was heavy, suffocating, a black ocean crushing her lungs. She screamed into the void, a silent, agonizing wail of regret. Regret for loving a man who saw her as a nuisance. Regret for letting the Sterling family name rot while she played the role of the submissive housewife. Regret for dying without ever having lived.

Then, the air rushed back in.

It hit her lungs like a sledgehammer. Skye gasped, her body convulsing violently on the mattress. Her eyes flew open, wide and terrified, staring blindly into the darkness. She clutched her chest, her fingers digging into the silk of her pajamas, expecting to feel the thick bandages, the surgical staples, the wetness of blood.

But there was nothing. Just smooth, unbroken skin.

Her heart was hammering against her ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage. Thump-thump-thump. Alive. She was alive.

Skye sat up, disoriented. The room smelled of lavender and expensive polish. The moonlight filtered through the heavy velvet curtains, illuminating the familiar contours