Chapter 2
Everything went black momentarily, and Kristin was shoved into a car, huddled in a corner, shaking in utter despair.
There was no way she could donate a kidney. It would kill her, and she couldn’t afford to die.
“Kristin, how’s prison life been treating you these past five years?” Vincent eyed the woman curled up in the corner, who had long lost the pride she once carried. He couldn’t quite put his finger on the mix of emotions brewing inside him.
Kristin flinched, perhaps a reflex born from being bullied behind bars. She hugged her head in fear.
*Cat’s got your tongue, huh?” Vincent looked at Kristin with disgust, grabbing her chin, the dark red blood on her forehead stark against her pale face.
“Please…” Kristin’s voice shook, her eyes filled with despair and resentment.
Thanks to Vincent, her time in prison was a living hell.
On the day she was released, a cellmate who couldn’t stand to see her mistreated any longer spilled the beans. Vincent’s people had paid her to ensure Kristin ‘got special attention‘ during those five years.
Vincent’s Adam’s apple bobbed with disgust as he pushed her away after looking at the bruises on her face.
How disgusting it was.
Kristin numbly watched Vincent, the man she had once loved with all her youth, unable to stir any emotion in her anymore.
She had long stopped loving him.
The car arrived at Silvergrove Hospital.
Vincent dragged Kristin out of the car.
She pleaded with Vincent, kneeling on the ground and begging him. Endless beating during the years in prison freaked her out.
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“Vincent, please. I can’t donate my kidney. I’m not eligible. I can make amends and do anything you ask.”
As Kristin kept begging and knocking her forehead on the ground, she knew she had no powerful family to back her up. She knew Vincent and the Turner family could squash her like a bug if they wanted to.
They wanted her to suffer, and she had to outdo their expectations to cling to life a bit longer
14:44
and then figure out her next move..
It was clear to Kristin that neither Vincent nor the Turner family would let her off the hook.
She had to survive. She had her reasons.
Vincent stepped back Involuntarily, his eyes betraying a complexity of emotions, seemingly taken aback by the sight of the once lofty Ms. Turner in such a pitiful, lowly state.
“Clarence, please! With the Turner family’s resources, plenty of people can donate a kidney to Ruby, right? Clarence, I’m begging you. You and Mom and Dad know my body can’t take it.”
Kristin had a congenital heart defect. Even after surgery in her childhood, she couldn’t withstand the damage that donating a kidney would cause.
Clarence knew that yet he looked on coldly. “This is what you owe Ruby. You would’ve been dead a long time ago if your mother hadn’t swapped my sister away.”
Kristin’s body stiffened for a long time before she slumped to the ground, powerless. “Can I make amends in some other way?”
“Do you think you deserve that chance?” Vincent scoffed. “Kristin, you think a five–year stint in prison can wipe the slate clean? Have you forgotten what you did to me? When you betrayed me and slept with that jerk, did you ever think this day would come?”
Kristin couldn’t bear to remember the hell from five years ago, nor did she have the energy to explain.
Upon uncovering the grim truth, Clarence, once her sworn protector, heartlessly cast her into another man’s bed.
In Clarence’s eyes, Kristin was a counterfeit, and by extension, her fiancé Vincent belonged to Ruby Collins.
So, Ruby took Vincent to catch her in the act…
It was a setup by Ruby and Clarence.
Ruby was the victim, the true heiress. People believed whatever she said. And nobody would believe a word from Kristin, the daughter of a thief.
Ruby was still in a coma in the hospital room, looking pale.
Kristin shrank her shoulders, keeping her head down.
By the sickbed stood the Turner family’s patriarch, Johnnie Turner, and his wife Mamie, the people Kristin had called Mom and Dad for twenty–one years.
Snap! When Kristin entered the room, Mamie swung a slap at her, overcome with emotion.
Compared to Mamie, Johnnie was much more composed. “Has she agreed?”
Chapter 2
“She doesn’t have the luxury of disagreeing.” Vincent had already decided for Kristin, forcing her to kneel beside the bed.
Trembling all over, Kristin looked up at Johnnie. “Dad… I mean, Mr. Turner, I’m not eligible to donate. Please spare me. I can make amends in other ways. I can pay back what I owe the Turner family…”
Johnnie’s expression darkened, his displeasure evident.
Kristin looked at everyone like strangers. During her five years in prison, she even doubted if the past twenty–one years of her life had been a dream.
“Kristin, have you forgotten? Five years ago, you slept with some nobody and had his child, whom you gave away. That kid must be about five now,” Vincent said, always knowing how to hit Kristin where it hurt most, reopening her wounds and rubbing salt in them.
Kristin suddenly looked up at Vincent, who was pushing her to the edge.
