BETRAYED ONCE: FROM NOTHING TO BILLIONIARE POWER

Chapter 2: Second Chance

“You were brilliant, but easy to control. You had no powerful family, no influence, and no leverage, and my father called our marriage the safest investment the company ever made.”

Ryan stared at her in shock, but her words didn't soften.

“Your inventions were not only the return but your blood as well,” she finished.

Ryan opened his mouth, but nothing came out; only a broken laugh escaped, weaker this time. He felt his eyes burn as reality settled in. Six years of marriage reduced to business terms.

“All I ever wanted was to give you everything," Ryan's voice cracked with pain.

“And you did,” Zoula replied. “You gave my son a kidney.”

Ryan’s world shattered. Like glass breaking endlessly around him Before the full weight of the betrayal could settle, hurried footsteps echoed down the hallway. Two nurses rushed into the room, panic visible even through their masks. Behind them stood two men in dark suits, members of the Zhou family’s private security.

Zoula’s smile vanished when she saw them. “What’s the problem?”

“Is my son alright?” Christopher stood immediately.

No one looked at Ryan anymore; he had become invisible to them.

The first nurse's voice shook. "Ms. Zhou. The boy is crashing; there isn't enough blood to circulate his body. —"

"Then fix it!" Christopher stepped forward.

The nurse jerked with fear. "I'm sorry, Ms. Zhou, we can't. The hospital does not have his blood type, and the only compatible donor is—" The nurse paused, shifting her eyes to Ryan, and the room fell silent.

“Then do it!” Yalan ordered. She glanced at Ryan, frowning as if the situation were merely inconvenient.

The second nurse stammered. “If your husband undergoes another transfusion, he will die.”

“I don’t care,” Zoula yelled. “My son is the heir to the Zhou empire!”

Ryan’s eyes widened in horror, and slowly every person in the room turned to look at him. In that moment, he was not a husband nor a father but a body filled with spare organs and blood.

The men clustered in black suits approached him with a cold look, prompting Ryan's movable heart monitor to spike.

“Don’t struggle, Ryan,” Yulan said gently. “No one will remember you, and you should be happy you're doing the Zhou family a favor."

Ryan, being too weak to fight off the men, felt a cold grip restraining him. The other man stepped forward, slamming his back against the wall. They draw out a syringe filled with something dark.

“W…what are you doing?!” Ryan gasped in horror.

“Helping you rest, Mr.Wright,” one of the men replied.

Ryan shifted his gaze to the doctors and the nurses, but they walked out, ignoring what was going on like they didn’t see anything.

The needle slid into Ryan's neck with a sharp pain; slowly and surely the room became blurred. His last thought wasn't of Zoula, or Christopher, or the boy he'd raised for five years.

It was of his workbench at home. The half-finished prototype. The notes he'd never get to use, followed by silence.

Darkness.

Not the peaceful kind but the type that pressed down from all sides. Ryan couldn't move, couldn't breathe, and couldn't even panic. His body was too far gone for that.

Thump

Above him, the sound of a shovel vibrated through the earth. Someone is throwing dirt at him. The thought should have terrified him, but instead, it arrived like a fact. Distant, like it was happening to someone else.

‘I don't want to die!’

The thought finally pierced through his mind.

Ryan's eyes ripped open, but dirt pressed against his eyeballs. He tried to scream, and his mouth filled with soil.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

Someone was still burying him.

Ryan's fingers twitched. Then his arms. He tried again and the dirt above him, shifted an inch, maybe two, before more rained down. He was too weak, too deep, and the weight of the earth pressed on his chest, reminding him that even with a beating heart, he could still suffocate.

‘Help!’ The words only soared through his mind; then he pushed more dirt, and more fell.

His arms trembled. The taste of dirt coated his tongue.

Finally, his hand broke through, and cold air washed his face. The shock of it made him gasp.

“Stop, please!” his cries were loud.

The shoveling stopped, and footsteps approached, followed by a flashlight beam that cut through the darkness above, sweeping across the grave and catching the pale skin of Ryan's body.

"Jesus Christ!" the voice yelled, terrified. "Y…You can't be! You were dead! I buried you. I watched them load you in with the others!"

‘Others?’

Ryan's hand closed on something in the dark. Fabric, and a cold flesh beneath. He was lying on someone or, rather, surrounded by them.

The grave was a mass grave.

The man was still babbling above as if trying to explain. "Industrial farm," they said. For manure processing. They said you were unclaimed, no family, no—"

Ryan pushed himself upward with everything he had, and rain hit his face. He sucked air like a drowning man, coughed, and spat dirt.

The man stood ten feet away, with his shovel dropped and flashlight aimed at Ryan's face like a weapon. He was late fifties, with grey hair that was plastering to his skull. He looked like he'd seen a ghost.

"I was alive." Ryan's voice came out shredded. "You buried me alive."

The man shook his head violently. "No, no, you were dead. The papers said they paid for disposal, I got a receipt, I—"

Ryan laughed.

It started small. A broken laugh, one laced with the pain of a man who has lost everything.

“I…I didn't know, I swear!” the man whispered with fear.

Ryan pulled himself out of the grave, but his arms gave out twice. And by the time he rolled onto solid ground, he was coated in mud and worse, shivering violently.

The old man hadn't run. He just stood there, staring, like his brain couldn't process what his eyes were seeing.

Ryan looked at him. Really looked. He was just a worker and a man doing a job, not the enemy.

"Where am I?" Ryan's teeth chattered.

"Outskirts, industrial zone. The farms."

"Zhou land?" he asked.

The man's silence was enough. Ryan pushed himself up. His legs buckled. He caught himself on a fence post and stood there, breathing hard, rain washing mud from his face.

"You need a hospital," the man said weakly.

Ryan's laugh came again, quieter this time. "The last hospital I walked into didn't just cut me open and take what's mine but also took my blood."

He looked at his hands, pale and trembling. "I'm not going back."

With that said, Ran staggered away.

The rain didn't stop. It fell in sheets, cold and relentless, soaking through the filthy hospital gown that was all he wore. His bare feet found broken glass, gravel, and things he refused to look at. He didn't feel them. Not really. His body was numb, or his mind was, or both.

The industrial zone stretched forever. Chain-link fences, warehouses, the occasional truck rumbling past, headlights cutting through the rain—none of them stopping.

Ryan kept walking.

He didn't know where, nor did he care. His just legs moved because stopping meant falling, and falling meant lying down, and lying down meant the grave, weight, and taste.

He kept walking for hours, and time meant nothing. A half-collapsed structure near the rail yard came into view. It was an old storage unit, with its door hanging off its hinges and the floor covered in wet cardboard and the remnants of someone else's fire.

Ryan crawled inside, and halfway through, his body gave out. He hit the concrete hard and lay there, shivering so violently his teeth clacked together. The rain found him anyway, dripping through holes in the roof, but it was less. Enough.

‘I'm alive.’

The thought should have brought relief. Instead, it brought memory.

Zoula's face was calm and patient. "You were useful." The needle is sliding into his neck. Ryan's hands curled into fists, and the movement cost him. His muscles screamed, followed by his abdomen, where his kidney had once been but now throbbed with fresh pain.

The cold, the hurt, and the rage building in his chest like a second heart.