2025-10-27 04:24:54The soft hum of hospital machines filled the sterile room. Ethan sat up slowly, every movement sending a wave of dizziness through his body. His arm still throbbed where the nurses had drawn too much blood.
Through the glass window, he saw Nancy pacing outside with Roy, laughing — actually laughing — her tone light and flirtatious, as if her husband weren’t lying half-conscious inside. He pressed his palm against his temple. His body felt drained, but what hurt most wasn’t the blood loss. It was a realization. The woman he thought he loved — the woman he married — looked at him like a tool, not a person.
The door opened. Nancy entered, the faint scent of Roy’s cologne still clinging to her clothes.
“You’re awake,” she said flatly. “Good. Mother’s condition is still bad. They said they might need more blood.”
Ethan stared at her. “You already took too much. I could’ve died.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” she replied coldly. “You’re fine. It’s not like you’re doing anything useful anyway.”
He looked at her — really looked — for the first time. The sharp edges of her tone, the way she avoided his eyes, the way she kept glancing toward the door as if waiting for Roy.
“You married me for this, didn’t you?” Ethan said quietly. “For my blood type.”
Nancy blinked, feigning innocence. “What are you talking about?”
“You never loved me. You only wanted a donor for your mother?” Pain colored his tone.
Her lips twisted into a smirk. “And what if I did? You should be grateful you were good for something.”
Ethan’s stomach turned. His hands clenched around the sheets. “Nancy…”
“Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped. “You think I owe you love? You’re nothing! You were pathetic when I found you — no job, no memory, no past! I gave you a name to hold onto!” she screamed as if she’d done him a favor.
Her words struck deeper than any knife could.
The door creaked. Roy entered, hands tucked into his pockets, expression smug.
“Everything all right here?” he asked, eyes sweeping from Nancy to Ethan.
Nancy’s hostility melted into sweetness instantly. “Roy, we were just talking about Mother.”
“Good,” Roy said smoothly. “The doctors are saying the only hope now is the Miracle Doctor.”
That name again. Ethan’s pulse quickened.
“I’ll find him,” Roy said confidently. “Even if it costs a fortune.”
Ethan’s head snapped up. “The Miracle Doctor?”
Roy arched a brow. “You’ve heard of him? You don’t move in those circles, friend. He’s a legend — vanished after some accident years ago.”
Ethan’s heart skipped. An accident. The word echoed like thunder in his skull. He saw flashes — fire, glass, a woman screaming his name. The memory vanished before he could grasp it, leaving a sharp pain behind as he grabbed his head.
Roy noticed and smirked faintly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Before Ethan could respond, Roy turned to the nurses. “We’ll need more blood. Mrs. Tilda can’t wait.”
“No,” Ethan said hoarsely. “You’re not taking another drop.”
Nancy’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t be selfish.”
“I said no,” he repeated, standing shakily.
Roy’s tone cooled. “It’s not your decision. The patient’s life is on the line.”
Ethan clenched his jaw. “Then save her yourself.”
Nancy’s temper exploded. “You worthless man!” She turned to the nurses. “Do it! I’m his wife — I give consent!”
They hesitated, but Roy’s glare made them move. Ethan stepped back, but his body was weak. Hands grabbed his arms; the needle pricked his vein again. His breath quickened, vision flickering.
“Stop…” he rasped, struggling. “You’ll kill me.”
“Maybe that’s what it takes,” Nancy hissed.
The world tilted sideways. The last thing he saw was Nancy’s cold eyes before everything went black again.
When consciousness returned, the lights above him were blinding. His head pounded like a drum.
Outside, Roy stood near the door, speaking on the phone, tone low and calculated. Ethan stilled, listening.
“Yes,” Roy said. “Find someone who can pretend to be the Miracle Doctor. Tilda doesn’t need to know the difference.”
Ethan’s chest tightened. Pretend?
“I don’t care if he’s a fraud,” Roy continued. “As long as it gets her to marry me. Once I’ve secured the alliance, she can rot for all I care.”
The pieces fell together like a cruel puzzle. Roy wasn’t helping out of kindness — he was hunting power. Nancy was just a pawn. And Ethan… Ethan was the fool holding their whole charade together.
The door opened. Nancy stepped in, expression calm. “Ethan,” she said softly, “you should rest. Roy’s working on a way to save Mother.”
Ethan met her gaze with emptiness she’d never seen before. “I’m done,” he said quietly.
She frowned. “Done with what?”
“Us.”
Nancy blinked, then laughed bitterly. “You’re serious? You think you can leave me?”
“I’m not asking,” he said steadily. “I’m telling you.”
She scoffed, walking to the bedside table and pulling out a file. “You want to leave? Fine. I already prepared this months ago.”
She tossed the papers at him. Divorce Agreement.
Ethan stared at the documents, then picked up the pen. Without hesitation, he signed. The scratch of the pen on paper sounded like the closing of a door.
Nancy blinked, stunned. “You… you’re actually signing it?”
He handed it back. “You’ve taken enough from me. You won’t take what’s left.”
Before she could speak, the door burst open. The woman from earlier — Leanna Cruz — appeared.
Nancy’s eyes widened. “Who are you?”
Leanna ignored her and rushed to Ethan’s side. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said urgently. “You’re too weak. Come with me.”
Nancy stepped forward, fury twisting her face. “So this is it? This is the woman you’ve been sneaking around with?”
Ethan tried to speak, but Leanna silenced him with a small shake of her head.
“Believe what you want,” Leanna said coldly. “But you’ll regret what you’ve done.”
Nancy lunged, but Leanna caught her wrist effortlessly. “Touch him again,” she said, voice like steel, “and you’ll learn who you’ve really betrayed.”
Then she slipped Ethan’s arm over her shoulder and led him out. Nurses watched but didn’t intervene; Leanna’s presence was commanding, almost royal.
Outside, the hospital parking lot gleamed under the fading sunlight. Rows of black luxury cars waited, engines humming. Men in suits opened doors as they approached.
Ethan blinked, confused. “Who are you… really?”
Leanna smiled faintly. “Someone who remembers who you were, even when you didn’t.”
She helped him into the car. The convoy roared to life, leaving Nancy’s shouts behind in a cloud of dust.
As the city skyline rose ahead, Leanna’s calm voice cut through the silence.
“Ethan,” she said softly, “you weren’t just a doctor. You were the Miracle Doctor — the best this country has ever known. You lost your memory after an attack, but your life… your empire… it’s all waiting for you.”
Ethan’s heartbeat thundered. “Empire?”
Leanna pointed through the car window. Ahead, a towering skyscraper pierced the sky, a gleaming monolith of glass and silver. The letters on its front glowed bright against the dusk:
BRAXTON PHARMACEUTICALS
Leanna turned to him, expression solemn yet proud. “Welcome home,” she said. “From today, you’re the CEO.”
Ethan stared silently, the reflection of the skyscraper burning in his eyes — a symbol of everything he’d forgotten and everything he was about to reclaim.
Ethan begins to remember flashes of his past as the car doors close, realizing his forgotten identity might be more than he ever imagined.
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Chapter 208
The city did not announce Mara’s disappearance.It never did.Disappearances were absorbed the way rain was absorbed by cracked pavement,quietly, unevenly, leaving darker patches that no one wanted to step in. Leanna learned of it the way she learned everything now, indirectly, through absence.Mara did not answer her comms.Mara did not show up for the morning briefing.Mara did not argue when Leanna proposed rerouting supplies.At first, Leanna told herself it was caution,that Mara was lying low,that this was what survival looked like now silence, misdirection, patience.By noon, denial tasted like ash.Leanna stood in the small office behind the clinic, hands braced against the desk, staring at the empty chair opposite her. The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and old paper,outside, volunteers moved in low voices, their steps careful, as if sound itself had become dangerous.She replayed the last conversation with Korrin again and again, searching for the moment she might have mi
Chapter 207
The city did not react all at once,and that was what unsettled Leanna most.There was no riot after the Council’s announcement,no cheers either,just a slow, uneven ripple,conversations in doorways, pauses in broadcast chatter, eyes lifting from screens and then dropping again. People absorbed the news the way one absorbed a change in weather,warily, with the instinct to adapt before questioning whether it was deserved.Leanna Hale appointed Civil Liaison to the Council,temporary mandate,oversight of humanitarian coordination.Temporary.Everything dangerous was always temporary at first.She watched the broadcast from a quiet room above the clinic, the sound turned low,her name looked strange in official typography, stripped of context and blood and fear,cleaned,sanitized.Legitimized.Mara stood behind her, arms folded so tightly her knuckles had gone white.“You didn’t warn us,” Mara said.Leanna didn’t turn. “I didn’t know until an hour ago.”“You could have refused.”“Yes.”Silenc
Chapter 206
The city learned restraint the way a wounded animal learned stillness.Carefully,suspiciously,with flinches that never quite went away.Leanna felt it every morning when she walked through the lower districts,the pauses in conversation when uniforms passed, the way shopkeepers kept their hands visible, the way laughter died down too fast,peace had arrived, but it had not been welcomed,it sat heavy in the air, like humidity before a storm.She had stopped pretending this was temporary.That was the first lie leadership burned out of you.There was no until Ethan returns,no until Korrin overreaches,no clean turning point waiting just beyond the horizon. There was only now messy, compromised, fragile,and the question of what kind of damage you were willing to accept in order to keep it standing.Leanna stood in the clinic doorway and watched volunteers work in practiced silence. Bandages. Rations. Quiet reassurances murmured to people who didn’t ask for hope anymore just relief.Mara joi
Chapter 205
The city learned how to live without Ethan faster than it should have,and that was the cruelest part.Leanna noticed it in the small things first the way patrol routes stabilized, the way blackouts became scheduled instead of sudden, the way people stopped looking over their shoulders every time a rumor passed through the streets. Order settled in like dust, quiet and persistent, coating everything.Korrin’s order.She hated how efficient it was.Three days after Ethan left, Leanna stood on the balcony of the safehouse and watched the city breathed,morning traffic crawled below,vendors argued over prices,children ran across cracked pavement chasing something that looked like hope but might have just been boredom.Life went on.That should have been comforting.Instead, it felt like betrayal.She pressed her palms against the railing, grounding herself. Sleep had become optional these past nights,brief, shallow, full of half-dreams where Ethan was always just out of reach,not dead,not
Chapter 204
The city did not celebrate.That was the first thing Leanna noticed when they released her.No crowds,no cheers,no whispered legends rising up the way they always had when Ethan broke something that was supposed to be unbreakable,just streets moving at their usual pace, people stepping around each other with careful indifference, as if nothing monumental had happened at all.As if the world hadn’t tilted.She stood at the edge of the transport bay long after the guards unlocked her cuffs and shoved her forward,the metal doors slid shut behind her with a sound that felt final in a way she couldn’t explain,not imprisonment ending,but something else.Something quieter.Her wrists were raw,her body ached in the dull, exhausted way that came after fear had burned itself out,but it was her chest that hurt most tight, shallow breaths, like her lungs didn’t trust the air anymore.Ethan.That was the thought she couldn’t escape.Not where he was,but what did he do.She had seen the broadcast.
Chapter 203
Night did not fall in the city anymore.It descended.The kind of darkness that didn’t simply remove light but rearranged meaning,turning familiar streets into corridors of intent, every shadow a decision waiting to be made. Ethan moved through it without disguise, without haste. That alone felt like a provocation.People noticed.They always did now.Some turned away quickly, fear reflexive and sharp. Others stared too long, eyes burning with questions they would never ask out loud,a few inclined their heads, gestures small but weighted, like prayers offered to something they weren’t sure deserved worship.Ethan hated that most of all.He adjusted the strap of his jacket and kept walking.Korrin’s perimeter loomed ahead not a wall, not a gate, but a gradual shift in atmosphere. Surveillance density increased,patrol patterns tightened,the air itself felt watched. This was where the city stopped pretending it was shared.Ethan crossed the invisible line anyway.Immediately, his comm ch
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