My Husband Forced Me to Donate a Kidney to His Mistress

The ticker tape on the news crawl was still burning behind my eyelids: *Foster Enterprises Declares Insolvency.* The words were a neon slash across my vision, turning the gray Manhattan skyline into a blur of vertigo and rain. My phone had been vibrating against my hip for an hour—lawyers, creditors, panic—but I didn't answer. I only had one destination.

Zain.

He was the only solid thing left in a world that had liquefied beneath my feet this morning. I bypassed the doorman at the Obsidian Tower, my breath hitching in my throat as the elevator surged toward the penthouse. I needed his voice. I needed him to tell me that money was just paper, that my father wasn't going to prison, that we would survive this.

The penthouse door was unlatched. That should have been my first warning. Zain was meticulous about security; an open door was a fracture in his armor.

"Zain?" My voice cracked, swallowed by the cavernous, minimalist foyer. The air smelled of ozone and his signature sandalwood cologne, but there was an undercurrent of something else—something floral and cloying. *White lilies.* My stepmother's perfume.

I moved toward the master bedroom, my wet heels squeaking against the polished marble. The silence in the apartment wasn't peaceful; it was heavy, like the pressure drop before a storm.

The bedroom door was ajar. I pushed it open, my hand trembling, ready to collapse into his arms.

I didn't collapse. I froze. The blood in my veins turned to ice, then to acid.

Zain was there. But he wasn't alone.

The sheets were a tangled mess of charcoal silk, and rising from them was the pale, slender form of Edith Richardson. My stepmother. Her hair was disheveled, her lips swollen, the strap of her silk camisole slipping off a shoulder that I had seen my father kiss a thousand times.

Zain sat on the edge of the bed, buttoning his shirt. He didn't jump. He didn't scramble to cover himself. He looked up at me with eyes that were terrifyingly devoid of shock. They were cold. Clinical.

"Emelia," Edith gasped, pulling the sheet up to her neck, her eyes wide with a performance of distress that looked almost genuine. "You… you shouldn't be here. We were just—"

"Stop," I whispered. The word scraped my throat raw. "Zain?"

He stood up, smoothing the cuffs of his shirt. He looked at me like I was a stranger who had stumbled into a board meeting. "You’re hysterical, Emelia. Look at you. You’re dripping wet."

"You're sleeping with her?" The reality of it hit me like a physical blow to the sternum. "She's my father's wife. Zain, she's—"

"She is the only person who understands the pressure I am under," Zain said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. He walked around the bed to stand beside Edith, placing a protective hand on her shoulder. "While you've been playing the spoiled heiress, Edith has been… here."

"Emelia!"

The shout came from the hallway behind me. I spun around. My father, Edwin Foster, stood in the doorway. He was drenched, his face flushed red from the exertion of chasing me, his chest heaving.

"Dad, don't—" I started, stepping toward him to block his view, but it was too late.

He saw them. He saw his wife in the bed of the man who had asked for my hand just weeks ago. The color drained from his face instantly, replaced by a sickly, ash-gray pallor. His eyes bulged, fixing on Edith.

"Edith?" he wheezed. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated heartbreak.

Then his hand flew to his chest. A guttural sound, like a tree snapping in a gale, tore from his throat. He crumpled. His knees hit the marble with a sickening crack, and he pitched forward.

"Dad!" I screamed, throwing myself to the floor. I scrambled over to him, grabbing his shoulders. His skin was clammy, his eyes rolling back. "Dad! Breathe! Please, breathe!"

I started compressions, my hands slipping on his wet shirt. "Call 911!" I shrieked at Zain. "Do something!"

Suddenly, hands grabbed my hair and yanked me back. A sharp pain exploded in my scalp. It was Edith.

"Get off him!" she hissed, her voice changing from victim to viper in a millisecond. "You're hurting him! You're killing him!"

"I'm trying to save him!" I fought against her, but she was surprisingly strong. She clawed at my face, her nails digging into my cheek. I shoved her back, desperate to return to my father, whose breaths were becoming terrifyingly shallow rattles.

Edith stumbled back, hitting the wall. She didn't fall, but she immediately grabbed her own arm, pinching the flesh hard enough to leave a mark. "Zain!" she wailed. "She attacked me! She's crazy!"

Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder. They must have been called for the bankruptcy chaos downstairs, or perhaps the doorman had summoned them when I ran past.

"Dad, please," I sobbed, pressing my ear to his chest. Silence. The terrible, deafening silence of a heart that had simply stopped beating.

Police officers swarmed the room moments later, their radios crackling with static. I was still on the floor, clutching my father's cooling hand, when strong hands hauled me up.

"That's her," Edith sobbed, pointing a shaking finger at me. She held out her arms, already blooming with fresh red marks. "She burst in here screaming. She attacked me. My husband… oh god, my husband tried to stop her and he collapsed. She killed him!"

I stared at her, unable to process the lie. I looked at Zain. He was the only one who could stop this. He knew the truth.

"Zain," I begged, the handcuffs biting into my wrists as the officer spun me around. "Tell them. Tell them what happened."

Zain looked at the body of the man who had mentored him. Then he looked at me. His expression was a wall of ice.

"She's been unstable since the financial news broke," Zain said calmly to the officer. "She came here looking for someone to blame. I tried to de-escalate, but she was violent."

My knees buckled. The officer held me up, dragging me toward the door.

"No!" I screamed, thrashing as they pulled me away from my father's body. "He's lying! They're lying! Dad!"

The last thing I saw before the elevator doors closed was Zain wrapping his arms around a weeping Edith, burying his face in her hair, while my father lay alone on the cold, unforgiving floor.