My Husband Planned to Harvest My Organs

The bathroom door splinters.

Cooper doesn't hesitate. Ninety pounds of golden fury launches through the opening, teeth finding flesh. A man screams. Another shouts. The sound of bodies colliding, furniture crashing.

I'm frozen against the tile wall, my sketch pencil still clutched in my hand like it could be a weapon. Through the doorway, I see shadows wrestling—Cooper's golden coat streaked with something dark, two men in black tactical gear trying to pin him down.

"Get the dog off me!" one screams.

A third man appears in the bathroom doorway. Ski mask. Gloved hands. A syringe glinting in the dim light.

Cooper sees him. Releases the first attacker and charges.

The needle plunges into his neck.

My dog—my only friend, my protector—staggers mid-leap. His legs buckle. He hits the marble floor with a sound that cracks something inside my chest.

"Cooper!" I'm on my knees beside him, hands buried in his fur. His chest still rises and falls, but his eyes are glazing over, unfocused. "No, no, no—"

Hands grab my arms. Haul me upright. The man with the syringe is close enough that I can smell cigarettes on his breath through the mask.

"Make it quick," he tells the others. "Boss wants it clean."

Boss. Sabrina.

The diamond bracelet on my wrist catches the light as I thrash. Jaxson's gift. Jaxson's collar. I twist, slamming my elbow into someone's throat. They grunt, grip loosening, and I'm running.

Through the bedroom. Down the hallway lined with paintings I used to admire. Past the library where I'd read novels about women who escaped. The house is a maze designed to keep me in, but I know every corner, every locked door, every dead end.

Except one way out.

The conservatory balcony. Second floor. Overlooking the rose garden where I've wasted five years sketching flowers I couldn't name.

Footsteps pound behind me. Voices shouting coordinates like I'm a target in a training exercise.

I burst through the French doors onto the balcony. The night air hits my face—cold, sharp, real. Below, the glass conservatory roof glitters like a frozen lake. Twenty feet down. Maybe twenty-five.

Behind me, the door crashes open.

"Don't move!" Ski Mask levels the syringe at me like a gun. "We can do this easy or hard, sweetheart."

I climb onto the railing.

The wrought iron is slick under my bare feet. My cotton dress whips around my legs in the wind. The bracelet slides down my wrist, too loose, almost falling.

"Get down from there," Ski Mask says, but his voice wavers. "You'll kill yourself."

"Better than what you're planning."

Headlights sweep across the driveway below. A black sedan—Jaxson's sedan—screeches to a halt. The driver's door flies open.

"Audrey!" Jaxson's voice, raw with something that might be fear. "Don't—"

I jump.

The air rushes past. For one perfect second, I'm weightless. Free.

Then the glass explodes.

Pain—white-hot, everywhere, shredding through my back, my legs, my arms. Shards rain down like knives. I can't breathe. Can't see. The world is red and sharp and screaming.

Distantly, I hear Jaxson roaring. Footsteps crunching over broken glass. Hands on my face, my neck, checking for a pulse I'm not sure I still have.

"Call the team!" he shouts. "Not 911—the private team! Now!"

I try to speak. Try to tell him I know what he is, what he's done. But my mouth fills with something warm and metallic, and the darkness swallows me whole.

---

Waking is worse than dying.

The room is white. Sterile. Machines beep in steady rhythm beside a bed that isn't mine. My body is a distant thing, wrapped in gauze and chemical numbness. I try to move my fingers—they respond, barely. Try to remember how I got here.

Glass. Blood. Cooper's eyes going dark.

The door opens. Heels click across polished floor.

Sabrina Ward-Hudson stands at the foot of my bed like a vision in cream Chanel. Her smile is surgical.

"You're awake," she says. "Good. I wanted you conscious for this."

I try to speak. My throat is sandpaper.

"The fall was quite dramatic." She examines her manicured nails. "Internal bleeding, shattered ribs, punctured lung. The surgeons worked for hours to save you."

Something cold crawls up my spine.

"While they were in there," Sabrina continues, voice light, conversational, "I had them take care of a little problem. You see, I couldn't have Jaxson's pet bearing his heir someday. So we removed your uterus. Completely. Cleanly."

The machines scream as my heart rate spikes.

"Don't worry," she leans closer, perfume suffocating. "You never would have used it anyway. You were always just spare parts, darling. Now you're just... spare."

She leaves me there, hollowed out, the machines still screaming.

---

Jaxson comes at night.

He sits beside the bed, takes my bandaged hand in his. His eyes are red-rimmed, his jaw shadowed with stubble. He looks like he hasn't slept.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. "About the hysterectomy. Sabrina had no right—"

I stare at the ceiling. White tiles. Sixty-four of them.

"But it doesn't matter," he continues, squeezing my hand. "Children, a uterus—you don't need those things. You have me. I'm all you need, Audrey. I'm everything."

Sixty-four tiles. Each one identical. Perfectly blank.

"Say something," he pleads. "Yell at me. Hate me. Just—say something."

I am a rose with the petals torn off. I am a sketch erased. I am sixty-four white tiles, and nothing more.

I close my eyes and let the darkness return.