Reborn to Revenge: Fighting My Devil Husband

The sedative hit my bloodstream like liquid lead, dragging me down into a familiar darkness. I tried to fight it, tried to cling to consciousness, but my body betrayed me once again. The last thing I saw was Dr. Finch's cold smile as the orderlies wheeled me toward the operating room.

When I woke, the pain was different this time. Not sharp and localized like after the previous surgeries, but a deep, systemic ache that seemed to radiate from my very bones. My mouth tasted like copper and decay, and when I tried to swallow, my throat felt raw and swollen.

"The procedure went well," Dr. Finch announced to someone I couldn't see. "Though there were some... complications. Her body is responding poorly to the repeated trauma."

I wanted to ask what he'd done to me this time, but when I opened my mouth, only a weak croak emerged. My voice was gone, stripped away along with whatever else they'd taken from me on that table.

The days that followed blurred together in a haze of nausea and weakness. Food became my enemy—everything I tried to eat came back up within minutes, leaving me retching bile into a plastic basin. The nurses would force spoonfuls of broth between my lips, their faces masks of professional concern, but my stomach rejected even that.

I was disappearing, piece by piece. My wedding ring, once snug on my finger, now spun loosely around bone and skin. My reflection in the bathroom mirror—when they allowed me to use it under supervision—showed a stranger with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes.

But even as my body failed, my mind remained sharp. Crystalline with desperation and fury.

It was during one of those endless nights, when sleep eluded me and pain kept me company, that I remembered Clara's gift. The small phone she'd pressed into my palm before being dragged away. I'd hidden it in the one place they never checked—taped to the underside of my bedside table with medical tape I'd stolen from a supply cart.

My hands shook as I retrieved it, the device feeling impossibly heavy in my weakened grip. But I managed to turn it on, managed to activate the recording function just as voices drifted from the hallway outside my room.

"...unnecessary procedures, but Ward's instructions were very specific," Dr. Finch was saying to someone. "He wants her weakened to the point where her body simply... gives out. Natural causes, you understand. The repeated surgical trauma is taking its toll."

"And if she doesn't die naturally?" The other voice was unfamiliar, younger.

"Then we increase the dosage of the experimental medication. Her liver is already compromised from the previous procedures. A little push in the wrong direction, and her body will shut down completely. Ward has been very generous with his donations to ensure our discretion."

My heart hammered against my ribs as I held the phone steady, capturing every damning word.

"What about the nursing staff? Some of them seem... concerned."

"The ones who ask too many questions don't last long here," Dr. Finch replied coldly. "Ward has connections throughout the medical board. Anyone who becomes a problem simply finds their career ended."

I had it. Finally, I had proof. Evidence that couldn't be dismissed as the ravings of a mentally ill woman. My hands trembled as I stopped the recording, checking to make sure it had saved properly.

For the first time in weeks, hope flickered in my chest. This recording could destroy them both. Could expose the truth and—

The phone slipped from my weakened fingers.

The sound it made hitting the floor was like a gunshot in the quiet room—a sharp crack that seemed to echo forever. I lunged for it, my cast scraping against the bed rail, but my coordination was shot. The device skittered across the linoleum just as the door opened.

Lucien stepped inside, his expensive shoes clicking against the floor as he approached. His eyes found the phone immediately, and I watched his expression transform from cold indifference to something far more dangerous.

"What," he said quietly, his voice carrying a deadly calm, "is this?"

I tried to speak, to lie, to come up with any explanation that might save me, but only a wheeze emerged from my damaged throat.

He picked up the phone, his fingers moving across the screen with practiced efficiency. I watched the blood drain from his face as he found the recording, watched his jaw clench as he listened to Dr. Finch's damning words.

Then he smiled.

It was the most terrifying expression I'd ever seen—not angry, not even particularly upset. Just... pleased. Like a predator that had finally cornered its prey.

"Oh, Ariadne," he said, crushing the phone beneath his heel until it was nothing but plastic fragments and circuit boards. "You really should have learned to accept your fate gracefully."

The first kick caught me in the ribs, driving the air from my lungs in a whoosh of agony. I tried to curl into a ball, to protect myself, but the restraints and my cast made it impossible.

"Did you really think," he snarled, his polished facade finally cracking, "that you could outsmart me? That you could gather evidence and play the hero?"

Another kick, this one to my stomach, sent waves of nausea through my already-fragile system. I retched, tasting blood.

"You're nothing, Ariadne. You've always been nothing. A placeholder. A speed bump on the road to my real life."

His fist connected with my shoulder, then my face, splitting my lip and sending stars exploding across my vision. Each blow was methodical, calculated to cause maximum pain without leaving marks that couldn't be explained by my 'deteriorating condition.'

"Lucien, darling, is everything alright?" Celeste's voice drifted from the doorway, honey-sweet and concerned.

"Just having a conversation with my wife," he replied, not even breathing hard despite the violence he'd just inflicted. "She had another paranoid episode. Tried to record the medical staff."

"Oh, the poor thing," Celeste cooed, stepping into the room. "She really is quite delusional, isn't she?"

I tried to focus on her face, but my vision kept sliding in and out of clarity. Blood trickled from my nose, warm and metallic.

"The question is," Lucien said, his voice thoughtful, "how do we clean up this mess? She's becoming more trouble than she's worth."

"Well," Celeste replied, perching on the edge of my bed like she had every right to be there, "accidents happen in hospitals all the time. Especially with patients in such fragile condition."

Their voices began to sound distant, echoing as if from the bottom of a well. The room spun around me, darkness creeping in from the edges of my vision.

"Her heart rate is already erratic," Lucien observed clinically. "A little stress, a little excitement... these things can be fatal for someone in her condition."

"How tragic," Celeste murmured. "Losing a patient to the very illness you were trying to treat."

I felt myself slipping away, my consciousness fragmenting like the destroyed phone. But even as my body failed, my mind burned with one final, desperate thought:

If I could live again—if I could have another chance—I would destroy them both. I would take everything they held dear and watch them burn.

The world went black, and I fell into nothingness with that promise echoing in my soul.