The Ring She Tossed Away

"Help me… it hurts…" Planette mumbled deliriously in his arms, her body trembling violently with pain.

Lucius didn’t spare a single glance for me on the floor. He scooped Planette up and bolted out the door. I slumped against the wall, my gaze empty and hollow. Blood was pouring steadily from the back of my head, soaking into the carpet beneath me. It was only then that I realized how badly I’d been hurt in the scuffle.

Suddenly, a sharp knock rapped on the door. My intuition told me it was Lucius. Pulling myself up with every ounce of strength I had left, I opened it, only to find my lawyer, Julian Croft, standing outside with the divorce agreement in hand.

Julian was absolutely stunned at the sight of my bloodied face. "I’ll take you to the hospital right now!"

"No, I’m fine. Just give me the agreement."

I scrawled my signature in one swift motion. A drop of my blood splattered across the paper, but I didn’t even blink.

Julian insisted on driving me to the hospital. By the time my wound was bandaged, Lucius had called. I didn't press the answer button until my phone showed over twenty missed calls.

Lucius’s voice came through the line, tight with frustration. "Amara, why weren’t you at home? Where did you go?"

"At the hospital," I replied, my voice flat and devoid of emotion.

I hung up. Not long after, Lucius burst into the ward, a sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead. He questioned me in a calm, chillingly cold tone.

"Amara, you're perfectly aware of how pitiful her background is. Are you just trying to humiliate her by letting her stay? I don’t understand why you’ve turned into such a shrew."

He kept rambling, showing no intention of stopping. "I told you I dreamed of her lying dead in a pool of blood! Why did you have to beat her until her face was covered in it?"

Every word he spoke was a dagger, a pure accusation. I curled my lip and flipped the divorce agreement to the signature page.

"Sign it."

"What is this?" he asked, frowning.

"A gift for you."

Lucius didn’t think twice before signing. I knew he felt a sliver of guilt for not bringing me to the hospital sooner, so he didn’t care what he was signing.

"Once Planette gets better, I’ll send her away," he muttered.

Right as the words left his mouth, his ringtone blared again. Lucius glanced at me, took a step back to answer the phone, and returned moments later, his expression strained.

"Amara, Planette… she’s been rushed to the emergency room due to excessive blood loss. The blood bank is short on her type. I remember you share the same blood type. Could you…" His voice trailed off, thick with awkwardness.

He was well aware he was in the wrong, but he had no choice right now.

Crack!

I slapped him across the face as hard as I could, my entire body shaking with rage. "Get out!"

As urgent calls kept flooding in, Lucius stepped out of the ward. In that brief window, I booked two plane tickets out of the country, one heading north, the other south. I had finally decided to leave Lucius forever.

When he walked back in, several nurses and his underlings stood behind him. He said nothing, merely gesturing at them with a flick of his finger. They pinned me down tightly. I bit my lip, fury churning in my eyes.

"What are you doing?"

A nurse approached, holding a syringe that looked as thick as my arm. Lucius’s voice was rough, laced with guilt.

"Amara, I’m sorry. Save Planette once again. I can’t afford to lose her anymore."

I screamed at him. "I’m still lying in this hospital bed myself! Are you out of your mind?"

Lucius didn’t even bat an eyelid. I tried to plead with him, my voice breaking. "No… Lucius. Please don’t… please."

But he remained completely unmoved. I twisted and thrashed, fighting with all my strength, but Lucius simply looked away, leaving them to take my blood without another word.

All of a sudden, I gave up struggling. I had always been terrified of needles. Whenever I got sick in the past, Lucius would coax me endlessly, even persuading the doctor to prescribe alternative medicines instead.

Seeing my sudden surrender, Lucius bent down and lifted me into his arms.

"It’s okay, Amara. It’ll be over soon."

But as I stopped resisting, a strange, suffocating tightness crept into his chest. It was an awful premonition, a terrifying certainty that he was about to lose me forever.