Chapter 8 - The Underground Hospital
I woke up to the smell of bleach and metallic blood.
A harsh, blinding surgical light was shining directly into my eyes.
I tried to sit up, but a sharp, agonizing pain flared in my stomach, forcing me back down.
"Don't move, you'll tear the stitches."
The voice belonged to an older woman wearing a blood-stained surgical apron.
I turned my head and realized I was lying on a metal table in a dingy, underground basement.
Ethan was sitting in the corner, his head buried in his hands, completely covered in my blood.
Luis was asleep on a small cot nearby.
"Where am I?" I croaked, my throat feeling like sandpaper.
Ethan snapped his head up, jumping out of his chair and rushing to my side.
"You're safe," Ethan breathed, tears shining in his exhausted eyes.
"We are in Doctor Aris's clinic in the lower wards."
"She is the only surgeon in the city not on my father's payroll."
Doctor Aris wiped her hands on a towel and looked down at me grimly.
"The bullet grazed your liver and cracked a rib," she said bluntly.
"You lost a lot of blood, but you're going to live."
"However, you need at least six weeks of strict bed rest."
I looked at the calendar hanging on the concrete wall.
The tournament was in exactly five days.
"I don't have six weeks," I whispered, forcing myself to sit up despite the blinding pain.
"Claire, stop," Ethan pleaded, gently pushing my shoulders down.
"The tournament is over."
"I am not going to let you dance with a bullet hole in your stomach."
"I'll figure something else out for my sister."
I glared at him, a sudden, fierce determination overriding the physical agony.
"If we don't dance, Julian takes the company, your father kills us to cover his tracks, and Daniel wins," I panted.
"I have waited twelve years to destroy the people who took my life away."
"I am not stopping for a scratch."
Doctor Aris let out a dry, humorless chuckle.
"You dancers are all completely insane," she muttered.
She walked over to a metal cabinet and pulled out a heavy metal brace lined with thick padding.
"If you actually plan to do this, you will wear this corset brace."
"It will hold your stitches together, but it will be excruciatingly painful to move."
She locked eyes with me, her expression turning deadly serious.
"If one of those stitches bursts while you are on the floor, you will bleed out in three minutes."
"Do you understand me?"
I nodded slowly.
"Good," Doctor Aris said, turning back to Ethan.
"Then you better start practicing, rich boy."
"Because she can't do any lifts, which means you have to carry the entire routine on your shoulders."
For the next four days, we lived in that miserable basement.
We practiced in the cramped space between the surgical tables.
Every step sent shockwaves of agony through my torso, but Ethan's hands were always there, guiding me, supporting my weight.
Our bodies learned to move as one desperate, synchronized entity.
On the night of the tournament, I strapped the heavy corset around my waist and put on a stunning, floor-length red gown Ethan had procured.
We walked out of the clinic, ready for war.
But as we climbed into Ethan's car, my phone buzzed with an unknown number.
I opened the text message.
May you like
It was a picture of my mother, bound to a chair with a gag in her mouth.
The text read: Lose in the first round, or I send her back in pieces.
