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She was taken out of her ward, the doctor said she had to be prepared for the operation.
She had wanted to be in the room with her aunt, to hold a hand and whisper something that might steady a frightened soul.
Instead, she had been pushed from one nightmare to the next: signed paper, whispered threats, a man in a black suit who had slid a pen across her fingers, the ambulance, the phone call that had made the hospital move faster than she thought possible. She still could not believe how quickly everything had changed.
She forced herself to stand and walked into the cool night air to clear her head. The hospital garden smelled of wet earth and something green and real — and for a moment she let herself breathe.
She thought of the man who had approached her in the street: the dark suit, the flat tone, the way his hand had been steady when he held the pen out. Angel, she had thought once, absurdly. A savior in expensive shoes.
A footstep behind her made her turn.
He was there it was the man that gave her the contract to sign.
"Elena," he said quietly. "You look like you need fresh air."
Thank you sir, my aunt will be receivingher operation?" Her voice came out raw.
"Who are you? Why did you—" She stopped because words were slippery. "Why did you do what you did? The file, the money… who sent you?"
He watched her with the same calculated stillness she'd come to hate and fear. "We made a deal." He pronounced the last word as if it was a simple fact of physics.
"A deal?" She laughed, a short, edge-of-hysteria sound.
He stepped forward before she could finish. "You signed a contract. You accepted terms." He gave the smallest of nudges with his brow. "You do understand contracts, yes? Once signed, they're binding."
Elena's pulse jackhammered with the meaning of those words. The garden seemed to tilt. "What terms? Who would make me—what are you talking about?"
He flicked the file closed with a patient click. "You signed to be my boss… playtoy.
The world went very cold.
"No." The single word tore out of her. She lunged for the file, for some scrap of paper or clause she could throw back at him and demand justice, but his hand was on the file before she reached it.
He held it as a man holds an object of nocllonsequence;
"You can't do this," she whispered. Her throat closed. "I didn't read. I thought it was for the hospital—"
His mouth tilted, not unkindly, but like a man looking at a puzzle come together. "You read life wrong sometimes, ."
"It's done. The money moved. The operation will begin. You have a roof now — of a sort."
Elena staggered back. Tears blurred the garden lights into watery stars. "Please—please. I won't do anything. I won't be your—"
"You will obey the terms," he said simply. "My boss don't bargain on obedience. he require it." There was no rhetoric in his voice, only fact, like wind moving a branch.
She fell to her knees then, body folding over with the weight of panic and shame. "No, no, no. You can't take me. You can't just… I have an aunt. I have—"
Her voice dissolved into a wet, animal sob. Passersby saw but did not stop; the world was mercilessly practical.
He watched her for a long time, then — with an almost bored gentleness — he turned away.
She was about going inside the hospital when a huge man felt put her into a car without ceremony. The world folded and slid.
She woke in the same soft room she had first come to consciousness in. Panic flooded the air again, hot and immediate.
She threw herself up and pounded the heavy door until a maid, pale and prim and clearly instructed to be firm, opened it. The maid's eyes flicked over her,
the maid said politely.
"Master has ordered you to Freshen up and put this dress on." she dropped a green and short revealing dress.
"Please, help me," Elena begged, fingers curling in the maid's sleeve. "Please, I have to go to the hospital. My aunt—she's having an operation. You have to help me. Please—"
She wanted running out of the room but saw two guards standing by the door.
Tears came at that: gratitude mixing foully with the knowledge she'd been bled of her choices
"I will take my leave now ma'am" the maid said as she bowed her head slightly then left the room.
She stood there as her tears slowed into a shaking, exhausted quiet, one.
Then she finally headed to the bathroom to freshen up.