“I left because if I didn’t… you wouldn’t have lived long enough for us to get married.”
Everything stopped.
My mind rejected the sentence before it even finished forming.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
My father leaned against the wall, watching us like he’d already seen this ending.
Chloe inhaled slowly, like she was preparing to relive something she never wanted to remember.
“Three weeks before I disappeared,” she said, “I found something.”
I felt my hands curl into fists.
“What?”
She hesitated.
And for a second… I saw fear.
Real fear.
“In your father’s office.”
That didn’t make sense.
“My father?” I glanced at him.
He didn’t look surprised.
That was worse.
“He wasn’t supposed to know I saw it,” Chloe continued. “But I did.”
“Stop talking in riddles,” I snapped. “Just tell me.”
She swallowed.
“There was a file. With your name on it.”
My heartbeat started to climb.
“A medical file,” she added.
My stomach dropped.
“That’s impossible,” I said immediately. “I’m fine.”
She didn’t argue.
She just looked at me.
And that silence… said everything.
“No,” I shook my head. “No. You’re lying.”
“I wish I was.”
My father let out a tired sigh.
“She’s not lying,” he said.
I turned to him.
“What is she talking about?”
He hesitated for the first time.
And in that hesitation…
I felt something break.
“You had a condition,” he said slowly. “Something rare. Aggressive. We caught it late.”
“No,” I whispered.
“You were scheduled for surgery,” he continued. “But there were… complications.”
“What complications?” My voice rose.
He looked at Chloe.
She closed her eyes.
“They needed a donor,” she said.
The room felt smaller.
“What kind of donor?”
“A match,” she replied. “A perfect one.”
I felt cold.
“Okay,” I said, forcing logic into chaos. “Then find one. That’s what hospitals do.”
“They did,” she said softly.
“And?”
Her voice dropped to almost nothing.
“I was the match.”
The words didn’t land all at once.
They came apart.
Piece by piece.
Like my brain was trying to slow the impact.
“You?” I repeated.
She nodded.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Why not?!”
“Because you would’ve said no.”
She was right.
That made it worse.
“I had to do it without your consent,” she continued. “The procedure was risky. Not just for you… for me too.”
I stared at her.
“And this has what to do with marrying my father?”
Everything.
I could feel it.
But I didn’t want to see it.
She took a shaky breath.
“Your father refused the surgery.”
“What?”
“He said it was too dangerous. That the survival rate wasn’t guaranteed. That it wasn’t worth risking two lives.”
I looked at him.
“Is that true?”
He didn’t deny it.
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