The wife he bought

chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

Damien POV

I’ve killed men for less than what my father just said.

He stands in my office, files on his hand, calling my wife damaged goods. Calling her a burden. Telling me to divorce her. Cut my losses.

I wanted to hit him. One punch. Just one.

“Get out,” I said. The ice was back. The cold that kept me alive. “If you ever come back, if you ever say her name again, I’ll put you in the ground next to the men who bid on her. Do you understand me?” now I wasn't joking. He left in resignation.

He understood. His son had found someone else. He could now stop being anxious of when his son and wife might get back together. The real reason he wanted me married.

Now it's just me and Zara. She’s pale. The bruises on her arms from the warehouse hasn’t faded. They’ve multiplied.

“Damien” she calls out in a sweet voice.

We were downstairs watching a documentary about oceans. I don't get why she watches does but I watch with her.

I looked at her, frail, leaning on me. Suddenly she gets up a nosebleed, she rushes to her room. I went with her. She didn't allow me in. I stood outside till I heard her say she was okay.

I went to my study. Locked the door. Put my fist through the drywall. It doesn’t help. I hated this. Hated seeing her so weak. So sick.

Kessler called that night. Zara puts her on speaker. I stood behind her chair, hands on the wood, because if I touch her I’ll break something.

“Your counts are down again,” Kessler says. “The last transfusion didn’t take. We’re seeing early signs of infection. Your body’s not responding to the meds.”

“Not responding.” The word echos in my head.

“How long?” The question scrapes out of me.

“We need to move up the transplant timeline. But Damien…” She uses my name. She never uses my name. “We still don’t have a match. Not in the registry. No where. Without a donor, we’re looking at weeks. Maybe less.”

Weeks.

Zara hangs up. My hands tighten on the chair until the wood creaks.

“We’ll find one,” I said. It’s not a promise. It’s a fact. I’ll buy the registry. I’ll test the whole city. I’ll bleed every person from here to the coast. “We’ll go overseas. Switzerland. Japan. There’s always—---” she cuts me off

“Damien.” She turns. Makes me look at her. God, she’s tired. Tired in her bones. “Stop.”

I stopped .

“I’m a burden,” she whispered.

The word my father used. The word Roman wants me to believe. The word that’s been sitting in my chest since I saw her on her knees in that warehouse.

“Don’t you ever,” I said, and my voice breaks. “Say that again.”

“It’s true. The contract was for a year. You’ve done more than enough. You should—”

“If you say divorce me I swear to God, Zara.”

She doesn’t. She said worse. “You should let me go.”

No. No. Never.

“You have to. I’m only going to get worse. I’m going to” she moved her shoulders up in a way as if saying the last bits of the sentence with it. She couldn’t say die. Neither could I. “I’m going to be in a bed, and you’ll be stuck watching. That’s not what you signed up for.” she said to me.

“I signed up for you,” I tell her. My ribs feel like they’re caving in. “All of you. This is you. So this is mine too.”

It was the most honest thing I’ve ever said. It was not love. I don’t get to have that word. Not yet. Not when saying it might kill us both.

She looked at me like I handed her the world. Like I’m the one dying.

Three days pass. I couldn't sleep. I watched her. She sleeps sixteen hours, then pretends for four. She folds laundry. She drinks tea. She doesn’t look at me the same. Like she’s memorizing me.

I should’ve known.

I came home at 9:47 PM. The house felt wrong before I open the door. Too quiet. No light in the kitchen. No sound from the TV.

Zara’s not downstairs. I called for Mali asked her where Zara went. Said she went for a stroll, wanted to be alone, didn't allow anyone with her.

I take the stairs two at a time. Her room. Empty. Bed made. The kind of made that means she didn’t sleep in it.

Bathroom. Empty.

My room. Empty but.

There’s a note on my pillow. Ten words. Her handwriting, shaky.

“You said I was important. That's enough for me. Zara”

The paper crumples in my fist before I finish reading.

“Zara.” Her name comes out raw. Not a yell. A wound.

I tore the room apart. Closet. Drawers. Under the bed. Nothing. She didn’t pack. She didn’t take clothes. She took herself.

Kitchen. No mug in the sink. Balcony. Empty.

Garage. No car taken. Nothing.

Enzo’s still in the hospital. No one was watching. Because I told them to give her space. Because I thought she was safe in my house.

I’m back in my bedroom. Standing in the middle of it, breathing like Roman got a second shot at my skull.

She left.

She thinks she’s a burden. She thinks I’ll be better off.

She’s wrong.

I pulled out my phone. My hands aren’t shaking. They’re steady. Deadly.

I called Kessler first. “She missed her transfusion. Where would she go?”

“I don’t know,” Kessler said. Then, quieter. “Damien… if she doesn’t get it soon”

“I know.” I hanged up.

Next call. Marco. My Marco, not Roman’s idiotic one.

“Find her,” I said. My voice not cold. fire. This was the part of me Old Voss made. The part I buried for her. “Check every clinic. Every hospital. Every bus station. I don’t care what it costs. I don’t care who you have to hurt.”

“Yes Boss”

“Find my wife.”

I ended the call.

The note was still in my hand. Ten words.

She doesn’t get to decide she’s a burden. She doesn’t get to die alone in some free clinic because she thinks she’s saving me.

She’s mine. For a year, I said. For a lifetime, I didn’t.

Roman took her once. Her father sold her once.

She's not going anywhere a third time.

Not to her own blood. Not to herself.

I grabbed my keys. My gun.

Because Zara Voss doesn’t get to leave.

Not until I tell her to.

And I was never going to say it.