The Fight
1625 Words
I woke up from darkness. Not the peaceful kind but the kind that presses against your skin like a warning.
The beeping was faint, distant, like it was coming from underwater. My chest felt tight, raw, as if the machines had clawed their way inside me. Cold air stung my face. My throat burned like I’d swallowed broken glass.
Where am I?
Not the same room. Not the same light or suffocating closeness of Damien and Alexander’s storm.
Silence swallowed the space around me.
Then a chair creaked, my pulse leaped.
Someone was here. The breath was too slow, controlled and deliberate.
I forced my eyes open.
A shadow sat in the far corner of the dimly lit room, legs crossed, posture elegant and terrifyingly calm.
Alexander Blackwood.
The air shifted the moment I recognized him. My skin tightened. My breath stalled halfway in my chest.
He wasn’t watching the floor.
He was watching me with his white bold eyes fixed to my face.
I licked my cracked lips, voice barely loud.
“What are you doing here?”
He didn’t answer immediately. He just stood watching me then he stepped into the thin strip of moonlight, I saw the barely concealed storm in his eyes. A storm he didn’t bother hiding anymore.
“You flatlined for twenty-two seconds,” he said quietly.
My breath hitched.
He didn’t blink.
“Do you know what happens to a man when he watches a woman he shouldn’t care about die in front of him?”
My stomach tightened. “Alexander”! I exclaimed
“Nothing,” he said softly. “Nothing happens. He shouldn’t feel anything.”
He stopped beside my bed.
“But I did.”
My heart slammed against my ribs so hard the monitors spiked.
I tried to sit up, but my body refused, too weak, trembling, aching.
He adjusted my pillow with slow, deliberate hands, as if touching me wasn’t a violation he was daring me to acknowledge.
“You frightened the entire hospital,” he said. “Doctors. Nurses.” His eyes locked onto mine. He went on to say“my son.”
Damien.
His name shot through me like an old wound reopening. I didn’t wait for him to finish the sentence.
“Where is he?” I whispered.
A flicker barely there crossed Alexander’s expression. A warning. A displeasure he didn’t bother softening.
“He attempted to force his way into this room twice,” Alexander said. “Security removed him twice.”
My chest tightened painfully. “Is he… okay?”
Alexander leaned closer, and I felt the heat of him sipping into my skin, his voice dropping to a razor-thin threat.
“You almost died because of him,” he murmured. “And you’re worried about him?”
A shiver ran through me.
“I didn’t say”
“You thought of it,” he cut sharply, his breath brushing my cheek. “I can hear it in your silence.”
His control was terrifying. Not violent. Not loud. But absolute.
I turned my face away, but he gently guided my chin back toward him with two fingers—slowly.
“You need to understand something,” he said calmly. “You are not alone anymore.”
My heart jumped. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” he said, “what happens to you… concerns me.”
I didn’t know if that was protection or possession.
Maybe it was both.
I swallowed hard. “Alexander… you can’t just decide that.”
He smiled slowly but dangerously, promising trouble I didn’t dare touch.
“I don’t decide,” he murmured. “I recognize.”
The door opened suddenly.
Both our heads snapped toward it.
A doctor stepped in, but froze instantly at the sight of Alexander beside my bed.
“Mr. Blackwood,” the doctor stammered. “We didn’t realize you were still here.”
Alexander didn’t move. “Clearly.”
The doctor swallowed. Hard. “We just wanted to run a few more tests on Miss Cruz.”
“No.” He said in a low but final voice.
The doctor blinked. “Sir…?”
“She’s not being moved again,” Alexander said. “Not until I approve it.”
My breath caught. Approved it? Since when did he have that authority?
But the doctor nodded reluctantly, terrified, and backed out of the room.
I stared at Alexander.
“Why did you do that?”
He looked at me like the answer should have been obvious. “Because you don’t know your limits. And you won’t listen to your body. Someone has to.”
“That someone isn’t you,” I whispered.
He tilted his head slightly. “Isn’t it?”
The air thinned, stretching tight enough to choke.
His hand brushed a loose strand of hair from my forehead in the lightest touch so gentle it was almost cruel.
“You agreed to my proposal,” he murmured. “Or did you forget?”
My blood froze.
I hadn’t forgotten.
I tried. But I hadn’t.
“I—I didn’t say yes,” I whispered, even though we both knew I was lying.
He smirked faintly. “You did. You said, ‘I’ll do it.’ I remember every word.”
My stomach knotted. My breath shook.
“What exactly did I agree to?”
“Patience, Arielle,” he said softly. “You’ll know soon.”
I hated the way my name sounded in his mouth.
Because it didn’t feel like a name.
It felt like ownership.
He picked up a folder from the chair and placed it on my lap.
“What’s this?” My voice trembled.
“Your future,” he said. “If you want it.”
I hesitated before opening it.
Inside were documents.
Legal ones. Contracts,Transfers,Confidential agreements.
And at the top was my name written in bold letters.
My pulse tripped.
I looked up in horror.
“You want me to marry you,” I breathed.
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t blink.
He nodded once.
Calm. Certain. Inevitable.
“Why?” The word tore out of me. “Why me?”
His eyes softened—not kindly, but deliberately, as if he were peeling back the truth piece by piece.
“Because you walked into a world you don’t understand,” he said. “A world where you could be destroyed if you stand alone.”
“I don’t want”
“You don’t know what you want,” he said, stepping closer. “Not yet. But I do.”
My breath wavered. “And what is that?”
He leaned in until I felt his breath on my lips, but he didn’t touch me.
“Power,” he whispered. “For you. For us. And a lesson my son will never forget.”
My heart slammed against my ribs.
“Alexander… this is insane.”
“No.” His voice dropped lower. “This is war.”
Before I could respond, the door flew open this time violently.
A shout exploded into the room.
“Get the hell away from her!”
Damien stormed in, shoving past the nurse desperately trying to hold him back.
His eyes landed on me, on the folder in my lap, on the Blackwood name staring back at him.
His face was drained of color.
“What is that?” he demanded, voice cracking.
“Damien” I started.
But he wasn’t listening.
He snatched the folder from my lap and flipped through it, his hands trembling, breath shaking louder than the machines beside me.
His eyes snapped up to Alexander.
“You want to marry her?” Damien spat. “Are you out of your mind?”
Alexander stepped forward, unbothered. “It’s already in motion.”
The room spun. The walls closed in.
Damien’s voice shattered. “She is my ex-girlfriend.”
“No,” Alexander said calmly. “She was your mistake.”
Damien lunged at his father.
Security burst through the door at the same moment, dragging Damien back, arms locked around his chest.
“Let me go!!” Damien roared, struggling viciously, eyes fixed on me. “Arielle, don't do this! You can't marry him!”
“I’m not” My voice broke. “Damien, you never love me”.
“You’re right,” he choked, eyes glistening with something dangerously close to despair. “I don’t. But I know one thing.”
The world stopped.
Alexander went rigid. The security guards froze.
The air shattered around me.
But Damien wasn’t finished.
He jerked forward so violently that the guards nearly lost their grip.
“You think you’re broken, Arielle?” Damien whispered. “You can't marry my father”
My breath faltered. “Don’t”
My fingers curled into the sheets. “Damien—stop—”
“Enough,” Alexander growled.
Damien ignored him.
“Arielle,” this won't happen. I can't let my father have you”
A security guard yanked him back toward the door.
“Damien!” I gasped.
Every machine around me beeped harder.
My chest tightened until it hurt to breathe.
Alexander’s jaw clenched, a flicker of something dark flashing across his eyes.
Damien struggled against the guards, desperate, wild.
The world tilted violently.
My vision blurred.
My breath broke as I could barely choke out a word.
“Why?” I whispered .
Damien’s throat tightened.
And then the lights in the room flickered.
The entire hallway went black.
The machines beside me glitched, screens stuttering.
A single alarm wailed somewhere down the corridor.
Darkness swallowed the room. Then someone else's voice came through the dark.
Low, cold, and unfamiliar
“She shouldn’t have lived.”
- Writer
