I Knelt For Three Years For A Lie. Now I’m Back For Blood Chapter 07
Playing the lunatic was a special kind of hell.
Every day, I lay there while Marcus and Owen talked business over my bed as if I were a piece of furniture.
They didn’t even lower their voices. Why would you whisper in front of a vegetable?
I let food slide down my chin. I ate with my hands.
The taste of my own humiliation was the only thing I had to chew on.
Jenna showed up once. She didn’t even make it past the doorway. She pinched her nose, looking at me like I was a pile of roadkill.
“Owen, she’s disgusting. She doesn’t even recognize us. Don’t let her near Leo.”
She said it with a pout, as if my broken mind was an inconvenience to her afternoon.
Owen soothed her, his voice dripping with a tenderness that made my skin crawl.
“I know. I won’t bring you back. Once her leg’s stable, she goes back to the ward for good.”
I lay there, staring at a fly on the ceiling, and recorded every word.
Dr. Reyes moved like a shadow. During rounds, she’d use the equipment to hide the hand-off, swapping the recorder’s battery and clearing the files while she checked my vitals.
She never looked me in the eye, but her hands were steady.
Two weeks in, they put my leg in a cast.
The itch underneath the plaster was a constant, biting reminder that I was still alive.
Marcus couldn’t wait to sign the discharge papers. He wanted me back in the cage.
He was packing my few pathetic rags while Owen stood by the window, smoking.
The smell of his expensive tobacco felt like a thick film on my skin.
“How’s the launch looking?” Marcus asked.
Owen blew a smoke ring. He looked bored, successful.
“Intercontinental ballroom is booked. Next Tuesday.”
“We’re not just launching the brand. We’re bleeding Mia’s followers dry. The ‘Pilgrim’ product line. We’ll clear ten million in the first night.”
He looked at me, the drool on my chin, with a flicker of pride—not for me, but for the profit I represented.
“I’ll do the grieving ex act. Tell the tragic story of our ‘doomed love.’ The public loves a girl who breaks herself for a lie.”
Marcus let out a short, dry laugh.
“Jenna’s okay with you playing the devoted lover?”
“Jenna knows where the money comes from. She’s already picking out houses in Melbourne.”
Owen crushed his cigarette out on the sill.
“Once the venture capital lands, we disappear. Who’s going to go looking for a crazy woman in a state ward?”
In my pocket, the recorder drank it all in.
On my way out, Dr. Reyes pressed a flash drive into my palm while she faked a bandage change.
The metal was cold and sharp against my raw skin.
“Backups of everything. Plus proof of the insurance fraud they pulled three years ago,” she whispered, her voice barely a breath.
“Next week’s launch is your only window. I’ve taken you as far as the edge. The rest is on you.”
I closed my hand. My knuckles turned white.
“Thank you.”
The first honest words I’d spoken in weeks. They felt like jagged glass.
Back at the center, I leaned into the madness.
I sat in the corner for days, muttering to the walls.
When they brought the pills, I swallowed them like a good dog.
But they stayed tucked under my tongue, a bitter, chalky secret.
They got lazy. No more straps. They stopped locking my door.
To them, I was a broken tool, a vagrant-in-waiting.
The night before the launch.
The sky broke. Thunder shook the floorboards, drowning out the world.
The orderly on duty was a slumped shadow in the staff room, eyes glued to the TV.
I spat the pill into my hand. It was half-dissolved, a gray smear of poison.
I dragged my cast-heavy leg off the bed. Every movement was a grind of bone against plaster.
I reached under the frame. Over two weeks, I’d used my fingernails until they bled to work the screws loose.
I used the sharpest one to bite into the lock.
The metal shrieked, but the thunder swallowed the sound.
I moved through the halls like a ghost, keeping to the blind spots I’d memorized.
I crawled through the laundry vent. The mud outside soaked through my gown in seconds. The rain hit my scars like a million needles.
I didn’t feel the cold. I only felt the fire.
They’d spent three years writing my script.
Tomorrow, I’m the one who ends the play.