Semua Bab My Last Breath, His Eternal Regret: Bab 1 - Bab 10

The antiseptic burned my nose when I woke for the third time. Cold. Sterile. Empty.Dr. Brown stood at the foot of my bed, face set in stone. “Miss Smith, the dialysis is failing. Without a transplant, you don’t have much time.”“How much?” My voice cracked.He hesitated, the kind of silence that tastes like metal. “Three weeks. Maybe twenty-one days if we manage the symptoms. That’s all.”Twenty-one days. Not a month, not a season. Just twenty-one sunsets. Every tick of the clock was a nail in my coffin. I imagined the seconds dripping like blood from an open wound.I wanted to scream. To beg. To fight. But the truth was crueler: part of me longed for it to end, for the countdown to reach zero so I wouldn’t have to see Henry and Susan’s names flashing on my phone ever again. And yet… another part of me clung like a child, whispering: What if tomorrow there’s hope? What if I survive? The contradiction was unbearable. Hope and despair wrestled in my chest, until even breathing felt li

The studio smelled faintly of dust and old chemicals. I sat quietly beneath the lens, still and pale—the same calm I’d felt last night when I booked the appointment. This was the portrait I’d chosen to leave behind. Twenty days left. Maybe fewer. I wanted at least one picture that was mine.The photographer smiled awkwardly. “Passport photo? ID?”“Final portrait,” I said evenly.His hand shook. The camera almost slipped.While I waited for the prints, laughter drifted in from the doorway. My stomach clenched.Susan, hand hooked possessively through Henry Colombo’s arm, stepped inside. She froze when she saw me.“What photo are you taking, Olivia?” Her voice was sugar with an edge.“ID,” I said, slipping the photo envelope into my bag. “What about you?”Susan leaned into his shoulder. “Couple portraits, of course. We already did a session, just came to pick them up.”“Just humoring her,” Henry explained, glancing at me. His voice softened. “When you’re better, I’ll take you anywhere you

The candle flames from Susan’s birthday cake still burned in my mind when the night sky lit up again. Fireworks burst above the river—too close, too loud, too wild.For a moment they were beautiful. Then sparks rained where they shouldn’t have. Someone had left a crate too near the crowd. The wood caught, the sparks fell.I raised my arm as the blast cracked through the air. Heat seared down my forearm, blistering skin in an instant. Blood welled from a cut where shrapnel grazed me.“Henry! I’m burned!” Susan shrieked, clutching a faint scrape on her palm.He didn’t look at me. He scooped her up, carried her toward the exit, and vanished into the smoke—while I staggered alone, my arm raw with pain.The ER was all white walls and antiseptic sting. The doctor cursed as he stitched and wrapped my burns. I kept my gaze steady, refusing to flinch, even as the pain hollowed me out.The door banged open. Henry stormed in, still bandaged from his own injuries, breath ragged. “Olivia!” His voic

Shards of the emerald still glittered on the floor where Susan had let it fall, each fragment catching the cold light like broken stars.I knelt, scooping them into my palms. The edges cut deep, red drops smearing over green. This wasn’t just jewelry. It was my mother’s hands smoothing my hair, her voice humming me to sleep, the only proof she had ever loved me. And now it lay shattered, like me.Behind me came a gasp—too practiced, too perfect. Susan stumbled backward and clipped the bedframe. Blood trickled down her forehead in a neat, crimson line.“Olivia!” Henry’s roar shook the walls. He rushed past me, cradling Susan like fragile porcelain, murmuring her name as if she might vanish.Then he turned, his fury aimed at me. “Are you insane? Over a necklace?”My chest seized. I pressed the shards harder until they carved deeper lines in my palms. “Yes. Over this. Because it’s all I have left of my parents.”For a heartbeat, something flickered in his face—hesitation, almost guilt. Th

They wheeled me out of the surgical suite in silence.I wasn’t breathing anymore. My lips had gone cold, pale, the color drained from me until I looked like a porcelain doll someone had left behind.I heard the sigh, low and heavy, from the surgeon. “Time of death confirmed. No family present.”He dialed again. The ringtone echoed over and over, unanswered. Finally: powered off.Of course. Henry Colombo had turned off his phone.With no parents, no relatives, no one else left, there was no one to claim me. The nurses exchanged helpless glances before rolling me down to the mortuary, stainless steel drawers yawning open, waiting.The cold swallowed me whole. Darkness closed in. Yet somehow, I could still see. Still hear.Across the city, thunder cracked open the night. Susan whimpered into his chest, her body trembling prettily.“Don’t be afraid,” he soothed, his large hand patting her back. “I’m here. Nothing will touch you.”I saw her face in the shadows he couldn’t. The fear was an a