Dying For Your Cruel Game

Tonight was my seventh gig at this VIP lounge.

Under the pulsing, strobe-lit haze of the dance floor, my footsteps faltered. My eyes locked onto a woman in the center of the VIP booth, surrounded by male models and half-empty champagne flutes.

It was Carol. The woman who had once been the center of my entire universe, and the architect of its ruin.

One of the socialites draped over the leather sofa caught sight of me. Her manicured finger pointed in my direction, her voice dripping with lazy amusement. "Well, well, Carol. Isn't that the pathetic, broke ex you dated for that little bet with Timothy?"

Carol finally lifted her gaze. A flicker of irritation crossed her flawless features. "Calvin," she said, her voice cutting through the bass of the club. "Do you really have no backbone at all? Scrubbing floors in a place like this to scrape by?"

I didn't dignify her mockery with a response. I just tightened my grip on my serving tray, adjusting the expensive bottles of liquor, and turned to leave.

"Stop!" she commanded, her voice spiking.

"You're desperate for cash, aren't you?" Carol swirled the amber liquid in her crystal glass. "Drink this bottle. For every bottle you manage to down, Ill pay for it."

My knuckles went white around the neck of the bottle. A sharp, violent cramp twisted in my stomach, sending a cold sweat down my forehead.

But I couldn't say no.

Nana was paralyzed, lying in a sterile, underfunded ward, waiting for her medical bills to be paid. And my own body, rotting from late-stage stomach cancer, didn't have much time left.

If I could just scrape together enough money to secure Nanas care facility before I died... what was a little humiliation?

I gritted my teeth, turned back to face her, and popped the cork.

Dignity is a luxury of the living. In the face of pure survival, it is utterly worthless. My life was already a sinking ship; if burning it down could buy Nana a few more years, I would gladly strike the match.

"One bottle, two bottles, three... God, Carol, your little lapdog sure can drink."

The socialite next to Carol was laughing so hard she had to wipe away a tear, her hand clamped over her mouth.

Carols eyes bore into me. She stared at the empty bottles lining the glass table, her expression darkening into something terrifyingly cold.

"You really are cheap, Calvin. Just as money-hungry as you were back then."

I didn't defend myself. I just held the final empty bottle out toward her, my voice mechanically hollow.

"I finished them. Ten thousand dollars."

A second later, a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills was hurled violently into my face.

The paper rained down around me, fluttering to the sticky club floor like dead leaves. The surrounding club-goers, drawn by the spectacle of flying cash, started to surge forward, their eyes greedy.

Carol slammed her glass down, her voice ringing out with the absolute authority of old money.

"Nobody moves."

She leaned forward, her eyes locked on mine. "You want the money, Calvin? Get on your knees. Pick it up. Every single cent."

I did it. Without a fraction of hesitation.

I crawled on the liquor-stained floor, my hands trembling as I gathered the crisp bills one by one.

Just as I reached for a bill near her designer heels, a stream of freezing liquid splashed against my forehead, running down my face and soaking my uniform.

I looked up. Carol was staring down at me, holding an empty glass, a radiant, vicious smile playing on her lips.

"Oops. My hand slipped," she purred. "But that shouldn't stop you from crawling for your cash, right?"

I shook my head slowly, saying nothing.

Perhaps she found my lack of resistance boring. After emptying her drink on me, she turned her back, and her entourage swept her away, disappearing into the VIP corridor.

Watching her confident, untouchable silhouette fade into the neon lights, a sudden, violent spasm wracked my chest. I coughed, and a mouthful of blood spilled into my hands.

It seeped through my fingers. Crimson, viscous, and glaringly bright under the club lights.

A coworker rushed over, grabbing my arm to steady me.

"Cal, are you out of your mind?!" he hissed, panicked. "You have terminal stomach cancer! Why didn't you say anything? Downing three bottles of liquor... do you have a death wish?"

I stared at the blood pooling in my palms, momentarily dazed.

Does a poor man's life even count as a life?

Carol certainly didn't think so.

The bitter irony was that my stomach had been destroyed for her.

Winter is always brutal when you're poor. Four years ago, on a freezing, snow-swept night, I found Carol shivering on the street in a thin jacket. She told me her family had thrown her out. She said she had no home, nowhere to go. She begged me to take her in.

I was soft-hearted. I said yes.

For the months that followed, we split a single stale bagel into four piecesshe ate three, I ate one. Whenever I managed to afford hot soup, I gave it to her. In sub-zero temperatures, I drank freezing tap water from rusted pipes to silence my own hunger.

That was how my stomach began to rot.

But on the exact same day I was handed my terminal cancer diagnosis, I walked home to find her slipping into the back of a blacked-out Maybach parked outside our crumbling apartment building.

That was the day I learned she was Carol Steward, the heiress to one of Manhattan's wealthiest real estate dynasties.

Her entire poverty-stricken act had been a game. A sick little dare she took after getting drunk with Timothy Montgomery.

The bet had an expiration date. Time was up, so she packed her bags and left.

From that moment on, the illusion shattered. I knew with agonizing clarity that we existed in two entirely different universes.

She was a swan, perched high on a pedestal of generational wealth. I was the mud beneath her tires, meant only to be trampled on. The chasm between us wasn't just made of unrequited love; it was made of that multi-million dollar car idling outside my pathetic life.

We were never meant to fit.

Ignoring my coworker's frantic pleas to go home, I meticulously smoothed out every single crumpled bill Carol had thrown at me. I tucked the money into the breast pocket of my shirt, right over my heart.

Only then did I wipe the blood from my mouth and begin the long walk to the hospital.

Three bottles of cheap liquor burned like battery acid in my veins. My steps were unsteady under the flickering streetlights, but the freezing night wind kept my mind devastatingly sharp.

The doctor looked at my chart, letting out a heavy, defeated sigh.

"Mr. Davis, do you have any idea what you're doing to your body? Drinking like this... Working yourself to the bone. You had maybe three months left. At this rate, Id be surprised if you make it another two weeks."

"Two weeks..." I murmured. "That's enough."

I lowered my eyes, pulled the ten thousand dollars from my pocket, and slid it across his desk.

"Please. Move Nana to a better room. Make her comfortable."

The doctors eyes grew glassy. "Mr. Davis, you have money now. You could use this for your own chemotherapy. It might buy you a little more time."

I shook my head. I knew my own body. I could feel the decay creeping into my bones. My time was already gone.

All I could do now was run against the clock. Bleed myself dry to earn every last cent I could. Just a little more. So that when I was finally gone, Nanas nursing home fees would be paid in full, and she wouldn't be left alone in the dark.

After sitting by Nanas bedside for an hour, I turned to leave. It was time to start my eighth gig of the day.

But as I rounded the corner of the hospital corridor, I collided hard with someone.

A glass water bottle shattered against the linoleum with a deafening crash. The medical report I had been clutching slipped from my fingers.

I bent down to grab it, but a manicured hand snatched it up first.

I looked up. It was Carol, standing arm-in-arm with her newest pretty boy.

"Late-stage gastric cancer... You've got to be joking," the boy toy sneered, over-enunciating the words for dramatic effect. He leaned into Carol's shoulder. "Care, is he actually trying to use a fake medical report to scam some sympathy out of you?"

Carol stared at the paper. For a split second, her perfectly arched brows knitted together.

Before she could speak, her boy toy chimed in again, his voice dripping with faux innocence.

"Wait, is this the broke loser you dated for that bet four years ago? We literally just saw him at the club begging for ten grand, and now hes conveniently lingering in a hospital with a cancer report? Its honestly embarrassing how hard hes trying to con you."

Carols friend, standing just behind them, scoffed in agreement. "Exactly. He's probably still bitter about the bet and is just trying to bleed you dry."

When Carol remained silent, still staring blankly at the paper, her friend gasped. "Carol, don't tell me you actually still care about this walking charity case."

That snapped her out of it. Carols posture straightened, a defensive sneer warping her mouth.

"Are you insane? As if."

She crushed my medical report in her fist, ripped it down the middle, and threw the shreds directly into my face.

"Calvin, stop dreaming. I am never coming back to you. Do you understand me? You couldn't earn in your entire pathetic lifetime what I make passively in an hour."

Her arrogant, condescending face blurred. For a moment, it superimposed perfectly over the memory of the sweet, gentle girl who used to curl up against my chest in the dead of winter, whispering how proud she was of my hard work.

I felt a profound sense of vertigo. I honestly couldn't tell which version of her was the lie anymore.

"You just want a payout, don't you?" Carol looked down her nose at me. "Get on your knees and beg. Swear to God that you will never, ever show your face to me again, and Ill wire you three hundred thousand dollars right now."

"That should be enough to fund your little retirement, right?"

She was looking at me, but it felt like she was staring down at an insect.

Three hundred thousand.

It was enough. Enough to cover Nana's care facility for years. Enough to finally pay for her spinal surgery.

"Deal."

The calculation took less than a second. I nodded, closed my eyes, and sank to my knees on the cold linoleum.

"I, Calvin Davis, swear I will never appear before Carol Steward again. If I break this vow, may I be struck down and die a miserable death."

"Whoa, hold on, he said it way too fast! I didn't even get my camera app open." The pretty boy held up his phone, his face painted with a sickeningly sweet smile that hid a venomous cruelty. "Care, make him say it again. I need to post this to my close friends."

Carol ruffled his hair, her eyes softening with indulgent affection.

"If that's what you want," she purred. She looked back down at me. "Do it again. Say it slower. I'll make it five hundred thousand."

I remained kneeling. The jagged shards of the broken glass bottle bit deep into my kneecaps, piercing my skin. I felt the warm trickle of blood sliding down my shins, staining the pristine white hospital floor red.

I looked dead into Carol's eyes, and spoke every single word with deliberate, agonizing clarity.

"I, Calvin Davis, swear I will never appear before Carol Steward again. If I break this vow, may I be struck down and die a miserable death."

Carol gave a satisfied little nod.

"Five hundred thousand. It'll be in your account by tomorrow afternoon."

I waited until the sound of their designer shoes clicked away down the hallway, fading into nothing. Only then did I press my hands against the bloody floor, trying to push myself up.

My arms gave out. I crashed back down into the glass.

More shards tore into my palms, my knees, my chest.

But I couldn't feel the sting. My heart had been hollowed out, scraped raw and left to rot until the phantom pain made it impossible to draw a full breath. Compared to that, the physical bleeding felt like nothing at all.

When I finally dragged my broken body back to my cramped, freezing apartment, the thick, metallic taste of rust rose in my throat.

I shoved a handful of cheap painkillers into my mouth, dry-swallowing them. It didn't work. I collapsed over the sink and vomited a horrific amount of dark blood.

Exhausted, I dragged myself to the cheap pink sofa in the corner of the roomthe sofa we used to sit on, huddled under a single blanket, whispering promises about the future.

Leaning my head back against the worn fabric, I suddenly started to laugh.

It was a broken, grating sound.

Back then, my heart bled for her. She had sat right here, crying, telling me how her parents hated her, how they always wished she was a boy, how she felt entirely invisible in her own home.

I had resonated with her so deeply. I was an orphan. I never knew my parents. The only family I had was a sick, elderly woman who found me abandoned and raised me on pennies.

I truly believed Carol and I were two fractured souls who had finally found home in each other.

But it was all a beautifully spun lie.

I was nothing but a billionaire heiress's after-dinner entertainment. A fun little diversion to pass the time.

The next afternoon, just as promised, the notification lit up my cracked phone screen. A wire transfer for $500,000.

I practically sprinted to the hospital, slamming my palms down on the billing desk, demanding they prep Nana for the spinal surgery immediately. She had been paralyzed for ten years. Before I died, my only wish was to see her stand up again.

As I watched the orderlies wheel Nana into the operating room, a genuine smile broke across my facemy first real smile in three years.

But fifteen minutes later, the billing nurse walked over to me, her face pale and tight.

"Mr. Davis... the funds you just transferred. They've been frozen by the bank. The system flagged the transaction for fraud. They suspect the money was obtained illegally. Hospital policy states we have to halt the procedure until the funds clear or you provide an alternate method of payment."

My blood ran cold.

"But you know how dangerous it is to halt a surgery mid-operation," she continued, her voice trembling slightly. "Given the patient's advanced age, the risk of shock is incredibly high. You need to pay the remaining balance right now."

A bomb detonated in my skull.

Frozen? How could it be frozen? Carol promised.

Suddenly, the heavy doors of the OR swung open. The lead surgeon rushed out, ripping his mask down.

"We're losing her! The patient's vitals just plummeted!"

I didn't stop to think. My vision tunneled.

I bolted out of the hospital, hailed a cab, and screamed at the driver to take me back to the club from last night.

When I burst through the doors, a coworker grabbed me, telling me Carol had taken her pretty boy across the street to the luxury shopping district.

I ran. I shoved past security guards, ignoring the horrified stares of the wealthy patrons as I sprinted into high-end boutique after high-end boutique.

I knew I looked like a deranged madman. My clothes were stained with dried blood and sweat. But I didn't care. Time was slipping through my fingers like sand.

Finally, inside a Tom Ford store, I saw her.

I lunged forward and grabbed the sleeve of her silk blouse.

Carol flinched, spinning around. When she saw it was me, her face contorted with rage.

"Calvin! You literally swore a blood oath yesterday that you'd never show your face to me again. Aren't you afraid of getting struck by lightning?"

My eyes were bloodshot, my chest heaving as I gasped for air. "The money," I choked out, my fingers digging desperately into her sleeve. "Why is it frozen?"

Carol raised a brow. She casually inspected her nails.

"Oh, that. Yeah, I called the bank this morning. Told them I was a victim of a wire scam and had them intercept it."

She laughed, a short, cruel sound. "Did you seriously think I was just going to hand you half a million dollars? God, you really are an idiot."

My grip on her arm tightened. My knuckles turned white. And then, slowly, the strength drained out of my hands. My fingers went slack.

I dropped to my knees right there on the pristine marble floor of the boutique.

I pressed my forehead to the ground, bowing so hard the impact echoed in the quiet store.

"I am begging you..." My voice broke, reduced to a pathetic, ragged sob. "Carol. Thirty thousand. Just give me thirty thousand dollars. Nana is on the operating table right now. They stopped the surgery. She's going to die."

"Do you remember her? Do you remember how she used to save her milk rations just so you could drink them? Don't you remember?"

Carol stared down at me, her eyes flashing with absolute disgust. She shoved my shoulder hard with the toe of her heel, knocking me backward.

"Shut up! Stop bringing up the past! You are so obsessed with money you've completely lost your mind. Lying about your grandma being in surgery just to extort me?"

She turned to the terrified sales associate. "I've seen enough grifters like him to last a lifetime. Wrap up that five-thousand-dollar belt Trent picked out. And call security to drag this piece of trash out of here."

I sat on the floor, staring at her, and suddenly, I smiled.

She was willing to drop five thousand dollars on a belt for a boy she met three days ago, but she wouldn't give a dime to the man who starved himself for three years to keep her alive. She didn't realize that the pocket change she threw around could mean the difference between life and death for someone else.

I was the fool. I actually believed the words of the woman who had already destroyed me once.

When I finally staggered back into the hospital ward, the doctor was standing in the hallway. He looked at me, his eyes dark with grief, and slowly shook his head.

"Mr. Davis. I am so sorry. The interruption in the surgery... her heart couldn't handle the strain. It was a catastrophic failure."

"My deepest condolences."

As he walked past me, he gently squeezed my shoulder.

I stood outside her room, my shoulders shaking in absolute, terrifying silence. I walked in, took one last look at Nana's lifeless face beneath the white sheet, and walked out of the hospital without saying a single word.

When I pushed through the revolving doors, the sky broke open.

A torrential downpour washed over the city. It matched the absolute desolation inside my chest.

I didn't seek shelter. I let the freezing rain soak through my clothes to my skin, stumbling aimlessly until I reached the edge of the suspension bridge.

Suddenly, my knees buckled. I vomited blood again.

This time, it didn't stop. The blood poured out of me as if an artery had burst, hot and thick, mixing with the freezing rain swirling around my boots. A blinding, agonizing fire ripped through my stomach.

I closed my eyes, leaning my weight against the cold steel railing.

The suffocating weight of absolute loneliness swallowed me whole. I was standing in a fog, completely untethered from the earth.

The last person in the world who ever loved me was gone.

Calvin Davis, I thought to myself. There is absolutely no reason for you to exist anymore.

I stood there for a long time, letting the rain wash the blood from my chin.

Finally, a faint, ghost of a smile touched my lips.

I climbed over the railing. And I let go.

I plummeted like a kite with a snapped string. Like a dead leaf blowing aimlessly in the wind, entirely unnoticed by the world.

I hit the freezing black water, and the river swallowed me whole.

It was over.

Nana, I'm coming to see you.

...

Miles away, in the VIP lounge of the boutique, Carol sneezed.

She looked out the rain-streaked window, a sudden, inexplicable wave of anxiety knotting in her chest. Her heart fluttered with a strange, dark panic. Suddenly, she desperately needed to know where Calvin was.

She pulled out her phone and dialed her assistant.

"Find Calvin Davis. Tell him to come see me right now. Tell him I'll give him the thirty grand."

The line was dead silent for a second. Then, her assistant's voice came through, trembling uncontrollably.

"Ms. Steward... Calvin Davis... I think he jumped off the bridge. I was just driving past the hospital district. The police pulled a body out of the river. It... it looks exactly like him."