---- Chapter 12 Erin Calhoun POV: "Can't a nurse do this?" | mumbled, my face pressed into the padded table. | heard him snap on a pair of latex gloves. "Are you questioning my professionalism, Ms. Calhoun?" | fell silent, my cheeks burning as his expert hands went to work, kneading the tense, painful knots in my muscles. His touch was so skilled, so soothing, that despite the awkwardness, | felt myself drifting off. | was somewhere in that hazy space between wakefulness and sleep when | heard someone call my name. | was too tired to open my eyes. | felt a light touch on my hair, a whisper of something | couldn't quite catch, and then he was gone. | slept for hours. When | woke up, | didn't go looking for him. | left a message with the nurse and slipped out of the hospital, my head down, a surgical mask hiding my face. | had just stepped out of the elevator on the ground floor when a hand clamped down on my arm, yanking me to a stop. The sharp sting of a slap across my face snapped my head to ---- the side. My cheek throbbed, and my eyes watered from the shock. When my vision cleared, | was staring into the cold, furious faces of my two older brothers. "You're coming with us," my eldest brother, David, said, his voice like ice. "You're going to see Carlton." "No," | said, my voice shaking slightly. "You don't have a choice," my other brother, Mark, snarled. "He's agreed to the engagement, but only if you go to him and beg for his forgiveness." "This deal is everything to this family," David added, his tone dangerously calm. Mark, always the hothead, raised his hand to hit me again. David caught his wrist. "Not here." He turned his deceptively gentle eyes to me. "Erin, the family business is in trouble. We need this partnership." "And what about my dignity?" | shot back, the anger finally overriding the fear. "You're asking me to go back to a man who cheated on me and beg him to marry me?" "He'll be good to you," David promised, a blatant lie. "Don't be naive. Do you know how many women would kill to be in your position?" "l am not going back to him," | said, each word a stone. ---- | took a step back, looking at the two men who were supposed to protect me. "If you're so desperate for this marriage," | said, my voice dripping with scorn, "why don't you sell one of your own daughters?" "That's it," Mark spat. "If you're going to be so heartless to your own family, then give us back everything we've ever given you and get out." "Fine," | said without hesitation. David's composure finally cracked. He frowned. "Don't you regret this? Without your family, you have nothing." | couldn't help it. | laughed. A hollow, broken sound. They didn't know my secret. They didn't know that years ago, I'd accidentally discovered the truth in a locked box in my father's study. Adoption papers. | was a foundling, an abandoned baby they had taken in for one purpose and one purpose only: to be a beautifully crafted tool for a strategic marriage. A tool doesn't have feelings. A tool doesn't need a family. And this tool had finally learned how to save herself. Discover our latest featured short drama reel. Watch now and enjoy the story!