My four-year-old daughter needed a heart transplant. We were fifty thousand dollars short.
Then Denys Simmons called. "Get over here and give Maureen her blood. Your daughter needs money to survive, doesn't she? I'll give you a hundred thousand."
For that money, I let them drain me until I collapsed.
When I woke, I rushed straight to my daughter's operating room—only to find the payment had never arrived.
I went to confront Denys Simmons. His response was casual, dismissive: "The daughter of a call girl deserves nothing better."
I slapped him across the face. "It seems Mr. Simmons has forgotten that night five years ago at the club."
He seized me like a man possessed. I looked him dead in the eye. "You don't deserve to know."
——
"Denise Mason's surgery is still fifty thousand short. If we can't get the funds together, we'll have to cancel tomorrow's operation." The nurse's words played on loop in my head.
Canceling was not an option. I was racking my brain for ways to scrape the money together when Denys Simmons's call came through.
I took a deep breath and answered. Before I could speak, his voice cut through—cold as a blade. "Alberta Mason. Central City Hospital. Hematology. Now. Maureen needs blood." A pause. "Your daughter needs fifty thousand to live, doesn't she? I'll give you a hundred."
Maureen Mason, Denys Simmons's fiancée, was my sister in name only—a fragile "porcelain doll" who required my blood at regular intervals to survive.
Before, the Mason family had paid me two thousand per transfusion. Now he was offering a hundred thousand. They must be desperate.
I couldn't afford to question it. Denise's surgery couldn't wait.
I grabbed the few hundred dollars I had left—just enough for a cab—and rushed to the hospital. My stomach churned, empty and acidic. The nurse frowned at my test results. "Your hemoglobin is already low. Drawing 400cc on an empty stomach—you'll pass out."
I forced a smile. "It's fine. My daughter's life depends on this."
I extended my arm. The nurse hesitated, then reluctantly inserted the needle. The cold crept up from the puncture site, spreading through my veins.
I watched the blood bag slowly fill with red, my mind fixed on one image: Denise in her hospital gown, looking up at me with those brave eyes. Mommy, I'm not scared.
The last drop drained from me. My vision went black. I hit the floor hard.
When I came to, I bolted upright and grabbed my phone, checking my balance with shaking hands.
The hundred thousand Denys Simmons had promised? Not a single cent had arrived.
I didn't wait for the dizziness to pass. Still clutching my sleeve where they'd drawn blood—the fabric wrinkled and damp—I stormed into Simmons Group headquarters.
The receptionist tried to stop me. I shoved past the glass doors and burst into the top-floor office.
Denys Simmons lounged on the leather sofa, sipping coffee. He looked at me the way someone looks at trash blown in from the street.
"Where's the money?" My voice shook. My nails bit into my palms.
He set down his cup with deliberate slowness, a mocking curve forming on his lips. "What money?"
When I just stared at him, he let out a derisive laugh. "The daughter of a call girl thinks she deserves a hundred thousand?"
Call girl.
The words seared into me like a branding iron.
Five years ago, on a night he'd clearly forgotten, I'd been forced to work as a hostess to pay for my foster mother's medical bills. That night, I stumbled upon him drugged by his cousin Wayne Simmons, barely conscious. I'd only meant to help him back to his room—but he'd pulled me in, and I couldn't break free.
When I discovered I was pregnant, I knew the gulf between us was too vast to bridge. I never told him. I raised Denise alone for four years.
And now he had the audacity to humiliate me like this.
Rage obliterated reason. My hand moved before I could think.
The slap echoed through the office. Silence crashed down like a hammer.
Denys Simmons's face flushed a mottled purple. He grabbed my wrist with the grip of a man unhinged. "You dare hit me?"
I wrenched free and met his glare, biting out each word. "It seems Mr. Simmons has forgotten that night five years ago at the club."
He went rigid. His pupils contracted sharply, as if something had struck him square in the chest.
"How do you know what happened five years ago?"
