The morning sun that filtered through the Gothic silk curtains of Alexander Volkov's palace carried no warmth. It was akin to the lights of an operating room: cold, exposing, and desolating, stripping your soul bare before your body. I woke at exactly five in the morning, not to an alarm, but to the sound that had become my Doomsday clock—the turning of the key in my door. The silence in the East Wing held a physical weight, pressing against my frail chest as if the walls themselves were breathing with me, watching my slow expiration in this gilded cage. Since the night I signed the deed of servitude in the ink of shame, my body had become a territory for a small army of doctors summoned from the ends of the earth. They no longer saw "Ayla," the girl who once shared her dreams with the stars; to them, I was a "research specimen"—a broken valve in a machine owned by a man who refused to lose.
Before Alexander stormed into my room with his medical team, Sophia's words from our last call gnawed at what remained of my pride like a flock of ravens. Sophia, once my moral compass, had screamed at me with contempt, accusing me of selling my purity for the glitter of wealth. She was blind to the bitter truth that could crush mountains: I sold myself to buy a heartbeat for the man who gave my heart a reason to live. But Alexander—that demon who mastered the art of playing on human frailty—did not leave her in ignorance. He sent her a confidential medical file containing the truth buried under the rubble of our orphanage years: Alfred was not just a poor orphan; he was "Adrian Fulton," the sole legitimate heir to the great Fulton empire, which the world believed had perished in a night of mysterious conspiracy. This revelation sent Sophia plummeting from her high ground of anger into a pit of deep regret. Her messages now overflowed with pleas for forgiveness, calling me a "crucified saint" who restored a king to his stolen throne. She did not know that the price was turning me into ash in the furnace of a man who knew no mercy.
The door opened with a quiet violence. Alexander entered, followed by three surgeons in pristine white coats, their faces as motionless as statues in a royal tomb. Alexander stood at the edge of the bed, lighting a luxury cigar that emitted the scent of tobacco and mystery. His grey eyes pierced my paleness with a gaze of morbid obsession—a look that sought not love, but "completion." He ordered the comprehensive examinations to begin. I felt the bite of cold metal and electrodes against my skin, while giant screens projected the secrets of my trembling chest before his eyes. The lead surgeon spoke with fascination about the nanotechnology Alexander demanded—an experimental surgery applied only in clandestine labs, costing fortunes beyond human comprehension. Alexander didn't flinch. With his characteristic chill, he remarked that money was no obstacle to restoring the efficiency of his "property." My heart no longer belonged to my sorrows; it was now a gear in his empire, and he would not allow a "genetic error" to steal what he had purchased at the highest price.
After hours of legalized medical torment, Alexander finally allowed Sophia to visit me after I had nearly kissed his feet in desperation. The visit was not a reunion of sisters, but a grotesque theatrical performance. Martha dressed me in a black silk gown that draped over me like a shroud and applied expensive makeup to hide my deathly pallor. In the mirror, I looked like a priceless porcelain doll with dead eyes. Sophia entered in her simple, dusty clothes, and upon seeing the opulence surrounding me, she broke into hysterical sobs. She threw herself into my arms, apologizing for her cruelty, telling me how "Adrian"—formerly Alfred—had miraculously survived. He was now in a royal suite at a private hospital, undergoing reconstructive surgeries that would reshape his features back to the "Fulton heir" he was meant to be. Then, she spoke words that slaughtered my heart: Adrian had woken up, but he had lost his recent memory entirely. He didn't remember the orphanage, the hunger, and worst of all... he no longer remembered a name called Ayla. Alexander stood in the shadows of the room, watching the meeting with a hidden smile of victory. He knew that Sophia, by praising his "nobility," was adding the final touches to my absolute isolation. She saw salvation and wealth; she did not realize her sister had become a walking corpse with a "mechanical" heart programmed for one master.
As soon as Sophia left, Alexander's mask shifted to one of quiet savagery. He gripped my wrist so hard my bones groaned and dragged me toward the grand mirror, forcing me to look at my wreckage. "Do you see?" he hissed, his voice like the rustle of snakes in a deserted Eden. "Your loyal sister sold you to me with words of gratitude because I saved Adrian. The Alfred you thought was your world has been erased, replaced by Adrian Fulton—a man who will marry into royalty and won't even see your ghost in his nightmares. Now you are truly alone. You have no father, no brother, no lover. You have nothing but this palace... and my obsession which will eat you alive." He pushed me back toward the bed. The medical team had prepared a new dose of experimental drugs designed to attack and rebuild my cardiac cells. As the cold fluid flowed through my veins like daggers of ice, Alexander leaned into my ear to whisper the secret that froze the scream in my throat: He didn't appear in my life by chance. He was the "monster" child who used to watch me at the orphanage. He had watched my laughter with Alfred and sworn to himself that one day, that smile would belong to him alone. Saving Alfred wasn't charity; it was a way to exile him forever into a social class I could never reach, leaving me for him—the jailer, the doctor, and the owner.
Dizziness began to invade my mind, and images of the past melted like wax under the heat of the drugs. I felt Alexander's hand caressing my cheek with a harshness dripping with the desire for possession. He spoke of his plan to turn me into his private secretary—the "shadow" walking behind him in billion-dollar meetings, where everyone would see a polished diamond but no one would dare touch my secret. He wanted to turn me into a machine functioning at his signal, a heart beating under his supervision, and a body that knew no touch but his. I drifted out of consciousness as the monitors sang a hymn of "Merciless Mercy." In that final moment of awareness, I realized a terrifying truth: Alexander didn't fix my heart so I could live a normal life. He fixed it so it could endure the cruelty of his hell for as long as possible. He was ensuring that my agony would not end with a swift death; I would remain the eternal prisoner in the shrine of his dark obsession, watching from afar as Adrian ascended his throne, entirely unaware that every breath he took was, in truth, a piece of my soul being devoured every night in the silence of the cursed palace