Coma, Cruelty, and Caleb's Betrayal

Coma, Cruelty, and Caleb's Betrayal

Qing Gongzi

4.0
Comment(s)
33.6K
View
20
Chapters

After donating bone marrow to save my brother, a rare complication put me in a coma for five years. When I woke up, I found my family had replaced me. They had a new daughter, Hailie, a girl who looked just like me. They told me my jealousy over her caused a car crash that forced Hailie and my parents into hiding. To make me atone, my fiancé, Caleb, and my brother locked me in an isolated villa for three years. I was their prisoner, their slave, enduring their beatings because I believed my suffering was the price for my family's safety. Then, a doctor told me I had terminal lung cancer. My body was failing, but my tormentors decided on one last act of "kindness"-a surprise birthday trip to a luxury resort. There, I saw them all. My parents, my brother, my fiancé, and Hailie, alive and well, drinking champagne. I overheard their plan. My torture wasn't penance. It was a "lesson" to break me. My entire life had become a cruel joke. So, on my birthday, I walked to the highest bridge on the island, left behind my medical diagnosis and a recording of Hailie's confession, and jumped.

Coma, Cruelty, and Caleb's Betrayal Chapter 1 Chapter 1

The first thing I felt was a dull ache behind my eyes. The light was too bright, a sterile white that made my head throb. Machines beeped a steady, rhythmic pattern next to me.

Five years.

They told me I had been in a coma for five years. After I donated bone marrow to my brother, Fitzgerald, a rare complication sent me into a coma, stealing those years from me.

My family was there. My mother, Beverley, was crying, her face etched with new lines I didn't recognize. My father, Franklin, stood beside her, his hand on her shoulder, looking older and grayer.

My fiancé, Caleb Skinner, was there too. He held my hand, his grip tight, his handsome face pale with a relief so deep it looked like pain. And my brother, Fitz, the reason I was here, stood at the foot of the bed, his expression a mixture of guilt and gratitude.

They were all here. My world had returned.

But then I saw her.

She was standing just behind my mother, a young woman who looked to be in her early twenties. She had my hair, my eyes. The resemblance was so strong it was like looking at a distorted reflection.

"Who is that?" I asked, my voice a dry rasp.

My mother's smile faltered. "Oh, honey. This is Hailie. Hailie Silva."

Caleb squeezed my hand. "She's... she's been with us for a while, Ericka. Your parents took her in while you were gone."

"A foster daughter," my father supplied, his voice careful.

My eyes stayed locked on Hailie. She offered a shy, nervous smile, a performance that never reached her cold, assessing eyes.

In the days that followed, I saw how it was. Hailie was the one my mother fussed over, asking if she was hungry, if she was comfortable. She was the one my father praised for her grades, her demeanor. Fitz treated her like a cherished little sister, and even Caleb... even Caleb spoke to her with a gentleness that felt foreign, a tone that used to be reserved for me.

I felt like a ghost in my own life. A relic they had dusted off and didn't know where to put.

"She comforted us while you were... away," Beverley explained one afternoon, her voice soft. "She needed a family, and we needed someone to... to fill the quiet."

The excuse felt hollow. It felt like a betrayal.

"I want her gone," I said, my voice finally finding its strength.

The silence in the room was heavy.

"Ericka, be reasonable," Caleb started.

"No," I insisted, looking from his face to my parents'. "I am not a placeholder. And I will not be replaced. She has to leave."

My rejection was a stone thrown into a still pond. The ripples were immediate and ugly. Hailie burst into tears, a dramatic, gut-wrenching display. My mother rushed to comfort her, shooting me a look of deep disappointment.

"How could you be so cruel?" Fitzgerald demanded, his voice sharp. "After everything she's done for this family?"

The argument was a blur of accusations and my own stubborn refusal to back down. Finally, they agreed. They would find another place for Hailie.

The day she was supposed to leave, Caleb and Fitzgerald were taking her. I stayed in my room, a bitter sense of victory in my chest.

Hours later, they returned. Alone. Their faces were grim masks of fury and despair.

"She's gone," Caleb said, his voice flat and dead.

"What do you mean, gone?" I asked, a knot of unease tightening in my stomach.

"There was an accident," Fitzgerald bit out, his eyes burning with a hatred I had never seen before. "A car crash. It was your fault. Your jealousy, your anger... you did this."

Before I could process the lie, the next one came.

"And that's not all," Caleb continued, his voice breaking. "The people she was running from, the reason she was in the foster system... they've found out where she was. They're making threats. Because of what you did, your parents and Hailie had to go into hiding. We don't know when we'll see them again."

The world tilted. Hiding? Threats? Because of me?

It didn't make sense, but the force of their conviction was a battering ram against my confusion.

"You did this, Ericka," Fitzgerald said, his words like ice. "You destroyed our family."

Caleb stepped forward, his expression twisted with a dark, righteous anger. "And now, you will pay for it. You will do penance until you've earned their forgiveness. You will learn your lesson."

That was the beginning. The beginning of three years of hell. They moved me to an isolated villa owned by Caleb. There were no phones, no internet, no escape. Just the two of them.

My brother and my fiancé.

They became my tormentors.

They told me my parents and Hailie were safe but that their continued safety depended on my obedience. My atonement.

I believed them. I clung to the guilt they fed me every day, because it was the only thing that made sense of the nightmare. I scrubbed floors until my hands were raw. I ate the scraps they left for me. I withstood their cold words and, sometimes, their hands.

I learned to be silent, to be small, to be sorry. I made my suffering a prayer, hoping it would reach my family, wherever they were, and buy their safety.

My body began to fail. A persistent cough became a wracking, painful thing that left me breathless. A dull ache in my bones grew into a constant fire.

After I collapsed one day, Caleb reluctantly took me to a doctor.

The diagnosis was a death sentence. Terminal lung cancer. A few months left, at most.

The news landed in a place inside me that was already dead. It was just another form of punishment, one I deserved.

Just as all hope was extinguished, they decided on a final, twisted act of "kindness." For my birthday, they were taking me on a trip. A trip to a luxury island resort.

They locked me in a suite, telling me to wait. They had a surprise.

I didn't wait. A strange, desperate energy filled me. I picked the lock with a hairpin and slipped out into the bustling resort.

And then I saw them.

Across a manicured lawn, under a sky lit by a setting sun, my entire family was gathered on a terrace. My mother, Beverley, and my father, Franklin, laughing, holding champagne flutes. My brother, Fitzgerald, and my fiancé, Caleb, standing with them.

And in the center of it all, beaming like a queen, was Hailie. Alive. Unharmed. Celebrated.

The world didn't just tilt. It shattered into a million pieces.

I hid behind a large potted palm, my heart hammering against my ribs. Their voices carried on the breeze.

"...the look on her face when we tell her!" Hailie was saying, giggling. "It's the perfect birthday gift."

"She needs the shock," my mother agreed, sipping her champagne. "It's the only way she'll finally accept you, dear. We just have to break her spirit completely."

"This will be the final lesson," Caleb said, his voice full of the same righteous tone he'd used for three years. "Then our family can finally be whole again."

The air left my lungs. The pain in my chest wasn't from the cancer. It was from a betrayal so absolute, so monstrous, it eclipsed everything else.

My life, my sacrifice, my suffering... it was a game. A cruel lesson. A joke.

With my life draining away, with everything I ever loved revealed as a lie, I knew what I had to do. There was one last thing I had control over.

My birthday. The day of their final "gift."

I walked away from them, a ghost they couldn't see.

I went to the highest point on the island, a bridge that spanned a deep, churning channel between the cliffs. The wind whipped my hair around my face.

I left two things on the railing. The crisp envelope containing my medical diagnosis. And a small USB drive.

On it was a recording. A conversation from months ago, when Hailie, in a moment of supreme arrogance, had visited me in my room to gloat, not knowing my phone was recording every sociopathic word.

Then, I climbed onto the railing.

The water below was dark and unforgiving.

For the first time in three years, I felt a kind of peace.

I jumped.

Continue Reading

Other books by Qing Gongzi

More
My Husband Sold Me to the Don

My Husband Sold Me to the Don

Mafia

5.0

My husband, Hudson Higgins, used my dowry to buy his way into the Chicago underworld while his family treated me like a servant in my own home. I endured their insults for the sake of my five-year-old daughter, Josie. But then, the unthinkable happened. I found Josie's small, lifeless body by the garden fountain, while my sister-in-law Karly and mother-in-law Eleanor stood by, complaining about their party plans. "She was just too naughty," Karly sneered, adjusting her pearls over my dead child. When I turned to Hudson for help, he looked at me with dead eyes and told me it was just her fate. In that moment of absolute grief, I remembered the words of the ruthless Don Damien Falcone: "Your husband is a man who knows how to close a deal." The truth sliced through me like a blade. Hudson hadn't just ignored the Don's interest in me; he had actively sold me to the Devil of Chicago to buy his seat at the table. He let his family punish me for the very sin he committed. I had lost everything-my dignity, my mother, and now my baby-all sacrificed for a man who traded his wife's body for power. The sorrow in my chest evaporated, replaced by a scorching, blinding thirst for a blood vendetta. After lunging at Hudson and feeling the world explode into white, I opened my eyes to find myself back in the winter of 1928. It was the exact night the nightmare began, and Don Damien Falcone was walking toward me in his penthouse. This time, I won't be the broken bird in his gilded cage. If Hudson wants to use me to climb the ranks, I will use the Don's dark obsession to burn the Higgins family to the ground.

Reborn: After 99 Divorces

Reborn: After 99 Divorces

Modern

5.0

I stood at the edge of the freezing pond on the Boone estate, my body trembling with a fear that rattled my bones. Across from me, Amanda Olsen looked immaculate in her cashmere coat, a sharp contrast to the jagged reality I was trying to hold together. "Why?" I whispered. Amanda just smiled, admitting she killed Grandpa Boone because he actually liked me. She pulled out a thick envelope-divorce papers Cordero had signed that morning. She told me he called me a parasite and was celebrating with her the night I suffered a miscarriage. Before I could even scream, Amanda lunged and shoved me into the icy water. My heavy wool coat acted like a sponge, dragging me into the artificial abyss. I thrashed and gasped for air, but Amanda just stood on the bank, watching me drown with her hands tucked casually in her pockets. As my lungs burned and the darkness closed in, I realized I had spent my entire marriage taking their abuse. I was the "foster trash" and the "gold digger" who let them win every single time. I was dying alone, hated by the husband I had tried so hard to love, while my murderer stood victorious on the shore. I never fought back. I just let them destroy me. Then, a violent spasm tore through my body. I sat up gasping, sucking in dry, air-conditioned oxygen instead of murky pond water. I wasn't dead. I was back in the opulent master suite, surrounded by red rose petals and wedding decorations. The digital clock glowed: October 14, 2019. I had gone back five years to the very night my nightmare began. The bathroom door clicked open, and Cordero stepped out, looking at me with the same cold disgust I remembered. But as I gripped the silk sheets, a new resolve hardened in my chest. This time, I wasn't going to be the victim. This time, the Boone family was going to find out exactly what happens when you push someone too far.

From Servant to Savior

From Servant to Savior

Romance

5.0

The alarm shrieked through the silent mansion, a sound I knew better than my own heartbeat. For fifteen years, I had been Dorian Steele' s living, breathing medicine, my blood the only cure for his fatal seizures. But then, his fiancée, Ainsley, arrived. She was flawless, a vision of cold, stunning beauty, and she looked like she belonged here. He shoved me away from him, pulling the silk sheets up to cover my worn pajamas as if I were something dirty. "Kira, clean this mess up. And get out." He dismissed me like a servant, after clinging to me for life just moments before. The next morning, she sat in my chair, wearing his shirt, a love bite visible on her neck. She taunted me, and when I spilled coffee, he didn't even notice, too busy laughing with her. Later, Ainsley accused me of breaking Eleanor' s prized porcelain vase. Dorian, without question, believed her. He forced me to my knees on the broken shards, the pain searing my flesh. "Apologize," he growled, pressing down on my shoulder. I whispered my apology, each word a surrender. Then, they drained my blood for her, for a fabricated illness. "Ainsley needs this," he said, his voice flat. "She's more important." More important than the girl who had given him her life. I was a resource to be exploited, a well that would never run dry. He had promised he would always protect me, but now he was the one holding the sword. I was nothing more than a pet, a creature he kept for his own survival. But I was done. I accepted an offer from the Estes family, a desperate, archaic idea of a "propitious marriage" to their comatose son, Emmett. It was my only escape.

You'll also like

Inferno Heiress: Freed From Hell To Reclaim My Empire

Inferno Heiress: Freed From Hell To Reclaim My Empire

Clara Voss
5.0

Hayley was betrayed by those who should have loved her most. To save their precious adopted daughter from a punishment she deserved, her own parents sent Hayley straight into a living hell—an infamous prison where survival demanded cruelty, and weakness meant death. Four years later, the girl who had entered those iron gates no longer existed. She emerged with a single, unbreakable rule carved into her soul: Every betrayal would be repaid tenfold. The day she walked free, the world trembled. A convoy of luxury cars lined the road. A legion of loyal followers awaited her triumphant return. Her father tried to buy her silence with money. But money had long lost its power over her. Her adopted sister hid behind sweet words and false kindness. But empty smiles no longer fooled her. Everything that had once been stolen would be reclaimed—piece by piece. When her parents attempted to tie themselves to the city's most feared man by offering their adopted daughter, Hayley's lips curved into a cold smirk. "Not on my watch." Backed by a legendary hacker, shadowy allies, and an entire prison willing to burn the world for her, Hayley dismantled her enemies with terrifying precision. Then the tyrant noticed her. "You're interesting," he said. "Be my woman, and the city is yours." Hayley raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "You want to own me? Survive me first." High society became their battlefield. Power collided with desire. Ambition clashed with obsession. In this ruthless game of dominance and temptation, only one would kneel first. The girl once abandoned in hell rose from its ashes, crowned by fire and vengeance—And in the end, even the most feared ruler in the city would bow, offering his empire to the woman who had conquered both hell… and him.

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book
Coma, Cruelty, and Caleb's Betrayal Coma, Cruelty, and Caleb's Betrayal Qing Gongzi Modern
“After donating bone marrow to save my brother, a rare complication put me in a coma for five years. When I woke up, I found my family had replaced me. They had a new daughter, Hailie, a girl who looked just like me. They told me my jealousy over her caused a car crash that forced Hailie and my parents into hiding. To make me atone, my fiancé, Caleb, and my brother locked me in an isolated villa for three years. I was their prisoner, their slave, enduring their beatings because I believed my suffering was the price for my family's safety. Then, a doctor told me I had terminal lung cancer. My body was failing, but my tormentors decided on one last act of "kindness"-a surprise birthday trip to a luxury resort. There, I saw them all. My parents, my brother, my fiancé, and Hailie, alive and well, drinking champagne. I overheard their plan. My torture wasn't penance. It was a "lesson" to break me. My entire life had become a cruel joke. So, on my birthday, I walked to the highest bridge on the island, left behind my medical diagnosis and a recording of Hailie's confession, and jumped.”
1

Chapter 1 Chapter 1

07/08/2025

2

Chapter 2

07/08/2025

3

Chapter 3

07/08/2025

4

Chapter 4

07/08/2025

5

Chapter 5

07/08/2025

6

Chapter 6

07/08/2025

7

Chapter 7

07/08/2025

8

Chapter 8

07/08/2025

9

Chapter 9

07/08/2025

10

Chapter 10

07/08/2025

11

Chapter 11

07/08/2025

12

Chapter 12

07/08/2025

13

Chapter 13

07/08/2025

14

Chapter 14

07/08/2025

15

Chapter 15

07/08/2025

16

Chapter 16

07/08/2025

17

Chapter 17

07/08/2025

18

Chapter 18

07/08/2025

19

Chapter 19

07/08/2025

20

Chapter 20

07/08/2025