…me, the rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor the only sound filling the stark, white room.<\/p>\n
My head throbbed with a sickening, heavy pulse. I tried to sit up, but my limbs felt like they were cast in lead.<\/p>\n
“Don’t move,” my friend, Marcus, whispered. His voice was trembling. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week; his clothes were disheveled, and his knuckles were bruised and raw. “You’re safe now. The police are outside.”<\/p>\n
“Marcus… what happened?” I croaked, my throat feeling like sandpaper. “Where is Celine? Where are her parents?”<\/p>\n
Marcus pulled up a chair, leaning in close so the officers in the hallway couldn’t hear. “They’re gone, man. As soon as I pulled my gun and grabbed you, they vanished. Slipped out the back door into the woods.”<\/p>\n
I stared at him, my mind struggling to piece together the fragmented memories. The living room. The casual French chatter. Marcus’s sudden, terrifying pallor. The walk upstairs. The bedroom door.<\/p>\n
“You told me to check under the bed,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “But I blacked out before I could look. Did someone hit me?”<\/p>\n
Marcus shook his head slowly. “No. You didn’t get hit. It was the wine Celine poured you with dinner. It was heavily laced with a paralytic. They were just waiting for it to kick in.”<\/p>\n
A cold dread began to pool in my stomach. “What were they saying downstairs, Marcus? You speak French. What did you hear?”<\/p>\n
He took a deep breath, looking down at his hands. “They weren’t talking about the weather or the flight from Paris. Celine’s ‘father’ was getting angry. He asked her why you were still walking around. He said, ‘The buyer is arriving in twenty minutes. If the paralytic doesn’t put him under soon, the surgical team under the bed is going to have to do this while he’s awake.'”<\/p>\n
The air in my lungs turned to ice. My wife of three years. The woman I woke up next to every morning.<\/p>\n
“Surgical team?” I choked out.<\/p>\n
Marcus nodded grimly. “When you collapsed upstairs, I drew my concealed carry and ran up after you. I thought I was going to have to shoot her parents, but they didn’t even fight back. They just ran. I locked the bedroom door, grabbed you, and dragged you out to my car. But before we left…” Marcus paused, swallowing hard. “I looked under the bed.”<\/p>\n
“What was there?” I asked, though every fiber of my being screamed at me not to hear the answer.<\/p>\n
“Two men in sterile scrubs, wearing surgical masks,” Marcus said, his eyes hollow. “And a high-grade medical transport cooler. It was packed with ice, IV bags, and an array of bone saws. They weren’t your in-laws, man. And she wasn’t your wife. You were livestock.”<\/p>\n
I closed my eyes as a tear slipped down my cheek, the chilling realization settling into my bones. For three years, I hadn’t been building a marriage. I had been slowly marinated, cared for, and kept healthy for a harvest I never saw coming.<\/p>\n
And if Marcus hadn’t stopped by to return a borrowed drill, I would have been carved up in my own home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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