Hannah’s POV
My phone buzzes at two in the morning.
I’m not asleep.
I never sleep anymore.
Not really.
I drift in and out of consciousness, hovering somewhere between wakefulness and exhaustion, never quite reaching the peace of real rest.
The darkness of my room presses in around me like a physical weight, and I’ve been staring at the ceiling for hours, tracing the same crack in the plaster over and over again.
The buzz shatters the silence.
I reach for my phone on the nightstand, my movements slow and heavy.
The screen glows in the darkness, too bright, too harsh.
A text from an unknown number.
“You deserve to know.”
My heart stops.
Then it starts again, faster, harder, pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird.
I don’t know who sent this.
I don’t know what they want.
But something in my gut tells me this is important.
Something tells me this will change everything.
I open the message.
There’s a video attached.
No explanation.
No context.
Just a file waiting to be played.
My thumb hovers over the screen.
I should delete it.
I should ignore it.
I should go back to staring at the ceiling and pretending I don’t exist.
That’s what I’ve been doing for five years.
That’s what I’m good at.
But something propels me forward.
Some desperate, broken part of me that still wants to know the truth.
That still wants to understand why I’m invisible.
That still wants to believe there’s a reason for all this pain.
I press play.
The video is grainy, like it was shot on a phone from a distance.
But the image is clear enough.
A bridge at sunset, the sky painted in shades of orange and pink.
Roses everywhere.
Hundreds of them, red and white and pink, scattered across the stone like a carpet of petals.
And in the center of it all, Elijah.
He’s on his knees.
He’s wearing a suit—the one I picked out for him for a business dinner last month.
I remember because I spent hours making sure it was perfect.
I wanted him to look good.
I wanted him to be proud of me.
I wanted him to see me.
He never did.
Isabella stands in front of him, her hands pressed to her mouth in a gesture of fake surprise.
She’s wearing white.
Of course she is.
White like a bride.
White like the woman he should have married.
White like everything I’ve never been allowed to be.
I can’t hear what he’s saying.
The audio is muffled, distant.
But then Isabella leans forward and adjusts something, and the sound clicks into focus.
“This marriage is a transaction.
You’re the only one I’ve ever loved.”
His voice.
Elijah’s voice.
Clear as a bell, sharp as a blade.
I stop breathing.
The world tilts.
The room spins.
The video continues playing on my screen, but I can barely see it through the haze that’s descended over my vision.
This marriage is a transaction.
You’re the only one I’ve ever loved.
I replay the words in my head, over and over, trying to make sense of them.
Trying to fit them into the puzzle of my life.
Trying to understand how the man who married me could have said something so cruel, so devastating, so utterly final.
But I already understand.
I’ve always understood.
I just didn’t want to admit it.
I was never the one he wanted.
I was never the one he loved.
I was just a means to an end.
A solution to a problem.
A bag of blood with a pulse.
Isabella was always the one he wanted.
Isabella was always the one he loved.
I was just the placeholder, the transaction, the inconvenient necessity that kept her alive.
The video continues playing.
Elijah slides a ring onto Isabella’s finger—the same ring his grandmother wore.
The ring I’ve seen in family portraits.
The ring that was supposed to be passed down to the wife of the eldest son.
Isabella wears it in the video.
She wears it at dinner.
She wears it everywhere.
I wear nothing.
I watch the entire proposal.
The romantic speeches.
The dramatic declaration.
The tears in Isabella’s eyes, the joy on her face, the love that radiates between them.
Everything I’ve never had.
Everything I’ve never been given.
Everything that should have been mine.
The video ends.
The screen goes black.
But I can still see it.
I can still see Elijah on his knees.
I can still see Isabella’s triumphant smile.
I can still hear his voice, cold and certain, declaring that our marriage was nothing but a transaction.
I press play again.
“This marriage is a transaction.
You’re the only one I’ve ever loved.”
I press play again.
“This marriage is a transaction.
You’re the only one I’ve ever loved.”
I press play again.
“This marriage is a transaction.
You’re the only one I’ve ever loved.”
I don’t know how many times I watch it.
Ten.
Twenty.
A hundred.
The words blur together, losing their meaning, becoming nothing but sound.
But the truth of them remains.
The truth of them cuts deeper than any knife.
I’m not his wife.
I’m not his partner.
I’m not even a person to him.
I’m just the transaction.
Hours pass.
The sky outside my window shifts from black to gray to pale pink.
The sun rises over the mansion, casting long shadows across my room.
I’m still sitting in bed, still holding my phone, still staring at the black screen.
I should cry.
I should scream.
I should throw something against the wall and let the shards of glass match the shards of my heart.
That’s what normal people do.
That’s what people who feel things do.
But I feel nothing.
I’m too empty for tears.
Too hollow for rage.
Too broken for anything but this cold, numb silence that has settled over me like a shroud.
I think about my grandmother.
She used to say that love was the most powerful force in the universe.
She used to say that love could heal anything, overcome anything, survive anything.
She was wrong.
Love didn’t heal me.
Love didn’t overcome anything.
Love didn’t survive.
Love just broke me.
Over and over and over again, until there was nothing left to break.
I look at my phone.
The unknown number is still there, taunting me.
I type a response: “Who is this?”
No answer.
Of course there’s no answer.
The sender doesn’t want to be known.
They just wanted me to know the truth.
They just wanted me to see what I’ve been denying for five years.
The truth.
I’ve been lying to myself for so long.
Telling myself that Elijah was just cold, just distant, just emotionally unavailable.
Telling myself that he’d come around eventually.
Telling myself that love could grow if I was patient enough, kind enough, selfless enough.
But love doesn’t grow in a vacuum.
Love doesn’t bloom in the darkness.
Love doesn’t survive when it’s never been given a chance.
The truth is simpler and crueler than any of my lies.
Elijah never loved me.
He never wanted me.
He never even saw me.
I was just the transaction.
The blood donation.
The inconvenient necessity that kept his real love alive.
I put down my phone and stare at the ceiling.
The crack is still there, the same one I was tracing hours ago.
Nothing has changed.
The world is the same.
My life is the same.
But everything has changed.
Everything I thought I knew about my marriage, my husband, my life, was a lie.
I was living in a fantasy, pretending that I mattered, pretending that I was seen, pretending that I was loved.
I was wrong.
I think about the moments I convinced myself he cared.
The time he held the door for me at a charity gala.
The time he asked if I was feeling well after a long donation session.
The time he looked at me across the dinner table and I thought I saw something in his eyes.
It was all in my head.
All of it.
Every glance, every gesture, every moment of hope was just my desperate mind trying to find meaning in meaningless actions.
He didn’t care.
He never cared.
He was just going through the motions, fulfilling his obligation, keeping the transaction alive.
I close my eyes and let the emptiness wash over me.
I think about my grandmother again.
She’d be ashamed of me.
She raised me to be strong, to be independent, to be unbreakable.
She didn’t raise me to be this—this hollow shell, this broken thing, this woman who let herself be used and discarded.
But I can’t find the strength to care.
I can’t find the strength to do anything.
I want to hate Elijah.
I want to hate Isabella.
I want to hate the unknown sender who gave me this video, this truth, this final blow that shattered whatever was left of me.
But I don’t have the energy for hate.
I don’t have the energy for anything.
I look at my phone again.
The video is still there.
I press play one more time.
“This marriage is a transaction.
You’re the only one I’ve ever loved.”
The words hit me again, but they don’t hurt anymore.
They’ve become a dull ache, a familiar pain, a constant companion.
I turn off my phone and set it aside.
I lie back on my bed and stare at the ceiling.
The sun is fully up now, streaming through the windows, filling my room with light.
I’ve never felt more in the dark.
I think about what happens next.
I think about the hospital, the donations, the endless cycle of giving and giving and giving until there’s nothing left.
I think about the dinners with Isabella, the way she laughs and touches Elijah’s arm and wears his grandmother’s ring.
I think about the future, stretching out ahead of me like a long, empty road.
I don’t want to walk it anymore.
I don’t want to be invisible.
I don’t want to be the transaction.
But I don’t know how to be anything else.
I close my eyes and let the tears come.
Finally.
Finally, the tears come.
They slide down my cheeks and soak into my pillow, silent and hot.
My body shakes with the effort of holding back sobs, but I don’t let them out.
I can’t.
If I start, I might never stop.
I cry until I’m empty again.
Until the tears run out and I’m left with nothing but exhaustion.
I think about my grandmother one last time.
Her voice echoes in my mind, faint and distant.
“Strength isn’t never falling.
It’s getting back up.”
I want to get back up.
I want to find the strength to walk away.
I want to be someone again.
But right now, I’m still falling.
And I don’t know if I’ll ever stop.