Secret Admiration: Finding True Love After…

Chapter 688 Despair

After hearing what Alvin said on the phone, Chandler’s face darkened, and his eyes widened.

“That’s impossible!”

“The intel is solid,” Alvin replied. “We’ve managed to capture one of them, but we’re still unclear about the situation inside. We’re worried that if we rush in, the kidnappers might eliminate the hostages, putting their lives at risk. Chandler, you were always the best in our class at the police academy, especially when it came to covert infiltration. If we want to save your sister, we’ll need you to take point on this.”

After hanging up, Chandler’s face was as cold as ice. Alvin’s words were still ringing in his ears.

The kidnappers had chosen their location well. It was an abandoned factory with a maze-like layout. Actually, several factories merged into one. For inexperienced officers, infiltrating it would be like walking through a labyrinth. They’d likely alert the kidnappers before even locating them.

These were desperate men who lived on the edge. There was no telling what they might do if cornered.

But Chandler was an expert in this field. With him leading the infiltration team, their chances would be much better.

Chandler turned back to look at Meryl, still sleeping peacefully in her hospital bed, his eyes filled with conflicting emotions. He desperately wanted to stay by her side, to be there when his wife woke up.

He tried to apologize to her face for failing in his duties as a husband yesterday. He wished he could be the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes.

But… Alvin had just called to tell him that the kidnappers had brutally carved out one of Rachel’s kidneys. Now, her life hung in the balance.

Those evil bastards had only waited one night before cutting out Rachel’s kidney. Chandler couldn’t bear to think about what might happen if this dragged on any longer.

On the phone, Chandler had questioned whether the police report could be wrong. How could they possibly have taken her kidney? But Alvin confirmed it was absolutely true. The surgeon had been caught by police leaving the abandoned factory with the kidney in hand. Under interrogation at the station, the surgeon had confessed everything.

A chill ran down Chandler’s spine. He was terrified that if Rachel died, he’d spend the rest of his life drowning in guilt.

After all, Andy had given him his only chance at survival. Yet he’d failed to protect Rachel, and now this had happened…

With both her parents dead, Rachel had no one else to turn to. He was the only one who could save her now.

Chandler walked to the bedside and bent down to place a gentle kiss on Meryl’s forehead.

“Meryl, I’m sorry. I hope you can understand why I have to do this. Please don’t hate me.”

Chandler gazed at Meryl one last time with longing in his eyes, then turned and reluctantly left the hospital room.

Meanwhile, in an abandoned factory on the other side of town, Rachel lay barely conscious on the operating table. There was a pool of crimson blood spread beneath her. Her face was deathly pale as she stared vacantly into the darkness above, a hot tear rolling down her cheek. The look in her eyes was that of someone staring death in the face.

That night, Rachel lived through absolute hell. These kidnappers were complete psychopaths! They’d cut out one of her kidneys while she was still alive! So that was why they hadn’t given her any food! It all made sense now!

They were planning to harvest her organs!

Rachel had begged them like a madwoman, pleaded with them not to do this to her, begged them to spare her life. She was only twenty-three years old!

Rachel fell to her knees before Daniel, bowing until her forehead was cut and bleeding, blood trickling into her eyes, yet they showed not a shred of mercy.

She had never felt such despair before. The feeling of screaming until her voice was raw, with no one coming to her rescue, was devastating.

She couldn’t understand what she had done wrong to deserve such treatment from these kidnappers. At first, Rachel thought they were ordinary criminals after money. But that wasn’t the case.

After being starved for an entire day, a masked man appeared in the middle of the night. The man seemed to be a doctor, intimately familiar with human anatomy. She was taken to what looked like an operating room, though far more primitive than any hospital facility.

The man didn’t even give her anesthesia before taking his scalpel and cutting into her. At that moment, Rachel nearly blacked out from the pain.

Her limbs were tightly bound to the operating table, leaving her unable to move, forced to endure everything. Her whole body shook uncontrollably from the pain, her screams piercing one after another until her throat was raw, her mouth filled with blood from biting down.

Rachel could feel clearly as her flesh was cut open; the agony so unbearable that a quick death would have been more merciful. She begged them to let her go, offering any amount of money, but they remained unmoved. Worried she might try to bite her tongue; they stuffed a cloth in her mouth. By the end, the cloth was completely soaked with blood from her mouth.

Rachel was in agony, but death wouldn’t come. She had to endure the excruciating pain. It was like thousands of steel needles piercing into her bone marrow at once. Every muscle in her body was twisted in agony, her teeth grinding against each other.

That night, she lived through a nightmare.

The “surgery” ended at dawn. They had brutally taken one of her kidneys without any emergency care, simply stitching up her abdomen afterward.

Rachel could feel her life slipping away. She sensed her abdominal cavity was filled with blood. Her tears had long since dried up. Her body was ice-cold and trembling uncontrollably. She was terrified, desperately wishing someone would hold her right now.

Her parents had died when she was ten, taking the fall for the Powell family. All she had left was her older brother Andy. To escape from the center of the storm, they had no choice but to seek shelter with distant relatives.

They thought they’d finally found peace, but shortly after, Andy died, too.

She was the last of the Morgan family. Her life plunged into darkness. She was only in sixth grade at the time.

At an age when she should have been growing up surrounded by family’s love, Rachel became completely and utterly alone.

After Andy’s death, even those distant relatives showed their true colors.

Once, Rachel overheard them calling her a harbinger of doom behind her back, saying she was born under a dark star, and that was why everyone in her family had died. They worried she would bring disaster to their families, too.

“A harbinger of doom … am I really a harbinger of doom?”

Rachel knew her relatives didn’t want her around, so from middle school onward, she lived in the school dorms.

Every weekend, her roommates would head home to their families, leaving her completely alone.

Eating alone, sleeping alone.

Her most vivid memory was during Christmas when all her classmates went home. She had nowhere to go, and the school didn’t allow students to stay in the dorms during winter and summer breaks.

So she’d stock up on breads from the campus store beforehand, hiding them in the dorm. She’d have her roommates lock the door when they left, pretending she wasn’t there to avoid the teachers’ checks.

While other families celebrated together, she sat alone in the dark room, afraid to even turn on the lights for fear of being discovered. That was how she spent those endless holidays.