Too Late For Regret: The Surgeon's Comeback

Heavy breathing was close at hand, and the stench of whiskey and stale cigar smoke filled the depths of her throat. A ringed hand gently tapped a hammer on her left knee, which had just undergone rehabilitation surgery.

A wave of fear, the last remnant of the body's original owner, surged through her entire body. It was a cold, numbing fear. However, something else immediately followed. A pure, chilling logic, sharp and merciless like a glacier, crushed the fear into nothingness.

Arely Wallace's eyes snapped open.

Her pupils, which had once been blurry and unfocused, had shrunk to the size of pinpoints. The woman known as "Death" now held the reins.

“Don’t rush to get up, Miss Wallace,” a greasy voice whispered in her ear, laced with cruel laughter. “Enjoy this ‘deep physiotherapy’ while you can. I wonder which is tougher, these delicate knees or this iron hammer?”

Mickey O'Malley, the so-called "private therapist," was squatting beside her knees, holding a hammer that looked to weigh at least 20 pounds.

If that hammer were to strike, her kneecap would shatter into bone fragments, and she would spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair, or worse, crawling on the ground begging.

As his hand moved again, Ariel's hand shot out like a viper, her fingers locking onto the fragile bone in his left wrist.

A sharp, crisp sound of bone cracking echoed in the silent room.

Mickey opened his mouth wide and let out a silent scream, but before any sound could escape, Ariel's other hand slammed into his mouth, pressing his thick lips tightly against his teeth.

Using his weight as a fulcrum, she twisted violently. Her knee rose and struck his soft abdomen with the force of a hammer. The force flung him off the bed, like a heavy sack of flesh, with a dull thud as he crashed onto the soft carpet.

He lay curled up on the floor, gasping for breath, his eyes wide with pain and disbelief. He stared at the woman sitting on the bed, the woman who had just undergone knee rehabilitation surgery and should have been so vulnerable.

Arelly swung her legs off the edge of the bed. Her bare feet made no sound on the carpet. Her gaze swept across the room, landing on the iron hammer Mickey had dropped. She picked it up. It felt heavy and cold in her hands.

She walked towards him, her movements fluid and composed. She stood above him, like a predator surveying its wounded prey. Her eyes held no warmth, no anger, only a flat, empty coldness.

“You…you bastard,” Mickey gasped hoarsely, trying to project his usual authority into his voice. “Do you know who I am?”

A faint, unsmiling smile flickered across Arelly's lips. She didn't answer. Instead, with a restrained violence, she pressed the hammer firmly against Mickey's head.

The slow tapping produced muffled thuds that exploded in Mickey's ears.

"Now I'm more curious about whether your skull is harder or the hammer in my hand. I can't wait to find out."

Arelly's eyes gleamed with a cold light as she slowly raised the hammer and gently placed it on Mickey's skull. The icy coldness of the metal penetrated his scalp, freezing the blood in his entire body.

"Who set this up?" Her voice was low and whispered, colder than the iron hammer pressed against his skin.

He was trembling, sweat and blood mingling on his face. "I...I don't know what you're talking about."

The hammer fell with even more force.

“Kole,” he finally managed to utter. “Kole Bowman.”

The name brought back memories of the original Arelly—a nauseating mix of love and betrayal. The coldness in Death's eyes intensified, becoming truly dangerous.

“He is not alone,” she stated, her tone not questioning.

“Brittny,” Mickey sobbed, desperate to live. “Brittny Greene. She gave me the room key.”

The pieces of the story are piecing together. Her boyfriend and best friend. A classic and tragic betrayal, wanting her to live like a dog for the rest of her life, reduced to their plaything.

She moved the hammer aside. She stood up, reached into the pocket of his discarded suit jacket, and pulled out his phone. His sweaty thumb was all she needed to unlock it. Her fingers flew across the screen, bringing up her text message conversation with Cole. There it was: a smug text from Mickey a few minutes earlier.

She's mine now. You'll get your share.

Arelly snapped a picture of the screen, then of Mickey's pitiful, bleeding body on the floor. For later use. Her fingers moved so fast they blurred as she encrypted the file and sent it to a secure, anonymous cloud server. Only then, after expertly erasing her digital traces, did she toss the phone into a glass of water on the bar cart. The phone hissed for a second, then went silent.

Mickey was trying to sit up, his face filled with terror. "Please...please..."

Arelly turned around. A precise slash struck the back of his neck, and he collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

She stopped in front of the full-length mirror. A strange face looked back at her. Beautiful, exquisite, yet unfamiliar. It was real. She was here, inside this body.

She found a bright red lipstick in her handbag. She wrote a short string of numbers on the bathroom mirror—the contact code for a dark web cleaner. She might need it.

She leaned over Mickey's unconscious body and whispered, "If you don't want your bones to shatter into pieces, you'd better turn Cole Bowman's life into a living hell. Understand?"

She did not wait for an answer.

She opened the suite door. The hallway was silent, the sounds of a distant party echoing down the corridor. No one knew what had just happened.

Avoiding the main elevators and their cameras, she found the service stairs. The cold concrete steps led her down, one after another, until she pushed open a door and stepped into the chilly Los Angeles night.

The cold air stung her lungs.

She walked to the street corner and hailed a taxi.

"Where to?" the driver asked without turning around.

She gave him an address, to a cheap, run-down apartment in an area of ​​the city that tourists never ventured into.

As the taxi pulled away from the roadside, the neon lights of Beverly Hills swept across her face. Ariel clenched her fists. This was a new life, a new war. And to fight a war, she needed money.

A lot of money.

The taxi drove into the darkness.