“Eve, the kidnapping may not have been your fault, but you know the twins only wandered off because they were trying to find their daddy.”

“And you made up that story about your daughter dying just so he'd feel guilty and come back to you!”

Julius's face changed instantly. He shoved me away, seething：

“Eve Henson, are you done with this? You're so desperate for my attention you'd fabricate lies about your own daughter's life? You're out of your mind!”

“I'm warning you. If I ever hear you curse your daughter like that again, don't blame me for what happens next.”

He turned without a second's hesitation and walked away with Effie and the twins.

I scrambled to my feet and stumbled back inside, scooped my daughter up into my arms, and ran.

She must have sensed me close, because her lips moved, words breaking apart between the blood.

“Mommy, it hurts……”

“This……this is for……for Daddy……”

I looked down. In her small hand was a drawing, crumpled almost beyond recognition from how tightly she'd been gripping it. The portrait on it was unmistakable. Julius.

The pain in my chest nearly split me open. I bit down hard on my lip just to keep myself from falling apart.

I pulled her frail little body tight against mine, swiped roughly at my tears, and kept my voice as gentle as I could：

“Stella, don't be scared. Mommy's taking you to the hospital right now.”

I charged out and threw myself in front of a car to flag it down, and we raced to the hospital.

But when I burst into the emergency room, the doctor took one look at her vitals and his face went white：

“This is critical—she needs a heart transplant now, right now.”

I grabbed at his words like a lifeline：“There is one! There is! Her surgery was scheduled for tomorrow. Move it up, please, just move it up!”

The doctor sent a nurse to check right away. I had barely closed my hand around Stella's fingers when the nurse came back：

“Ms. Henson's daughter was indeed scheduled for tomorrow, but……but the donor heart has already been taken by the VIP patient upstairs……”

“Something about his child having a heart condition—they wanted the transplant for him instead……”

Whatever the nurse said after that, I couldn't hear anymore.

My head just—rang. One high, splitting sound, and everything went white.

One thought, and one thought alone, consumed me: I had to save my daughter. She was only three years old.

I seized the doctor's arm and screamed until my voice tore：

“Where is he? I'll go beg him. If he gives the heart back, I'll do whatever he wants—anything!”

The look on my face must have frightened the doctor, because he told me immediately: the top-floor VIP ward.

I left Stella in the observation room and ran without stopping, up to the top floor, and threw open the door to the ward. Julius was inside, his arm around Effie, each of them cradling one of the twins.

In that moment,

I froze.

The VIP the doctor had been talking about was Julius.

But I had no room left for heartbreak. I bent at the waist, low enough to beg：

“Please. Give the donor heart back to me. My daughter is downstairs waiting to be saved.”

Julius's brow creased, and he opened his mouth to speak, but Effie's tears fell first.

“Eve, it's bad enough you fight me for Julius every single day. Now you want to take the heart meant for my child?”

“You're doing this on purpose, aren't you? Lying about your daughter dying just to get Julius to look at you!”

Before her voice had finished ringing through the room, Julius was already in front of me, his hand locked around my throat.

“Eve Henson, you never learn. You'll say anything—anything—to claw for my attention. Now you're cursing your own daughter to die!”

I shook my head desperately, forcing the words out：

“No……that's not it, Stella is right downstairs……”

Before I could finish, Julius hurled me to the floor：

“Oh, so you want the donor heart? Then get on your knees and lick every bit of the children's filth off this floor. Lick it clean, and I'll give it to you.”

I looked up, almost unable to believe what I'd heard.

All I met were Julius's eyes—cold, utterly indifferent.

But I thought of my daughter, barely clinging to life, and I bit down on my lip until I tasted iron. I dropped to my knees and, like a dog, began licking the filth off the floor.

I didn't even dare swallow—one wrong second and everything would come back up.

Finally, every trace of that murky puddle was gone. I swayed to my feet and looked at him, full of desperate hope：

“Can I have the donor heart back now?”

Effie smiled, triumph smeared across her face, and reached into the transport case to pull out the heart.

It was still beating—alive, right there in her hands. I saw my daughter's life in every pulse. I reached for it, and Effie let go.

The next second,

the heart slammed into the floor.

Before I could even react, Effie brought her foot down on it.

The beating stopped. What was left was a smear of red pulp……

I couldn't process it. Then she leaned down next to my ear and whispered：

“Stupid woman. You really think I'd let you save her? Your daughter should've been dead a long time ago.”

“Otherwise, how are my two babies going to be the only heirs to Gilbert Group?”

Every last flicker of hope in me went out. I lost my mind. I lunged at Effie, pinned her to the bed, and locked my hands around her throat.

“You hurt my daughter—I'll make you pay with your life——”

I squeezed with everything I had, deaf to Julius's roar behind me, squeezing until Effie's eyes rolled back.

She clawed and begged, but all I could see was my daughter's face, and my fingers only tightened.

Then electricity tore through me, and my body hit the floor, convulsing, no longer mine to control.

I looked up into Julius's savage eyes and the stun baton in his hand.

“Eve Henson, you've lost your mind. You actually dare hurt Little Effie right in front of me?”

“If there's so much as a scratch on her, I will kill you and your daughter. Don't test me.”

Every word was a blade, driven straight through my chest.

I laughed.

Laughed until the tears came.

I pointed at Julius, my voice shattered：

“Yes! I've lost my mind! You drove me to it!”

“Julius Gilbert—Stella is your daughter too! How can you be this cruel! You'd kill her for them!”

His brows drew tight, and he looked at me with nothing but irritation：

“What nonsense are you spouting? I would never let my daughter die!”

“I already told you those tigers were fake……Enough! It's just a heart. I guarantee I'll find her another match within a week.”

“She's already waited two years. A few more days won't make a difference.”

A bitter laugh escaped me.

So he knew. He knew that finding this one matching heart had taken Stella two years.

And now,

he had destroyed it all……

My phone buzzed in my pocket. The hospital's number. I answered with shaking hands.

The voice on the other end said：“Ms. Henson, your daughter's lungs are failing. She's down to her last breaths—please, come now……”

Whatever the doctor said after that, I couldn't hear. There was only a hole carved through the center of me, and the pain swallowed every breath I tried to take.

I bolted for the door, but Effie suddenly screamed behind me,

“Help——”

“Julius, please—she's trying to stab me!”

Julius turned to the bodyguards outside the door without a second's pause：“Stop her!”

Huge men swarmed me in an instant, pinning me down from every side. I fought like a rabid dog, slamming and thrashing in every direction, screaming over and over,

“Let go of me! Let go!”

“I need to see my daughter, she's waiting for me! She's waiting for me!”

Tears streamed down uncontrollably, but Julius just looked at me with open disgust.

He picked up a syringe of sedative from the instrument tray and walked toward me. I shook my head, desperate.

“No——”

The needle drove into my skin, ice-cold and merciless. The room blurred at the edges.

Before I lost consciousness, I heard Julius's voice, flat and remote：

“My wife has lost her mind. Have her sent to the psychiatric hospital.”

In the haze, I dreamed. A long, long dream.

In the dream I was back to the day I first found out I was pregnant. Julius's whole face lit up—the dazed, helpless joy of a man about to become a father for the first time.

He pulled me tight against him：“Eve, this is wonderful! We're finally having a baby!”

“I promise, from now on I'll protect you both. I won't let anything hurt either of you.”

Ten months later, I gave birth to our daughter, and Julius still had eyes for no one but us.

Every day he came home on time and cooked for us. He cancelled every dinner, every client function, just so he could be the one rocking her to sleep.

Back then, a hangnail on my finger could make him ache. A single whimper from Stella and he'd hover over her for hours……

Then Effie Swanson appeared, and everything changed.

He stopped being the husband who cherished me,

stopped being the father who doted on Stella……

The dream shifted. Stella's voice cut through, raw with pain：

“Mommy, it hurts……save me……please save me……”

I reached for her, frantic, but my hands closed on nothing. I jolted awake. The air reeked of disinfectant.

My head was still thick with fog as I ripped the IV needle from my hand and stumbled toward the ER.

I searched every bed. Stella was nowhere.

I was standing there, lost, not knowing what to do, when I caught the nurses talking among themselves.

“That little girl with the heart condition yesterday—so tragic. Never got a donor in the end, and then they went and stripped skin off her……”

My chest seized. I grabbed the nearest nurse by the arm, shaking：

“What do you mean? The little girl with the heart condition—where is she?”

The nurse flinched, stammering：

“There was……there was a little girl with a heart condition yesterday. She was supposed to get a transplant, but the donor fell through and she died. They couldn't reach her family……”

“She should've been kept in the morgue, but……our hospital director's kid got some skin scraped off, so they cut a graft from her face……then dumped the body on the dirt mound out back……”

Every drop of blood in my body went cold. I ran toward the back hill like a woman possessed.

Stella's smile kept flashing through my mind—all I could do was beg for a miracle……

But when I saw that small, familiar shape lying on the dirt pile, my legs gave out and I dropped straight to my knees.

“Stella——”

I crawled to her and pulled her body tight against my chest,

my trembling hand touching a face so ruined I could no longer tell how much of it had once looked like mine.

I couldn't hold it back any longer.

Blood surged up my throat and spilled from my mouth.