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.

Ten months I carried her. A piece of my own flesh, torn from my body.

How could it not hurt?

And still,

her own father had killed her.

Even had the skin stripped from her face and given to someone else.

The pain was unbearable. I held her until her body went cold, then stumbled home in a daze and found the little white dress she'd loved most when she was alive, and changed her into it.

The next morning, at the cremation, I placed my daughter into the furnace with my own hands.

The girl who used to run to me calling “Mommy! Mommy!”

was now a handful of ashes, sealed inside a tiny box.

I couldn't hold back anymore. I broke down sobbing.

Then a shadow fell over me.

I looked up, dazed, and saw Effie Swanson walking toward me with two small children in her arms, her face bright with triumph.

She glanced at the box in my hands and sneered：

“Oh, so she's finally dead. I guess it was worth hiding the twins in that toy-store cabinet after all. Almost suffocated them!”

“Oh, and did you know? Yesterday, when I had people take the skin off your daughter's face for the graft, Julius didn't even blink. He was too busy fussing over a little scrape on our baby's foot!”

“Doesn't that just make you sick, Eve?”

She clapped her hands together as she spoke, delighted with herself.

Something detonated inside me—a white-hot rip through my gut, my vision flooding red. I grabbed a fistful of Effie's hair and slammed her head into the wall.

Again and again, without mercy.

Blood covered her face. The children in her arms were screaming.

But she didn't care. She just smiled, taunting：

“You think this is revenge for your daughter? Dream on.”

Before I could react, she shoved both children's hands into the furnace. Their fingers blackened instantly.

Then she dropped to her knees in front of me, sobbing：

“Eve, I was wrong. I know I shouldn't have let Julius fall for me, but the children are innocent……Please, just let them go. You can punish me however you want……”

Julius arrived to exactly that scene, and without a word, backhanded me across the face.

“Eve Henson!”

“How dare you keep hurting them—did I give you permission to act like this?”

I lay sprawled on the ground, and a bitter laugh scraped out of me.

Such pathetic acting. But Julius didn't even ask. He'd already convicted me.

Seeing me like that only deepened the disgust on his face：

“It's that rotten character of yours—no wonder your daughter turned out just like you, selfish through and through!”

The mention of my daughter split something open inside me, and I screamed at him：

“Don't you dare speak her name, Julius Gilbert! You killed her! You don't get to say her name!”

My grief was too raw to be faked, and he hesitated, just for a moment, as if about to say something.

But Effie shrank into his arms, her voice small and pitiful：“Julius, the babies are so upset. Their little chick died today and they were already heartbroken, and then she did this to them.”

“And I can barely breathe—she said she put something filthy in that box to curse me, something she got from outside. It has to be working.”

The doubt on his face vanished. In its place, cold stone.

He picked up the box from the floor, opened it, and saw the ashes inside. Rage overtook him.

“You did this on purpose, didn't you, Eve?

“Brought this disgusting stuff just to scare them!”

“I really misjudged you—you're not just selfish, you're rotten to the core!

Julius looked at the urn, and his face went cruel.

I shook my head frantically, begging, pleading：

“Don't——”

“Julius, that's our daughter's……”

Before I could finish, his arm swung wide and the urn dropped straight into the fire basin beside us—gone in an instant, without a trace.

“No——!”

I screamed until something in my throat gave out, threw myself at the basin and shoved my hands into the flames, clawing desperately for anything at all.

Blisters swelled across my arms, scorched skin splitting open,

and still I couldn't find a single grain of my daughter's ashes……

I collapsed flat against the ground, screaming until my throat tore. Julius looked at me the way you'd look at a lunatic, then turned, wrapped his arms around Effie and the two children, and left.

He left me with one line：：

“Enough! Cut the act. I found a donor for Stella—she's getting her heart transplant next week.”

I said nothing.

I just held the charred, discolored wooden box against my chest.

Once he was gone, I picked up my phone and dialed a number I hadn't touched in a long time：

“You've always wanted to bring Julius Gilbert down. I can help you. But you have to agree to one condition.”

One week later, Julius arrived at the hospital with the donor heart, heading straight for the ward.

He pushed open the door. The room was empty.

His stomach dropped.

He was reaching for his phone when Noah Carter burst in, face white as paper.

“Mr. Gilbert, I asked the doctors. They said your daughter passed away a week ago!”