The risks of my mom's heart transplant surgery are very high.

My wife, Wendy Lowell, is known to be a miracle doctor. Everyone advises me to convince her to perform the surgery on Mom.

But when I arrive at the hotel Wendy is staying at, I witness her assistant, Hayden Sterling, changing her panties for her.

I glare at Wendy angrily.

"Wendy, if you agree to perform the surgery on my mom right now, I'll let you off the hook this time!"

But Wendy slowly wraps her arms around Hayden's neck right in front of me.

"What are you looking at? Are you threatening me?"

She picks up her phone on the spot. "Switch off the oxygen machine for Finn's mother right now."

My eyes go bloodshot as I grip the door frame tightly.

"Wendy Lowell, that's your mother-in-law! Karma will definitely bite you in the ass!"

Wendy goes into an outburst as soon as she hears me.

"Shut up! If it wasn't for the fact that the hag found out about me and Hayden, our affair wouldn't have gotten leaked to the public!

"All I did is turn off your mom's oxygen machine, Finn! I didn't refuse the surgery! Once I've cooled off, I'll go ahead and carry out the surgery!"

Then, Wendy orders her bodyguards to throw me out of the hotel.

I scramble up to my feet in a wretched manner, though my hands have already balled into fists. Soon, I send a newly drafted text as an unknown number.

"Dr. Lowell has suffered from bone fractures all over her body. She's currently at…"

As soon as I sent my location, a bodyguard slapped my phone out of my hand.

A man and a woman stood at the hotel entrance, staring at me with mocking smiles.

"Well, well. If it isn't the famous Finn Kirkland. What's wrong? Money can't save your mother now?"

Wendy Lowell is the only person in the world who can perform my mom's surgery.

Money has lost its value.

She hated my mom now. No amount of money could change that.

I clenched my fists. "You're the one who cheated, Wendy. My mom was just protecting me. Are you really going to stand by and watch her die?"

The hotel belonged to the Lowell family.

Within seconds, dozens of bodyguards surrounded me.

Several employees stood off to the side as they laughed at my miserable state.

"Dr. Lowell, aren't you the heir to the Lowell family? Since when do people like him get to beg you for treatment?"

"Seriously. He even laid a hand on your assistant. He got what he deserved."

I stared at Wendy as she nestled in Hayden Sterling's arms.

The sight took me back to the past. Wendy used to hold me the same way.

She promised that I would never have to worry about sickness, old age, or death. She was a miracle doctor. She would protect my entire family.

Yet now, my mom was fighting for her life on an operating table, and Wendy couldn't care less.

With every passing second, my mom was a step closer to death.

I was about to beg her to let me return to the hospital when my mom's attending physician came running over.

"Mr. Kirkland, please. Just apologize to Dr. Lowell. Your mother is about to suffocate!"

Wendy smirked.

I silently closed my eyes, then opened them again.

I took a deep breath before saying, "Wendy, I'm—"

"Don't apologize to me. The person you owe an apology to is Hayden," she spat, cutting me off before I could finish.

I stared at her in disbelief.

"What? You want me to apologize to the homewrecker?"

My mind went blank.

I treated Wendy with the utmost respect and pampered her beyond reason for five years.

After all, she was the one who stood by me when my career was at its lowest point ten years ago.

I still remember how her eyes sparkled as she looked at me that night. "Finn, I want to grow old with you."

Back then, I was building my business from nothing. She wasn't the world-famous doctor she was today, either.

We had struggled through some hard years together. That was why I'd always felt like I owed her.

"Apologize to Hayden, and I'll let your mother live."

I slowly lifted my head when I heard her words.

My lips trembled. "I-I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that about you."

Hayden finally laughed.

"People like you never learn until someone teaches you a lesson," he said, turning to Wendy. "Are you really going to let him off that easily? It makes sense, though. You gave me 30 million to invest back then. You probably stopped loving him a long time ago."

I widened my eyes. "30 million?"

Hayden sneered. "Did you really think Wendy was penniless when you built your little startup back then?"

I looked at Wendy in disbelief. My lips trembled.

"What… what does he mean by that?"

Wendy's expression turned cold. She looked at me with disgust. "So what if I supported him a little? He was young. He doesn't have a family to back him up."

I thought back to all the drinking at dinner parties, all the hospital visits I'd made, and all the surgeries I'd undergone.

It was all proof of my efforts to give her a better life.

I had always thought she was struggling and didn't want to burden me.

But the truth was that she had already fallen for someone else, even going so far as to spend a fortune on one of Hayden's projects.

I couldn't believe it. I had been pursuing Wendy for ten years, but she had already betrayed me nine years ago.

I forced myself to focus. Saving my mom was the only thing that mattered.

The doctor showed me a notification on his phone.

Her oxygen levels had temporarily increased, but her heart rate was still dropping.

I glared at Wendy. "I've already apologized. When are you going to save her?"

Wendy looked at me as if I were a joke.

"When did I ever say I was going to save her? Keeping her oxygen on is already me being generous."

My head went blank.

"You promised me! You said that if I apologized, you would treat her!" I screamed.

Ignoring the pain in my body, I crawled toward her and grabbed her pants. "Wendy, please. Don't do this. My mom has been nothing but kind to you. Just help her this once! Please!"

A sharp slap cut through the air.

"Who do you think you are, Finn? Did you really think you could order me around?" she growled. "Whether your mother lives or dies has nothing to do with me. She should've known this day would come the moment she called Hayden a homewrecker."

As if he had just received permission, Hayden stepped forward and kicked me hard.

My head hit shattered glass. Blood immediately started pooling on the floor.

Wendy stared at me for a couple of seconds, then withdrew her outstretched hand.

I was desperate to save my mom, but I couldn't move.

Hayden wasn't done. He approached me and looked down at me, then stomped on my chest. Blood spilled from my mouth. It even began to ooze from my eyes and nose.

"Look at him, Wendy. What should I do with him?"

Wendy hummed a response. "Do whatever you want. You can practice on him if you like."

She was letting Hayden treat me like a test subject.

I struggled to speak. "L-Let me go."

"You want to leave? Fine," Hayden snorted. "This watch looks decent. Give it to me as payment."

My gaze landed on the old watch on my wrist. I'd had it since my company was founded.

Wendy had used three months of her salary to get it for me.

"As long as the watch keeps ticking, I'll love you forever," she said.

It had been running perfectly for ten years, but somewhere along the way, she had changed her mind.

I held onto it for dear life, refusing to let Hayden touch it. "No! Don't touch it!"

Wendy walked over when she saw us struggling.

"It's just a broken watch. Why are you protecting it like that?" she said, forcefully prying my hand open. She ripped the watch off and threw it into a nearby trash bin.

"Hayden, if you like watches, I'll get you a Patek Philippe. We don't need this junk."

She had clearly forgotten that our names were engraved on the watch.

I gritted my teeth and glared at her. "Have you really forgotten about that watch?"

Wendy looked at me hesitantly, then walked over to the watch. She lowered her gaze. The worn back revealed the deep engraving: "WLFK."

Her expression faltered, but Hayden noticed it and pulled her into his arms. "Wendy, my hand hurts. Look."

Sure enough, Wendy's attention shifted to him. She took out some antiseptic and carefully dabbed it on his hand.

"You're so careless. What if you get a scar on your pretty hands?" she scolded.

Wendy's face darkened as she turned back to me.

"You're just a spoiled rich kid, Finn. You're only doing this to get my sympathy," she spat. "You could never understand Hayden.

"When he was in college, your mom rejected his graduate application. She looked down on him for being an orphan! She deserves everything that's happening to her now."

That was when I finally understood everything. She was doing all this to avenge Hayden.

But that had nothing to do with my mom.

Hayden was skipping classes, fighting, and causing trouble at school. His record was a mess.

My mom rejected him for a valid reason. Yet he even went so far as to report her for keeping a male college student as a lover.

If my company hadn't already started turning around and if I hadn't had the money to hire lawyers for the case, my mom's reputation would've been completely destroyed because of him.

I lost the will to argue when I noticed how Wendy only listened to Hayden.

He walked up to me and forced me to listen to him. "Don't you get why Wendy hasn't divorced you all these years? It's because she was helping me get revenge. Do you have any idea how satisfying it is to hear her scream my name in bed?

"Also, I caused your father's death. I told him you'd been kidnapped. If he hadn't panicked, he wouldn't have run a red light."

Back then, my dad believed a rumor and drove up the mountain in a blizzard. I had always thought it was just an accident.

My eyes were bloodshot as I stared at him.

I could no longer control the twisted look on my face. "Hayden! I want you six feet under just like my dad!"

I used all my strength to pull myself up.

I reached for the shattered glass and tried to stab him with it, but the moment I picked it up, the attending physician stopped me.

"Mr. Kirkland, your mother just flatlined!"