Chapter 2

The world snapped back into focus. I was still in the wheelchair, still in the mansion. Only a second had passed.

Ethan stared at his hand, then at me, a flicker of confusion in his eyes. He thought he'd imagined it.

He recovered quickly. "The press conference is tomorrow. You will be ready."

He wheeled me not to the panic room, but to a guest suite. It was luxurious, but it was just a prettier cage.

Later that night, he came in alone. He sat across from me, his face unreadable.

"There's been a development," he said. "Chloe collapsed after you... reappeared."

I waited.

"It's her heart," he said, his voice carefully neutral. "A sudden, severe cardiomyopathy. The doctors say she doesn't have long."

I felt a dark, ugly flicker of satisfaction.

"It's your fault," he continued, his voice hardening. "The stress of your plagiarism, the trial, the accident. It's all taken its toll on her."

He leaned forward, his eyes locking onto mine. "But there is a way for you to atone. A way for you to fix what you broke. A way for you to stay in my life, in Leo's life."

The air grew cold. I knew what was coming before he said it.

"You're a match," he said. "Your heart is strong. Perfect, even. You can save her."

He wasn't asking. He was telling me my sentence.

"You will donate your heart to Chloe," he said. "It's only fair. A heart for a heart. You broke hers, you will give her yours."

He framed it as justice. A noble sacrifice. I saw it for what it was: my final erasure. He would carve out the last piece of me and give it to her.

The next day, I wasn't taken to a press conference. I was taken to a private, boutique clinic in the hills outside Nashville. The sign read "Evergreen Wellness Center." It looked more like a spa than a hospital.

Chloe's family owned it.

A nurse with a cold smile prepped me. She didn't speak. She just moved with brutal efficiency, strapping my arms to the operating table.

Chloe appeared in the doorway, wearing a silk robe, looking perfectly healthy. No sign of a life-threatening condition. Just a triumphant, vicious glow in her eyes.

"No anesthesia," she said to the surgeon, a man with dead eyes who just nodded. "I want her to feel it. I want her to feel everything she cost me being carved out of her."

She leaned down, her face close to mine. "This is for stealing my life, you bitch," she whispered, though she and I both knew who the thief was.

The surgeon picked up a scalpel. The cold metal touched the skin over my heart. A thin line of fire.

This was it. The final cruelty.

I closed my eyes. The Pact was still there. A silent promise.

Leave.

My consciousness fled. It ripped away from the body on the table, from the pain, from the hate-filled room.

I left my body to die.