Chapter 2

The next day.

After taking that lethal injection, the serum completely severed the agonizing pain of my dying heart. It even forcefully catalyzed a bizarre, rosy flush on my otherwise ashen cheeks.

But only I knew that this "health" was just a terminal lucidity bought by overdrafting my heart's last reserves. My remaining time in this world was less than seventy hours.

I returned home. The sunlight in the living room was beautiful, illuminating a warm, piercingly cheerful domestic scene.

Sera leaned back on the main sofa, with my father Richard and mother Evelyn flanking her, their eyes brimming with the doting affection of having lost and found her again.

And Adrian, the husband I had loved for seven years, was holding my seven-year-old daughter Mia on his lap, pointing at a picture book and making Sera giggle endlessly.

They were a family.

And I was just an alien intruder who had barged in and ruined their domestic bliss.

Hearing the noise at the entryway, the laughter came to an abrupt halt.

My mother turned her head. Her gaze swept over my surprisingly healthy complexion, and a thick layer of disgust instantly welled up in her eyes. "Weren't you shamelessly rolling around the hospital yesterday, saying you were dying of heart failure? Now you're not even bothering to fake it anymore? Look at how good your complexion is!"

"If we hadn't been decisive and given the heart to Sera, how much longer would we have been fooled by your little victim act?"

If this were the past, I would have frantically pulled out my medical records and tearfully tried to prove to them that I was truly dying.

But now, I just felt so tired. I didn't even have the energy to open my mouth and defend myself.

There is no sorrow greater than a heart that has died.

When you know you are destined to die, all those grievances vanish into thin air.

I dragged my weak, hollow steps forward slowly.

I stopped in front of the sofa and let my gaze fall on Mia, who was hiding in Adrian's arms.

The little girl was wearing a beautiful princess dress, raised by me to look like a little angel.

"Mia..." I crouched down, reaching my trembling hands out to the daughter I had raised myself. "Come here, let Mommy hug you... okay?"

I was dying. I just wanted to feel one last trace of warmth that belonged to me.

But Mia gave a violent shudder. Not only did she not throw herself into my arms, but she leaned back hard, as if physically dodging some filthy virus.

Her small eyes were filled with undisguised disgust and defensiveness.

"Go away!" Mia pouted, her eyes red, frightened by my numb, wooden expression until she was on the verge of tears. "Grandma says you're a bad woman who bullies Auntie Sera every day. I don't want you to touch me! Go away!"

My hands froze in mid-air. My fingertips were as cold as ice.

"Vivienne, that's enough!" Adrian abruptly shielded Mia in his arms, looking up to reprimand me sharply. Those eyes, usually so calm, were now filled with intense irritation. "Must you bully the child the second you get back? How much longer are you going to act completely unhinged over your ridiculous jealousy?"

I slowly turned my stiff neck and looked at him quietly—the man who had kissed the back of my hand at our wedding and promised to forever be my safe harbor.

It felt like a massive hole had been blown through my chest, and cold wind was howling through it.

I looked at him and managed a faint, ugly smile, my voice as thin as a single thread. "Adrian... do you hate me as much as Mia does?"

Adrian frowned tightly, staring at me coldly as if looking at a repulsive piece of trash. "Yes. Sera is more innocent than you, and she fits in better with this family. As for you, your bitterness, your control issues, and your bottomless deceit over the past three years have become utterly nauseating."

All my extravagant hopes officially became a total joke in this very moment.

Sera, meanwhile, pretended to play the peacemaker from the side. "Alright, alright, we're all family, why are you saying such things..."

But I could clearly see the unconcealed smugness in her eyes when she looked at me.

"Okay... I understand." I lowered my eyelashes, hiding the thick, stagnant dead water in my eyes.

Adrian pulled a document from the coffee table and threw it in front of me like a handout. "Since you're done playing fake sick, sign this Core Asset and Voting Rights Transfer Agreement. Transfer all your foundation shares and administrative roles to Sera."

"Your emotions are too unstable lately. Go stay at the countryside villa, and don't come out here embarrassing us at a critical time like this."

The foundation's shares and roles—that was eight years of my blood and sweat, bought with my own health through endless, sleepless nights.

When the family was on the brink of bankruptcy back then, if it hadn't been for my desperate efforts to turn the tide, how could they afford their villas and luxury cars today? Let alone buy that heart for Sera.

But I was exhausted to my very core. I had absolutely no desire to fight back.

I wouldn't survive past three days anyway. Since they wanted the things I couldn't take with me, they could have them.

Though, given Sera's capabilities and character, who knows how many assets she'll actually manage to keep for them in the end.

"Okay, I'll give it to you all..." I sighed softly, slowly reaching out to pick up the pen.

"Sir! Ma'am! Something's happened!" The old family butler rushed into the living room in a sheer panic, entirely forgetting his knocking etiquette. He was tightly gripping a tablet with the screen brightly lit. "An anonymous whistleblower leaked the raw data of the Foundation intercepting the matched heart to the media! The whole internet is accusing the Hart family of using their privilege to commit murder! The reporters have already blocked off the building!"

The dead silence in the living room lasted for exactly one second.

The next second, my father, Richard, whipped his head around. His eyes were bloodshot with extreme, rabid fury.

He closed the distance between us in three long strides, raising his arm high—

SMACK!

A vicious, brutal slap struck my cheek with immense force.

My body, which was now nothing more than an empty shell, couldn't possibly withstand such violent force. I flew backwards like a broken kite whose string had snapped, crashing heavily onto the freezing marble floor several meters away. A sharp, piercing ringing immediately exploded in my ears.

My father froze for a split second with his hand still raised in the air, a fleeting trace of shock flashing through his eyes—he probably hadn't expected me to be as light as a piece of paper, easily sent flying so far by a single slap.

But the moment he caught out of the corner of his eye the news headline on the butler's tablet—Hart Family Uses Privilege to Murder—that tiny sliver of shock was entirely swallowed by towering rage.

"You ungrateful animal!" My father pointed his finger at my nose and spat curses at me. "Because you didn't get Sera's heart, you colluded with internet trolls to leak internal data for revenge! Will you only be satisfied when you've destroyed our entire family?!"

I lay on the floor, my concussed brain fading to complete white.

Immediately after, an indescribable burning sensation surged inside my nasal cavity.

Drip, drop! Scarlet blood fell like broken beads, splashing frantically onto the pure white carpet and running down my chin onto my neck.

"I didn't..." I said, my face deathly pale. Coughing violently as blood rushed into my windpipe, I struggled to squeeze a faint breath out of my throat, "It wasn't me..."

"Shut up!" My mother, Evelyn, cut me off without mercy. She covered her nose with a handkerchief in disgust and sneered. "Did you put a squib of fake blood in your mouth beforehand? You knew you were going to get hit for pulling this dirty trick, so you deliberately set this up to play the victim, didn't you? Vivienne, your acts are getting cheaper and more pathetic by the day!"

Even Adrian just stood there frowning at me, covered in blood, as if he were watching a nauseating, farcical comedy.

"Since you caused this scandal, you must be the one to fix it," Adrian glared down at me from above, his voice terrifyingly cold.

"At tomorrow's crisis press conference, you will personally go on stage and confess to the media. You will admit that you privately abused your authority to hoard the heart resources."

"The family will officially announce that we are cutting all ties with you. Furthermore, as an apology, you must sign this asset transfer agreement in front of all the media reporters, returning everything cleanly to Sera."

The air was so oppressive it made me want to throw up.

Enduring the thick, metallic taste of blood filling my mouth, I didn't waste another half-sentence defending myself. Instead, I slowly turned my head and looked at Mia, who was hiding behind the sofa, absolutely sobbing out loud, terrified by the adults' screaming and the blood on the floor.

She was crying so pitifully, yet she refused to spare me even a single glance. She just kept crying while burying her face tighter into Sera's embrace.

I looked at that little girl—the one I had risked my life to birth and loved deeply for seven years—and the very last shred of my sorrow and desire to explain myself dissolved completely into an absolute, irrevocable deadness of the heart.

Whatever.

I was dying anyway, so let them do whatever they wanted.

There was no longer a single thing in this human world worth lingering for.

I raised my bloodstained hand, randomly wiped my face, and spoke in a voice as soft as a breeze.

"Okay. Tomorrow, I will go on stage, confess, and sign publicly."