Chapter 3
Inside the VIP lounge of the press conference venue, the air was so suffocatingly thick it was hard to breathe.
There were ten minutes left until the Hart Foundation's crisis press conference began. I sat alone in a single armchair in the corner. Though yesterday’s nosebleed had been washed away, the weakness from the blood loss left my hands and feet freezing, as if they had been soaked in ice water.
On the other side of the lounge gathered the extended family members of the Hart clan and several high-society socialites. They made no effort to hide from me, the person in question; every word of their caustic gossip smashed directly into my ears.
"What an ungrateful wretch. She hogged Sera's identity for thirty years, throwing her weight around in our circles. It'd be one thing if she just had a bad temper, but to be this vicious?"
"Exactly. I heard she used to fake illnesses at home all the time to compete for attention. Her reputation has been rotten for ages. And now, to steal a heart, she threw away whatever bottom line she had left. It’s practically premeditated murder!"
"If you ask me, Adrian should have divorced this fake heiress ages ago. Look at her, sitting there with a rosy glow on her face! Who knows how long she schemed to intercept that heart. What cold-blooded scum."
I lowered my eyes and listened quietly. That lethal injection was forcibly maintaining a flush of color on my skin, but it couldn't stop the decay inside me. I was dying anyway. The reputation of the living had absolutely no meaning to me anymore.
"It's time." Adrian pushed the door open and swept a cold glance over me. "Let's go. Go out there, sign the papers, and confess to what you've done."
The heavy doors to the press conference hall were violently pushed open.
A torrential downpour of camera flashes smashed into me, blinding my eyes until they ached and watered. I followed numbly behind Adrian and my parents, walking toward a podium that felt like an executioner's block. Below the stage, not only was the hall packed tightly with various media outlets, but there were even radical protesters holding up signs.
"To demonstrate the Hart family's zero-tolerance policy toward such abhorrent behavior, Vivienne will now publicly sign an asset transfer agreement, handing over all management rights of the Foundation. Furthermore, I have officially filed for divorce from her." Adrian's voice echoed through the microphone, freezing and absolute.
A heavy stack of agreements was pushed in front of me, a pen resting beside it.
The flashing of cameras below reached a fever pitch; everyone was staring at me, the "sinner." Without a second of hesitation, I picked up the pen, flipped to the very last page in front of the lenses, and numbly signed my name.
After signing, I pushed the agreement away, leaned close to the microphone, and spoke in a voice so weak it had no fluctuation at all: "I admit... it was me who privately abused my authority to intercept the heart resources that originally belonged to someone else. I take full responsibility for this."
I thought that by pleading guilty and surrendering everything, this execution would finally end.
But right at that moment, Sera, who had been sitting weakly in her wheelchair to the side with a pale face, suddenly covered her face and burst into agonizing sobs into the microphone in front of her.
"Please, everyone, stop insulting my sister! I beg you..." Sera cried breathlessly, her voice filled with heartbreaking grievance and pleading. "She didn't mean to bribe the doctors into tampering with my medical reports and kicking me off the transplant list... She just wanted to live so badly! Even though she knew I would die if I didn't get the next heart, even though she was in my hospital room just last night cursing me and asking why I wouldn't just die... she is still my sister!"
The entire hall fell dead silent in an instant.
Sera seemingly realized she had "let things slip" and frantically reached out to cover the microphone. Large tear drops fell as she looked at Adrian in panic. "I'm sorry, Adrian, I shouldn't have said anything about my sister doctoring the reports... Please don't send her to jail! I survived anyway, I forgive her, I really forgive her!"
What a natural, yet utterly fatal performance.
She didn't use a single curse word against me, yet with the most pitiful posture imaginable, she ruthlessly hammered the malicious labels of "tampering with records," "attempted murder," and "cursing her own sister to death" deep into my bones. She painted a flawless portrait of a scumbag driven so mad by jealousy that she wanted to murder her own flesh and blood.
"Shameless murderer!"
An enraged roar tore out from somewhere in the crowd, instantly detonating the fury of the entire hall.
The reporters and protestors who were previously just taking photos lost complete control. The security guards made a symbolic attempt to block them before immediately stepping aside.
Splat!
A rotting, foul-smelling tomato smashed violently against my face. The sickeningly red juice slid down my forehead and into my eyes, burning intensely.
"Go to hell, you toxic bitch! Give back the heart you tried to steal!"
"Get out of London! Why don't you just die?!"
Immediately after, a torrential storm of rotten eggs, decaying cabbage leaves, and vicious curses rained down on me. My thoroughly weakened body had absolutely nowhere to hide.
I instinctively turned my head, only to see Adrian immediately using his suit jacket to shield Sera tightly in his arms. My parents, too, nervously blocked them from the front, as if I were some highly contagious, lethal plague.
No one cared about me.
I stood there all alone behind the long table, letting all that filthy garbage smash into my head, my face, my body. The foul stench of egg yolk and rotting leaves ruined what little dignity I had left.
Right at that moment, a stone half the size of a fist suddenly flew out from the crowd.
Thud. A muffled impact.
The stone struck my temple with absolute, brutal precision.
A violent, blunt force exploded in that instant. Warm blood gushed out, mixing with the reeking egg yolk, pouring heavily into my eyes and blurring my vision entirely.
I swayed, feeling the world spin violently around me. The effects of the lethal injection were finally, totally exhausted by this broken shell of a body. The suffocation of hypoxia and the dizziness of blood loss swept over me at the exact same time.
Through the blood-soaked curtain of my eyelashes, the last thing I saw was Adrian holding Sera tightly, his back turned to me as he screamed at the security guards to protect his sister.
The world plunged into absolute, dead silence and darkness.
Like a pile of foul-smelling, decaying mud amidst the spitting curses of countless people, I collapsed straight down to the floor.
