Chapter1

"Schedule the prep. Chloe's kidneys are failing. She can't wait."

A thin surgical consent form was slammed onto the table in front of me.

I clutched my swollen belly, shrinking back into the hospital bench.

"No." I glared up at my stepmother, Victoria, my nails biting into my palms. "I'm five months pregnant. The surgery will kill me. It'll kill my baby!"

"One worthless life for another," Victoria sneered, making no effort to hide her contempt. "Did you really think you were the Vance heiress? You're a walking spare parts catalog for Chloe. That’s the only reason you’re still breathing."

A chill wrecked my spine. I looked to my biological father, hovering in the shadows of the corridor.

Arthur avoided my eyes, wringing his hands nervously. "Serena, please," he mumbled. "Just do this. Save your sister. You can live with one kidney."

Acid burned my throat. This was my father. A pathetic coward living off his wife's handouts, watching them slice his eldest daughter open without lifting a finger.

"I won't sign!"

I grabbed the armrest to run, but two hulking bodyguards lunged forward, pinning my shoulders down with bone-crushing force.

"Stop! Get your hands off her!"

A furious roar echoed down the hall. Liam strode forward, violently shoving the guards aside.

"Liam..." I clutched his suit jacket like a drowning woman clinging to driftwood.

"I'm here," he said, dropping to one knee. His eyes were frantic with worry as his thumb wiped the cold sweat from my forehead. "Nobody is forcing you to do anything."

Victoria scowled. "Liam! Chloe is in the sterile room right now. We don't have time!"

"She's pregnant! This is murder!" Liam roared back, the veins in his neck bulging.

My painfully tense shoulders finally dropped. At least one person in this brutal house actually cared about me.

But when Liam turned back to face me, his gaze melted into heart-wrenching tenderness.

"Serena, baby, listen." He pulled a single sheet from the medical file. "The doctor just promised me in private. They don't need your kidney. They just need a bone marrow sample to screen her antibodies."

I stared at him, stunned. "Just bone marrow?"

"Exactly. A quick puncture. Five minutes," he said, squeezing my hand. "I swear on my life, I'd never put you or the baby in danger. Just sign this screening consent so we can shut Victoria up, and I'll take you straight home. Okay?"

Looking into his earnest, profound eyes, a tear rolled down my cheek and splashed onto his hand.

With trembling fingers, I clicked the pen and signed my name.

"I trust you, Liam."

He pressed a tender, lingering kiss to my forehead. "Good girl."

When I came to, the glaring operating lights burned my eyes. Something was wrong.

My wrists and ankles were strapped to the operating table with heavy leather restraints. An anesthesiologist shoved a hard plastic bite block into my mouth, pushing an icy liquid into my IV line.

Then, cold metal forceps lifted the surgical drape covering my abdomen. They weren't exposing my lower back for a marrow draw. They were laying bare my pregnant belly.

I tried to thrash, to scream, but my limbs felt like lead.

"Local block is effective. Prepare to isolate the right renal vein," the chief surgeon's detached voice echoed behind his mask.

Without a shred of hesitation, a scalpel sliced straight through the skin of my lower abdomen.

Mmph—!

Agony exploded in my brain. The anesthetic dose wasn't nearly strong enough. I felt every excruciating millimeter of flesh being sliced and peeled back. I tried to shriek, but the bite block smothered the sound into a suffocated, wet groan.

The heart monitor erupted into a shrill, frantic alarm.

"Stop!" the surgical assistant shouted, panic bleeding into his tone. "We can't! The enlarged uterus is entirely blocking the pathway. We physically can't extract the kidney like this!"

The chief surgeon looked up toward the darkened glass observation deck overlooking the theater. He pressed the intercom.

"Mr. Sterling, unless we extract the fetus, my scalpel can't reach the renal artery."

Shuddering from the agony of being gutted alive, I forced my bloodshot eyes open to stare at the window above.

Liam was standing there. He hadn't even bothered to take off his suit jacket. He casually glanced at his watch.

The next second, he leaned into the microphone and spat out a single, freezing sentence:

"Just do a C-section."

The doctor completely froze. "A C-section? The fetus is only five months. It won't survive."

"I said, slice open the uterus and throw that useless lump of flesh into the trash," Liam’s voice lowered into a menacing, oppressive growl. "I'm paying you to cut, not to talk. Chloe needs that kidney now."

My universe shattered.

There was no bone marrow draw. There was no devoted husband.

From the very beginning, this was a meticulously calculated scam. He had played the gentle savior just to coax the pig onto the butcher’s block, keeping me perfectly still while he ripped me open.

"Cut!" Liam's furious roar blasted through the intercom again. "If you delay Chloe's surgery by another minute, I will bury every single one of you!"

The surgeon hesitated no longer. He swapped his instrument for a much larger scalpel, aligned it perfectly with my swollen uterus, and plunged it down.

No!

I screamed in my mind, my eyes straining so hard that tears of blood blurred my vision.

The blade mercilessly severed the final physical connection between me and my baby. I distinctly felt the sickening rush of warmth as a torrent of amniotic fluid and blood gushed outward, drenching my lower body.

The doctor reached inside, using a pair of large medical forceps to wrench out a tiny, bloody silhouette.

Smack.

My unformed child was casually tossed into a stainless-steel hospital tray like garbage.

"Obstruction cleared. Isolate the renal vessels," the doctor said, his voice entirely flat.

I mechanically turned my head. My hollow gaze locked onto the blinding puddle of dark red resting in the tray. My heart had been scooped out of my chest while it was still beating.

Suddenly, another voice crackled through the intercom.

"Liam, did they get the kidney?" It was my stepmother Victoria, breathless with manic excitement. "Chloe is a little scared of the anesthesia. Do you want to come hold her hand?"

Beyond the glass wall, Liam's ruthless expression vanished in an instant.

"I'll be right there." My husband let out a soft, doting chuckle.

Through the thick glass, he cast one final, detached glance down at my mangled body.

"It's handled. We just have to wait an hour, and my sweet Chloe will be perfectly healthy for the rest of her life."

As the sharp clicking of his leather shoes faded away, pitch-black darkness finally consumed my vision.

But in the last second before my consciousness shattered, I firmly swallowed down that mouthful of metallic, blood-soaked hatred.

The pathetic Serena from the past—the one who used to kneel on the floor begging for scraps of familial love—had died on this sterile operating table right alongside her child.

The moment I crawled my way back from hell and opened my eyes again...

I was going to skin every single one of them alive.