The next morning, I stayed within a few feet of Lucian, apart from when he went into the bathroom.

I wanted to see what he thought of Pearl’s crude invitation.

If he reacted like a dog spotting a pile of crap, I was leaving.

I refused to waste my afterlife watching that.

If he wanted Pearl, sooner or later he would join the rest of the Whitmore scum.

Even if he uncovered the truth about my death, he might not care.

He might even help them hide it.

But he didn’t seem to have seen her message.

Instead, he received a call.

“Sir. We’ve got Voss. I sent you the location.”

The man’s voice was very low. He might have been thirty, or forty. I couldn’t tell.

Voss.

I knew a Dr. Martin Voss.

A renowned heart surgeon based overseas.

Two years ago, desperate to solve Julian’s heart condition, I had spent a fortune bringing him to Fairhaven.

I had offered to build him a private research laboratory, dedicated to finding Julian a compatible donor heart.

After examining Julian, he refused.

He told me the heart condition wasn’t the only problem. Julian also had a rare blood disorder.

He didn’t just need a suitable heart. He needed a donor with the matching rare blood type.

The odds of finding someone who met both conditions were less than one in ten million.

Before leaving the country, Voss had told me Julian would die unless he received a transplant before thirty.

Now I knew who that unlucky one in ten million was.

Me.

That was why the Whitmores had chosen me from all those orphans.

Was the man on the phone talking about the same doctor?

Hadn’t he gone back overseas years ago?

Bewildered, I followed Lucian into the car.

Halfway there, Miles looked down at his phone and reacted as though he had seen something horrifying.

“Fuck!”

Lucian glanced at him.

Miles turned, covering half his face with one hand. He looked personally defiled.

“Sir. Pearl Whitmore seems to think my number is yours.”

He took a deep breath.

“She sent explicit photographs. She’s trying to seduce you.”

Lucian held out his hand without a word.

For a second, I thought he wanted to look.

Miles passed him the phone.

Lucian threw it straight out the window.

One smooth, uninterrupted movement.

Then he took a tissue and meticulously wiped the fingers that had touched it.

His disgust was unmistakable.

“Buy a new one. And go to a hospital when you have time. Have your eyes washed out. Expense it.”

Miles hesitated.

“Thank you, sir.”

I laughed.

Lucian’s character might be defective, but his taste was intact.

Soon we reached an abandoned dockside warehouse.

Lucian got out.

“Wait here.”

“Yes, sir.”

Miles and the bodyguards stayed back, leaving a clear stretch of ground between themselves and the building.

A man stood at the door.

He must have been the caller.

He wore a black outdoor jacket. His hair was cropped short. A scar split one eyebrow, and a striking cross-shaped knife scar marked his left cheek.

His features were rugged. His presence was cold and vicious, like a blade brought out of some frozen killing ground.

This was no ordinary subordinate.

After years of fighting Lucian, I had thought I understood his people and his power.

I had investigated every trusted man around him.

Yet I had never seen this one.

“Sir.”

As Lucian approached, the menace vanished.

The man lowered his head and opened the door.

Before Lucian, his submission was complete.

I followed them inside.

In the middle of the empty warehouse, a man in a white coat hung upside down, his ankles chained to the ceiling.

Black-framed glasses sat crookedly on his face.

A lamb waiting for slaughter.

I saw his face and froze.

Martin Voss.

The doctor who had refused my offer and supposedly left Fairhaven two years ago.

Why had Lucian taken him?

A pair of expensive matte leather shoes entered Voss’s field of vision.

He strained to lift his head, trying unsuccessfully to see the man above them.

“Who are you? What have I done to you?”

Blood had congested his face. He shouted with obvious effort.

“I don’t care who you are. I have powerful people behind me. Let me go now, or you won’t leave Fairhaven alive!”

“Really?”

Lucian’s lazy mockery chilled the room.

“I had no idea Julian Whitmore had that much influence here.”

Voss recognized his voice.

He went pale and fell silent.

So Lucian was right.

Julian was his powerful protector.

For a moment, I couldn’t understand.

Then, finally looking at everything from the outside, I saw it.

I moved toward Voss and raised a trembling hand over the lower half of his face.

His glasses had fallen to the floor.

Nothing concealed his eyes.

I looked into them.

My whole spirit convulsed.

I was back on that freezing operating table.

Watching them open me up.

Take my blood.

Cut out my heart.

Those eyes had hovered above me, cold and resigned, with a trace of false sympathy.

Martin Voss was the surgeon who had taken my heart and put it inside Julian.

He had never left Fairhaven.

Refusing me and returning overseas had been a performance.

He and Julian had planned it together.

They had been secretly preparing the operation all along.

And I was their one-in-ten-million donor.

Their sacrifice.

Rage, regret, and bitterness filled me.

At the time, Voss had the highest transplant success rate of any surgeon I could find.

To persuade him to stay and save Julian, I had knelt before him.

I had thrown away my dignity.

And Julian had stood beside me, pretending to be distressed.

Life and death were fate, he’d said. He didn’t mind. He would rather die than see me humiliate myself for him.

That bastard had made a fool of me my entire life.

Behind me, Lucian spoke.

“The night Stella disappeared, you performed a heart transplant.”

His cold voice carried through the empty building.

“Who received it?”