I stared at Voss as intently as Lucian did.

This was the man who had cut out my heart and drained my blood for Julian. Nobody knew more about how I had died.

If Lucian could force the truth out of him, there would finally be justice.

“The night Stella disappeared, I… I did perform Julian Whitmore’s transplant,” Voss stammered. “He has a rare blood type. Finding a suitable donor was incredibly difficult. Once we had one, the operation couldn’t wait.”

Lucian stood beneath the warehouse’s only narrow window. His tall frame blocked the light, leaving his face in shadow.

“Who gave him the heart?”

“Tell him!” I shouted. “Voss, tell him it was me! Julian took my heart!”

But the doctor sounded utterly innocent.

“I really don’t know, sir. All I know is that it was a woman.”

He licked his lips, appearing to recall the operation.

“She was already dead when they brought her in. A car accident, they said. It was horrible. Her head had been crushed. There was no way to recognize her. The body was still warm.”

My hope shattered.

I leaned against the wall.

The hardest lies to expose were the ones mixed with truth.

Voss understood that perfectly.

He admitted operating on Julian. He neither confirmed nor denied that I had been the donor. Instead, he invented an unrecognizable woman killed in a crash.

Perhaps it was me.

Perhaps it wasn’t.

“I swear!” Voss cried. “If a single word is a lie, may lightning strike me dead! May my whole family die horribly!”

“If swearing worked,” Lucian said, “the streets would be full of corpses.”

Sweat poured down Voss’s face.

“Sir…”

“Kill him.”

Knox moved without hesitation. He seized Voss’s hair and drew his knife across toward his throat.

“Mercy! Please!”

The doctor wet himself.

The smell filled the air.

“Enough.”

Knox stopped instantly, the blade less than half an inch from Voss’s neck.

Lucian’s final test.

And Voss had kept lying until the end.

I gave a defeated little smile.

Julian certainly knew how to train his people. Even Lucian couldn’t break this one.

Or perhaps there was another explanation.

I looked coldly at the doctor, who seemed about to faint.

Perhaps betraying Julian carried a price worse than death.

Lucian turned and left.

Outside, Miles approached with Voss’s phone.

“We checked it. Nothing useful. His overseas account receives regular payments from Stella, though. I assume she was paying him to monitor Julian’s condition and prepare for the transplant.”

I laughed bitterly.

Julian had been so careful.

Even the money trail led to me.

“There was also an encrypted file. I just opened it.” Miles looked uncomfortable. “A video. Of Stella.”

He played it for Lucian.

I glanced at the screen and immediately turned away.

That sick bastard Voss had saved the security footage of me kneeling outside his home two years ago, begging him to stay and save Julian.

The recording was humiliating enough.

Having my worst enemy watch it made me feel stripped naked.

Fortunately, Lucian stopped it after little more than ten seconds.

“Is this the original?”

“Yes.”

He deleted it without expression.

Then he threw the phone to the ground.

It broke apart.

I stared at his furious face.

Why was he so angry about seeing me humiliated?

“You show your claws every time you see me,” he said, almost laughing with rage, “then let a piece of trash like that walk all over you. Stella, did a dog eat your brain?”

Now I understood.

He considered me his rival.

Discovering that I had knelt to someone as insignificant as Voss made him feel I had lowered his own standing.

Still, he was right about the dog.

Its name was Julian.

“Break both his legs,” Lucian ordered.

His anger hadn’t faded when we got back into the car.

Through the window, I watched two men carry a wooden crate out of the warehouse.

Voss was probably inside.

The man who had helped murder me deserved it.

Lucian might only be defending his pride, but he had still settled a piece of my debt.

“Where next, sir?” Miles asked cautiously.

Lucian didn’t answer immediately.

He was reading something on his phone.

I leaned over.

The bold headline stabbed at me.

“FORMER HEIRESS CEO STELLA WHITMORE LEFT HELPLESS; DEVOTED HUSBAND JULIAN ATTENDS FIRST SHAREHOLDERS’ MEETING AS CHIEF EXECUTIVE.”

The quarterly shareholders’ meeting.

It was today.

I stared at the words “heiress CEO.”

I had earned that position.

I had poured everything into building the company. Risked my life for it.

And Julian was simply walking in to collect the rewards.

I had never cared much for status or wealth.

But watching my murderer take my life’s work and claim it as his own filled me with fury.

Lucian put his phone away and glanced toward the distant sky.

His eyes were dark, like a beast waiting where the light couldn’t reach.

“Whitmore Group headquarters.”

His voice was unhurried.

“Let’s take that shameless bastard a present.”