Liora stood outside the car, flanked by a few scoundrels, cigarettes dangling from their lips, their eyes lingering on me with cruel amusement. In her hand, she gripped a bucket brimming with muddy, foul water.

“It’s too dry in here,” she said, glancing down at me with icy contempt. “How could you possibly understand Gareth’s helplessness, waiting for a parking spot in the rain?”

I tried to move my lips, but each word cost me everything. “Liora... please… save me…”

She snorted coldly, and the thugs around her immediately caught the signal.

Rough hands yanked me out of the car and slammed me onto the cold, muddy ground. The filthy water soaked my clothes instantly. I struggled to rise, but a heavy boot pressed down on my back, holding me down.

Liora approached, lifting the bucket.

The dirty water crashed over my head, the stench choking my nose and mouth.

I shivered violently, cold seeping into my bones, pain radiating from my kidneys, dragging my consciousness toward the edge.

“Aren’t you a mysophobe?” she taunted, her voice thick with satisfaction. Her high heel ground mercilessly against my trembling fingers. “You disinfect your house three times a day, remember? How does this feel now?”

She winked at one of the thugs, who grinned and pulled a baseball bat from the trunk. He tossed it to her.

Squatting beside me, Liora’s voice dropped to a soft whisper.

“Gareth said after getting caught in the rain, it felt like his lungs would explode.”

She rose slowly, raising the bat high.

“Let me feel that too.”

With a sharp whistle through the air, the bat slammed into my lower back—right over my kidneys.

“Ah!”

The pain exploded inside me, a scream tore from my throat, my body arched uncontrollably, and darkness rushed over my vision.

On the car’s screen, Gareth’s voice dripped with false concern.

“Liora, don’t hurt him. I still need him...”

His words only fueled Liora’s fury. Her eyes flamed with madness.

“He almost killed you! This little pain is nothing!”

She stopped the thugs and took the club herself, smashing it down onto my shin.

“Crack!”

The sound of bone breaking echoed in the cold air.

Pain threatened to swallow me whole, but she wasn’t done.

She discarded the club and barked, “Tear his shirt off!”

The cashmere sweater I’d treasured—her birthday gift—was shredded with a brutal hiss.

My bare skin met the biting late-autumn wind, and my whole body trembled.

Summoning every ounce of strength, I fixed my gaze on her.

Amidst the agony, my fingers trembled but reached for my collar. Sewn inside was a small, custom distress brooch.

Before I was hospitalized, my assistant Quinn Faraday had insisted I wear it—half-forced me—with a grim warning about trusting others too much.

I pressed the hidden switch with all my might.

A sudden calm washed over my ragged nerves—I nearly collapsed.

Quinn would come.

He had to come.

If I could just hold on until then...

“Silas, what do you think you’re doing?”

Liora’s voice cut through my fragile hope like a blade.

She leaned over and tore open my collar, exposing the brooch.

Her eyes flickered, momentarily frozen—then darkened with rage, twisted with cruel amusement.

She raised her foot slowly, the sharp tip of her scarlet high heel aiming squarely at the brooch.

“Want to ask for help?” Liora sneered.

“Crack!”

I heard the metal casing of my phone crush beneath her heel, the device warping and the delicate electronics inside scattering uselessly. My vision darkened, the world narrowing.

I couldn’t die—not yet.

I’d taken a first aid course in college; I knew my body better than anyone now.

Curled in the cold, muddy water, I twisted my body into a position that eased the pressure and bleeding around my kidneys.

Breathing slow and steady, I fought the relentless waves of pain crashing over me.

Liora’s expression twisted as she saw I was still fighting.

Gareth’s voice crackled again from the car’s screen.

“Liora, my asthma attack was agonizing. How could he possibly hold on this long?”

“He should have collapsed by now.”

“Yes. He shouldn’t have been so relaxed.” Liora nodded grimly.

She spun and pulled a white first aid kit from the car, throwing it roughly on the ground.

A woman stepped forward—a nurse’s uniform at odds with the rough crowd, her face blank and unreadable.

“He’s held on too long,” Liora said coldly. “Give him furosemide and saline.”

My pupils shrank with panic.

“Liora, you’re insane!” I screamed with everything I had left.

“My kidneys are failing! That will speed electrolyte imbalance—and cause cardiac arrest!”

The fake nurse knelt silently, opened the kit, and expertly drew a clear liquid into a syringe.

The needle gleamed cold as it pierced my arm.

“No—”

The drug was forced into my vein.

Suddenly, my heart stopped—then thudded violently, as if it might burst through my chest.

Air was ripped from my lungs.

My muscles spasmed uncontrollably.

My body arched sharply in the icy mud and water before collapsing heavily, bouncing on the ground.

Liora watched me writhe, lips turning blue, her tone eerily calm.

“Gareth convulsed the same way struggling for breath.”

The drug coursed through my veins.

My heart stuttered and stopped again.

Violent, pounding pain threatened to rip my chest apart.

Breath fled from me.

My muscles jerked spasmodically.

My body flailed in the freezing mud before crashing down.

My vision blurred—and I saw my mother.

She lay frail on a hospital bed, holding my hand, her breath shallow.

“Silas... live well... and see the world for me...”

No.

I couldn’t die—not now.

I hadn’t kept my promise.

I bit my tongue hard, pain sharpening my clarity.

With trembling fingers, I scraped the muddy ground until I touched something sharp—gravel.

I clawed toward the nurse who’d injected me.

“Ah—!”

She screamed, jerking back as the jagged stone cut deep into her arm, bone visible through the wound.

“You dare resist!”

Liora’s face contorted with rage as she kicked the stone from my hand.

Then her eyes locked on mine—and something strange flickered across her lips: a smile.

“Silas, didn’t you say your greatest wish was to donate your corneas after death? To help others?”

Those had been my sincerest words, full of love.

Gareth’s voice echoed on the screen, bright with excitement.

“Liora, I know someone whose mother is waiting for a cornea donor!”

“Okay.”

Liora’s smile was brilliant—yet cruel, like a blade glinting in the dark.

“You’re going to die anyway, so why not make a contribution now?”

She tilted her head toward the thugs.

“Hold him down.”

“Take his corneas off!”

“Liora! How dare you!”

I roared like a cornered beast, eyes bloodshot and wild.

Several thugs closed in, grim smiles on their faces. One brandished a fruit knife, its cold blade catching the dim light.

They pinned my limbs with brutal strength, the knife’s tip inching toward my eye.

Just as it was about to pierce—

“Bang!”

The parking garage’s rolling door exploded open with deafening force.

Black cars tore in, and sharp-suited men leapt out—fast, precise, lethal.

The thugs were overwhelmed instantly, screams piercing the chaos.

The leader rushed over, stripped off his coat, and wrapped it around me.

“Sir! Quinn is late—he deserves death for this!”