One second before I went into shock, Daniel Vance kicked the door in.

He stabilized me himself, then rushed me to the nearest hospital.

My congenital heart disease was something even my own family refused to treat. They said I was bad luck.

But Daniel was willing to help.

When I woke, he was at my bedside, the exhaustion carved plain beneath his eyes.

“Mr. Vance……” My voice was barely there, trying to thank him.

He just held my hand, steady and sincere:

“Sybilla, stay with me. Let me take care of you.”

From that day on, he was my savior and my lover. I gave him everything I had.

I thought I'd finally found a home. A person I could lean on.

It was all a lie.

Every promise, every moment together, was a story he'd carefully constructed to keep my heart alive and healthy.

Only if I stayed alive would my heart stay viable.

Ready to be given to Hope Price at the perfect moment.

Every machine in the operating room was screaming.

Daniel alone was terrifyingly calm.

After the massive transfusions, Hope's vitals stabilized.

The tension drained visibly from his shoulders, and he let out a long breath.

The panic in his eyes eased into a flicker of relief, something almost tender.

He changed his gloves and drew the blanket gently over Hope.

Only then did he turn around to deal with my surgical site. The cleanup.

“Stop the transfusion.” His voice was flat, clinical.

But the alarms didn't stop. They got sharper. Faster.

My blood pressure kept falling. My heart rate kept slowing.

Time stretched thin, every second pulling itself into a century.

A flicker of unease finally reached Daniel.

He frowned and crossed quickly to my table.

He was bending to check my monitors when a shout cut him off:

“Dr. Vance, we have a problem! Dr. Fox's bleeding won't stop!”

The blood welling from my chest drained the color from his face.

“Transfuse her. Now!”

The room dissolved into frantic motion.

But after all of it, my breathing was still fading.

“Dr. Vance, Dr. Fox she seems to have... lost the will to fight.”

The blood they couldn't stop cracked something open in that iron certainty of his.

More air leaving than entering. My oxygen plummeted. The ventilator was useless.

“Keep transfusing! Faster!”

Daniel's breathing turned ragged, his eyes shot through with red.

He leaned down, trembling, his lips close to my ear. “Sybilla, hold on.”

“Didn't you say, after this surgery, we'd try for a baby?”

“When you wake up, we'll travel. Anywhere you want.”

I used to beg him to take me somewhere, anywhere. He always said he was too busy with work.

Yet every few weeks, there he'd be in Hope Price's vacation photos.

Even when the two of them bickered openly in the comments.

“You can't even swim. Stop pretending you love the ocean.”

“Daniel! I smeared a little sand on your face and you're still holding a grudge? Petty!”

Travel……?

Something I'd once wanted so badly, and now, between the stuttering beeps of the heart monitor, the word sounded cheap.

Every nerve in my body was shrieking, the kind of pain that makes you want to die just to make it stop. I wanted to die right there on the table.

If I died, the pain would stop.

If I died, I'd be free of this enormous lie.

But I wasn't willing.

Daniel Vance, maybe I owe you something. But I owe Hope Price nothing.

Why should your love for her be paid for with my sacrifice?

“The bleeding stopped!”

A nurse's voice rang out, bright with relief.

Daniel froze for a beat, then smiled without meaning to.

Only then did he realize his face was streaked with tears. Those few minutes had felt like a lifetime.

“Sybilla, I knew it. I knew you couldn't bear to leave me.”

The nurses told me I'd been unconscious for three days and nights before I woke.

A large bouquet of white roses sat beside my bed, petals plump and open. I looked away without expression.

Daniel was standing in the doorway, his eyes lit with cautious joy.

He crossed the room in quick strides, reaching to help me sit up.

But I didn't lean into him the way I always had. I shifted away, quietly, as if it were nothing.

His hand stalled mid-air. “Sybilla, you just woke up. It's normal to feel unwell.”

His voice was gentler than I'd ever heard it. I laughed inside.

He'd already used me for everything he needed. Shouldn't he have thrown me away by now? What was this guilty act supposed to be?

I watched, cold-eyed, as he picked up a piece of pear from the fruit tray and held it to my lips.

The pear had been cut into small pieces. The pale, glistening flesh pulled my mind back to before the surgery.

Daniel had pried my cold fingers away from him, his tone flat and distant.

“Stop making a fuss. I have other patients. I don't have time for this.”

He'd brushed me off the way you'd brush off a stranger being unreasonable, and left without looking back.

He'd barely walked out then before the nurse making rounds told me the rest.

Daniel had canceled all his surgeries. He was in Hope Price's room.

“Oh, Dr. Fox, you like white roses too? When I was cleaning Dr. Price's room earlier, I saw a huge bouquet of white roses on her nightstand. Way more than yours, and blooming so beautifully. Really lovely.”

Daniel had never once sent me flowers. He always said fresh flowers were tacky.

But for every occasion that mattered to Hope, he made sure to order her a bouquet.

I'd tested him about it once. I still remembered how matter-of-factly he'd answered：

“She's always been childish like that. How can you compare yourself to her? You're really going to fight over this?”

In that moment, staring at my own sparse two bundles of white roses, a fierce stabbing pain suddenly seized my heart, as if it already knew what was coming.

I fumbled for my phone, gasping, fingers shaking so badly I could barely hold it, and tried to call Daniel.

It took several failed attempts before I managed to dial.

The busy tone droned on for what felt like a century before a familiar male voice finally cut through.

“What is it?” His voice was the same as always. Cold. Not a trace of warmth.

“I……” I barely started before the voice on the other end cut me off.

“Daniel, who is that? You haven't finished peeling my pear yet.”

Hope's voice.

The words died in my throat. I could see it, the scene on the other side of that call.

Daniel sitting at the edge of Hope's bed, patiently peeling an apple for her, voice soft, eyes full of tenderness.

And me. Just the person interrupting them. The one who didn't belong.

The stabbing in my chest kept worsening, like countless fine needles being driven in all at once.

I was grimacing, shaking all over.

I forced every last bit of strength into my voice, pleading into the phone：

“Daniel, I don't feel well……my heart hurts so much……”

“I told you, I have other patients. Can you try being a little less selfish?”

His tone was sharp with impatience now, edged with open reproach.

I bit down hard, voice breaking in and out, tears blurring everything until my vision went black.

Only when my breathing thinned to almost nothing did the man on the other end finally pay attention.

The impatience in his voice vanished, replaced by a flicker of panic he couldn't quite hide.

“I'm coming over now.”

Daniel stood up and was about to leave when Hope let out a sharp cry.

She clutched her chest and writhed on the bed, her face drained of color.

The call ended somewhere between her moaning and Daniel's frantic calls for help.

The dial tone filled my ears again, and I blacked out to the sound of my own pulse roaring.

The entire dish of pears lay shattered on the floor where I'd hurled it. I lowered my eyes.

Then, voice ice-cold, I asked the stunned man in front of me,

“Hope likes pears too, doesn't she?”

Daniel laughed in disbelief, his patience finally spent.

He swept the remains of the dish aside with a crash.

“So that's what this is about? Sybilla, can't you be a little less petty?”

“You know Hope's situation. She needs a new heart, and yours happened to be a match.”

“Do you really have to make a scene about this? Do you really have to be this small?”

His voice was low and cold, nothing like my calm.

I picked up his hand where it hung at his side and slowly pressed it to my chest.

Through the equipment, there was no heartbeat to feel.

I just looked at him, steady, and said, “Daniel, I don't even have a heart anymore. How exactly am I supposed to be petty?”

He froze. The color bled from his face, and something in my lifeless eyes made him afraid.

“Sybilla, I……”

His words were cut off by a ringtone.

Hope's soft, fragile voice drifted from the other end.

“Daniel, did you even do my surgery properly? My incision really hurts!”

His tone melted instantly, turning gentle—

“I'll be right there. Don't move around.”

The call ended. A razor-sharp silence wedged itself between us.

“Sybilla, Hope is innocent in all this.”

“If you need to blame someone……blame me.”

I pressed my hand to my chest for a long time, feeling the foreign thing beating inside me.

Since the artificial heart, the chest pains hadn't eased. They'd gotten worse. More frequent.

Daniel didn't believe me.

“I performed your surgery myself. There can't be a problem.”

“If you want me to take you on a trip to clear your head, just say so.”

The words had barely left his mouth when Hope appeared in the doorway.

“Hope, what are you doing here?” The man who'd been cold a second ago was suddenly all concern.

“I told you, you haven't recovered enough to be out of bed. Why don't you ever listen?”

He went to her, exasperated, reaching out to steady her.

Hope shook his hand off and rolled her eyes with a cute pout—

“Are you the doctor or am I? Don't underestimate me.”

She walked straight to my bedside and sat down, holding the fruit dish out to me, her voice sweet.

“Dr. Fox, thank you so much. Without your heart, I really don't know what I would have done.”

My fists clenched under the blanket, fingers digging in so hard they nearly tore through the fabric.

My lips curved into a cold smile. I turned to Daniel, expressionless—

“Sure. Then let's go on that trip together, the two of us.”

In my peripheral vision, the fake smile on Hope's face locked in place. Before Daniel could react—

“Ah!” Hope shrieked and threw herself to the floor.

A toothpick from the fruit dish had pierced her finger, and blood welled up.

“Sybilla Fox! What did you do?!” Daniel rushed to her, checking the wound.

He glared at me, eyes frigid. “I've already told you. Don't take your anger out on Hope.”

“Or I won't be so polite next time.”

My chest heaved, and blood surged up into my throat.

I'd already given up on him. So why did it still hurt this much.

I fought to steady my breathing and was about to speak when Hope cut me off.