My stepson, Lucas Lincoln, is trapped in a fire. After calling the fire brigade, I quickly ring my husband, Jasper Lincoln. Jasper is the leader of a search-and-rescue team, after all.

But to my dismay, Jasper is currently keeping his ex-wife, Yvonne Schmidt, company. Yvonne has won the "Forensic Doctor of the Year" award, and so they are out celebrating it.

My phone calls are rejected again and again. Jasper never once calls me back, even after Lucas' cries for help disappear entirely.

By the time the fire brigade arrives to quell the flames, Lucas has been burned to a crisp.

I tell Jasper what happened to our son, but he only gleefully says, "He was nothing but a troublemaker who'd contribute nothing to society. If he's dead, then so be it. This way, he won't grow up to become a menace.

"Yvonne happens to be giving a public talk tomorrow and is still in need of a specimen demonstrating burn injuries. She can use Noah's corpse for her demonstration since it's still fresh."

I sneer. So Jasper thinks that my own son, Noah Green, is the one who died in the fire.

I immediately send Lucas' blackened corpse to Yvonne's operating room.

Flames engulfed the abandoned warehouse that my stepson, Lucas Lincoln, was trapped in. I quickly phoned the fire brigade before repeatedly calling Jasper's number.

Jasper Lincoln was Lucas' father as well as the leader of a search-and-rescue team. But right now, he was Lucas' final hope.

Jasper rejected all my calls before finally answering one. I immediately asked him for help. "Your son is stuck in a fire, Jasper! You need to come and save him!"

A cacophony of noise filled the background over the phone. I could hear cheers of congratulations and laughter being exchanged by people.

Jasper's voice held a clear hint of irritation as he said, "Noah deserves what he's getting for always picking on his brother. If he's gone, I no longer have to deal with him wasting my money and framing Lucas for theft."

Jasper then hung up the call.

Everything seemed to turn silent as I gazed at the roaring flames.

So Jasper thought it was Noah Green, the son I had with my ex-husband, who'd been caught in the fire.

The fire brigade was slow to arrive on the scene. Thus, it took them a long time to quell the flames completely.

By the time they pulled Lucas' charred body from the rubble, it was already too late.

"Our son is dead," I texted Jasper.

Jasper called me the moment he received the message. There was a strange enthusiasm in his voice instead of the sorrow I'd expected.

"Summer, Yvonne just so happens to be missing a body for her dissection demonstration tomorrow during her public lecture.

"Noah just died in the fire, didn't he? We can use his body for the demonstration. Send the body over to me right away. Yvonne's lecture will surely become a success with its help!"

I was trembling with anger as my hand tightened around the phone.

So my son's body was nothing more than a tool Jasper could use to woo his ex-wife?

It was a good thing it was Lucas who died, not Noah.

I sneered and said, "Alright. I'll send it over right away."

I immediately arranged for Lucas' body to be delivered to the lecture building at the Department of Forensic Studies, where Yvonne was. Lucas had been Jasper and Yvonne's son, born during their marriage to each other.

The large lecture hall was filled with attendees by the time I arrived. There were students, media reporters, and even some well-respected figures in the industry.

A small body covered in a white sheet lay on the operating table onstage. Jasper stood to the side, gently straightening out Yvonne's doctor's coat for her.

He gently ran a finger along Yvonne's collar, his eyes filled with a tenderness I'd never seen before.

"Your public lecture is going to be straight out of the textbook now that you have this specimen," Jasper said.

Yvonne raised her head coquettishly and gently tapped his chest. "You're always so nice to me, always able to satisfy everything I need. By the way, have you seen Luke? Didn't you say you were going to get him, and that the three of us would celebrate my achievement together?"

"I'd got something urgent to deal with, so I had someone else pick him up instead. It's no big deal."

As Jasper spoke, his eyes scanned the audience before finally landing on me. They immediately filled with disdain.

He walked off the stage and came over to where I was sitting. "How can you still be in the mood to dress up after losing your own son? You truly are a cold-hearted woman."

The hatred in Jasper's voice was apparent as he eyed me. "That son of yours has always been a thief and a liar. He was probably caught red-handed while stealing something, which led to him being burnt alive. That's just how karma works, you hear?"

I looked at Jasper, who was a highly-respected search-and-rescue team leader.

He'd chosen not to save someone dying within a raging fire, all because he thought that the victim was my son, Noah.

Yvonne gracefully walked over at this moment. She gently peeled back a corner of the white sheet above the body with her gloved hands and examined it closely. There was an expert-like scrutiny on her face as she did so.

"The body is severely charred. It's formed some unique structures too," Yvonne said. She then looked up at me and smiled lightly.

"The only question is whether the inside of this cadaver is just as rotten as its previous character."

I closed my eyes as memories of the past resurfaced in my mind.

Lucas had been a bully since he was young. He'd often push Noah on purpose and make him fall for no reason. Once, Lucas made Noah fall so hard that the latter's arm sprained. Lucas then went to Jasper while crying his eyes out, claiming that Noah had tripped on his own.

Whenever any cash went missing in the house, Lucas would sneak the empty wallet into Noah's bag. Lucas would then innocently ask Jasper to search Noah's bag.

Jasper never believed a word Noah said. His reprimands toward Noah only grew harsher each time.

To Jasper, any attempts by Noah to explain himself were nothing more than deceptive lies.

Once, I even caught Lucas spitting in the soup I was making. I'd only had a look of upset on my face. But he'd started flailing on the floor, claiming that his stepmother was going to hurt him.

Jasper had come to the kitchen and slapped me across the face without even understanding the situation.

I'd tolerated everything thus far, all because of the promise Jasper had made me back then.

"I'll continue providing Noah the best treatment for his condition as long as you're a good stepmother to Lucas," Jasper had said.

Noah had a hereditary heart disease, which was why he needed constant but very expensive medication.

I'd swallowed down all my grievances so that Noah could be continuously treated.

I'd never imagined that my tolerance would result in Jasper's complete disregard for Noah's life.

The school bell rang loudly, pulling me back to the present.

Yvonne gracefully walked to the podium onstage at this moment. She looked like a heavenly angel as all the spotlights focused on her.

She smiled at the reporters and cameras pointed at her from below the stage, then said, "We're going to have a public lecture unlike ever before today. We will be using a genuine, burnt cadaver to demonstrate the latest 3D anatomy imaging technology."

After a brief pause, Yvonne turned to look at Jasper. Her eyes brimmed with affection for him. "Thank you for providing us with such precious curriculum material, Captain Lincoln. And thank you, Ms. Rayne, for donating your son Noah's body to science."

Gasps of shock rang out through the audience, followed by applause.

Jasper came to my side and whispered a warning in my ear. "If you dare cause us any trouble today, I'll make sure you leave the place without your son's body."

I didn't answer. Instead, I continued watching Yvonne's demonstration in silence.

Yvonne held up a bottle of antiseptic and went to the operating table. She turned to face the cameras and said professionally, "This cadaver is highly carbonized and has also been exposed to certain contaminants. To ensure precision during dissection, we have to first clean the outermost layer of the cadaver."

Yvonne then opened up the bottle and poured all its contents on the charred corpse. White smoke wafted up from the cadaver the moment the antiseptic came into contact with it, followed by an eerie sizzling noise.

It sounded like one final round of torture for the deceased.

Yvonne looked up and met my gaze from where I sat amidst the crowd. A cruel smile surfaced on her lips.

She began, "Look, Summer. It seems to be in so much pain. But then again, this cadaver was donated to science. Even trash has to undergo sanitization before it's cremated, right? I suppose this can be considered a final cleansing?"

Jasper burst into laughter. He happily went onstage and shot Yvonne a look of admiration before saying into the microphone, "So true! Something as filthy as this cadaver needs to be properly cleansed with antiseptic! How else could it ever be part of Ms. Schmidt's demonstration?"

The audience chuckled in agreement. Some of them even shot me sympathetic looks.

But of course, I laughed in response as well.

Jasper's brow knitted together. "What the hell are you laughing about?"

"I just think it's not unusual for mindless beasts to do something befitting of their nature," I drawled out.

"Are you calling Yvonne a mindless beast?" Jasper hissed angrily.

I did not respond and instead gestured for him to pay attention to Yvonne's demonstration.

Yvonne soon changed into a new pair of latex gloves before holding up a sharp scalpel. Its metallic brilliance was projected onto the big screen behind Yvonne.

She went to the body and sliced its chest open without hesitation.

Yvonne then swiftly removed all the internal organs with a pair of surgical tongs. Crumpled bits of black were tossed onto a tray, dull noises of impact echoing out each time.

The reporters carefully recorded Yvonne's thorough demonstration with their high-definition cameras. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, these videos would later serve to torture Yvonne for the rest of her life.

Presently, Yvonne was still explaining the process while making delicate and precise movements.

"Take a look here. Though the ribs are charred, we can see that the seventh rib here is a little different from the rest."

She tapped that rib with her tongs.

"Here, we can see traces of an old bone fracture. Based on the way it's healed, the deceased must've been quite young when this injury occurred."

Jasper's brow seemed to twitch very subtly.

I recalled how Lucas had fallen from a manmade mountain at a park when he was seven years old. He'd fractured his seventh rib from the impact at the time.

Jasper had rushed to Lucas' side and sent him to the hospital right away.

I looked at Jasper now, awaiting his reaction.

But Jasper only sneered into the microphone. "Isn't it normal for someone like the deceased to have bone fractures like this? The deceased has been involved in fights and thuggery since he was young. Maybe my son, Lucas, was the one who broke the rib in retaliation."

A quiet round of laughter came from the audience.

Yvonne chuckled, clearly agreeing with Jasper. "Captain Lincoln is right. I must've been overthinking things."

She then continued tending to the cadaver's head. Her tongs came into contact with something hard when she was clearing out the cadaver's charred mouth.

"Huh?" Yvonne found herself saying, gently retrieving the item. It was a metallic dental crown.

"This is a custom dental crown made of medical-grade titanium alloy. It must've cost a lot," she remarked in a professional tone before placing the crown on the tray.

Yvonne then glanced at Jasper with a slightly questioning look in her eyes.

She had gotten this dental crown custom-made for Lucas a while back. One of Lucas' teeth had grown rotten when he was young due to his terrible sweet tooth.

Jasper's expression stiffened briefly before he quickly composed himself. "Didn't Noah like stealing things? If he had no place to store it, it'd make sense for him to hide it in his mouth or swallow it down. We can never truly understand the mind of someone as foul as him."

Jasper's statement gave the audience the impression that the deceased had been a terribly immoral person.

Yvonne nodded, all traces of doubt disappearing from her eyes. She focused her attention back on dissecting the body.

"Next, we'll study the vital organs in the cadaver's chest."

Yvonne was searching through the body's cut-open chest when she suddenly stopped. She glanced at Jasper before sending me a long, hard look.

"Captain Lincoln, there should be a pacemaker in the chest cavity here. But I don't seem to be able to locate it anywhere," she said.

The sneer on Jasper's face deepened after Yvonne's questioning. "You think too highly of them, Ms. Schmidt."

He pointed at me and said to the audience, "This woman would come up with all sorts of lies just to get her hands on my money. Who knows? Maybe there hadn't been any surgery done for her son. Or maybe the pacemaker they installed in his chest was so cheap that it melted in the fire.

"Regardless, how could we ever trust the child of a liar?"

Understanding dawned on Yvonne's face. She scoffed and said, "I see. It seems that I was being too meticulous."

Yvonne then continued her perfect demonstration.

I silently watched everything unfold. Even now, Yvonne and Jasper still believed that it was Noah who'd died.

Poor little Lucas. His mother and father hadn't recognized him at all, even as his mother dissected his dead body under his father's watch.

I turned to look at Jasper, who was thoroughly engrossed in the dissection.

If Jasper had cared just a little more for Noah and learned more about his heart surgery specifics, he would've known that Noah's pacemaker was the latest technology from Germania. It was able to withstand extreme temperatures at all times.

Jasper would've also realized that the body lying on the operating table was none other than his beloved son, Lucas.