Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Excerpts

"Do you, Sir Darius, accept Miss Celine as your lawfully wedded wife?"

"I do," he replied.

"Do you, Miss Celine, accept Sir Darius as your lawfully wedded husband?" the priest asked.

A thousand eyes fell on her, heavy and judging. The entire weight of the room shifted.

"I... I... I don't know," she whispered, trying hard not to blink as his cold gaze landed on her.

Darius stepped closer, tilting her jaw up before his lips met hers. It was a kiss that left her breathless, completely devoid of any real warmth.

"Do this, and you are free after five months, just like the contract says," he whispered against her ear.

Beginning

"Take the patient in ward 208 to the theater immediately!" Celine ordered, snapping her latex surgical gloves against her wrists with a sharp, echoing crack.

The hallway dissolved into chaos. Three nurses frantically wheeled the thrashing patient down the corridor. The woman was suffocating, gasping for air that would not come, her face turning a bruised shade of blue. Yet, despite the panic vibrating through the walls, the surrounding staff felt a wave of relief the moment they saw Celine.

They had Celine. The prodigy. The untouchable cardiothoracic surgeon who had never lost a soul under her blade. She was the woman who had successfully removed a terminal tumor from a child's brain when every other senior doctor in the state had signed the death warrant.

Arrogant? Exceptionally so. But her track record justified the pride.

As Celine stepped into the operating room, the assistant surgeons automatically stepped back, clearing a path for her like disciples awaiting a master. The heavy automated doors sealed shut, and the surgical light flooded the room.

"Surgical lights up! Monitor the vitals!" Celine commanded, her voice cutting through the steady, rhythmic beep of the heart monitor. "The scan shows a massive aortic dissection. The tear is severe, and her heart is failing. We do not have a second to waste."

"Yes, Dr. Celine," Christian, her resident intern, replied quickly. He wiped beads of sweat from his forehead with the back of his sleeve, his eyes wide with anxiety.

"Place the nebulizer over her right now!" Celine commanded, her eyes narrowing as she studied the screens mapping out the failing parts of the patient's heart. "Hand me the needle and set the anesthesia machine. Let's move!"

She could see the nervous lines etched onto the faces of her assistant doctors. She knew they had their doubts; she knew they thought the damage was too extensive. But Celine did not care about their fears. She did not rely on a team; she relied on her own flawless intellect.

She made the initial incision, her movements fluid and terrifyingly precise. For the first twenty minutes, it was a masterclass. But the human body rarely cares for a surgeon's ego. Without warning, the monitor broke into a frantic, high-pitched scream.

"She is going into cardiac arrest!" the anesthesiologist warned, his voice rising. "Dr. Celine, her oxygen levels are plummeting. We need to patch the tear quickly and get her off the bypass, or we risk severe, irreversible brain damage."

"I see it," Celine snapped, her voice cutting like a scalpel. She did not look up. Her focus was entirely locked on the arterial wall. "The stitch isn't perfectly flush. If I don't realign this valve perfectly, the blood flow will cause long-term complications."

"Doctor, we do not have time for a textbook realignment!" Christian stepped forward, his hands trembling slightly as he held the retractor. "The brain is starving. We need to apply the chest compressor, patch it roughly, and close her up now!"

"Be quiet, Christian! I do not do sloppy work," Celine hissed, pushing his hand away. "I am the lead surgeon here."

Driven by an obsessive need for perfection, Celine refused to let the assistant surgeons help hold the clamps. She insisted on doing every single micro-stitch herself, rejecting their pacing suggestions. She spent three critical, agonizing minutes adjusting a minor cosmetic flaw in the tissue; a detail no one would ever see, but one that her perfectionism would not allow her to ignore.

By the time Celine finally stepped back, satisfied with her beautiful stitching, the monitor gave a long, flat, horrifying whine.

"The pulse is gone! Defibrillator! Charge to 200!" Celine yelled, panic finally piercing through her cold armor.

They shocked the patient once. The woman's body arched off the table. Nothing.

"Charge to 300! Again!"

Twice. Three times. Finally, a weak, erratic, agonizingly slow rhythm returned to the screen. But the damage was done. The patient's pupils were fixed and dilated. The surgery was over, but the patient was gone.

An hour later, the patient was wheeled into a private intensive care ward, completely unresponsive. Attached to a ventilator with ten sticky pads monitoring her failing heart, she was in a state of deep unconsciousness. A vegetative coma.

Celine stood in the scrubbing room, staring blankly at her trembling hands. The record was broken. Her perfect streak was dead.

"Dr. Celine..." Christian walked in, his voice soft, trying to offer a shred of comfort. "We did what we could. The tear was just too massive."

"Don't touch me," Celine spat, fiercely shrugging away from his hand. Tears of hot rage and humiliation streamed down her face.

"No... I could have saved her! If only I hadn't wasted that one minute changing my blood-soiled gloves, or if you had just handed me the clamps faster! If this incompetent team hadn't been slowing me down with your whining, she would be awake!"

"Are you serious right now?" Christian’s sympathy evaporated, replaced by boiling anger. He had tolerated her bickering and blame for months, but this was the end. "You didn't lose her because of a glove change, Celine. You lost her because of your damn perfectionism! You wasted four minutes fixing a cosmetic flaw while her brain was dying! You never listen to anyone because you think you're a god!"

"Get out!" Celine screamed, her voice cracking. "You're fired! I'll have your medical license for—"

"You won't be firing anyone, Dr. Celine."

Celine froze. Chief Thornton stood at the doorway of the scrub room, his expression cold. Behind him stood two heavy-set hospital security guards.

"Chief," Celine stammered, quickly wiping her face, trying to regain her regal composure. "Christian was being completely insubordinate—"

"The anesthesiologist already handed over the surgical audio logs," Chief Thornton interrupted, his voice echoing coldly. "You ignored three direct warnings about low oxygen. You locked your team out of the procedure to satisfy your own ego, and now a mother of three is in a coma she will likely never wake up from."

"I was trying to achieve a perfect surgical outcome!" she defended desperately.

"There is no perfection in a brain-dead patient," the Chief said flatly. He stepped forward and held out his palm. "Hand over your hospital ID badge, Celine. The board has already voted. You are terminated, effective immediately. Security will escort you to your locker, and then off the premises."

Celine felt the air completely leave her lungs. The room spun violently. Just an hour ago, she was the golden girl of the surgical wing, whispered about in reverent tones. Now, the security guards stepped up beside her, their hands resting near their belts as if she were a common criminal.

With trembling, numb fingers, she unclipped her badge; the badge that bore her name and the title she had sacrificed her entire youth to achieve and dropped it into the Chief’s open hand. She had moved from the absolute height of grace to the very bottom in a matter of minutes.

As she walked out of the hospital doors into the pouring rain, stripped of her career, her reputation, and her dignity, Celine realized she had hit absolute rock bottom.

And that was exactly when a sleek, jet-black limousine pulled up to the curb. The tinted window rolled down slowly to reveal the cold, calculating eyes of Sir Darius.