Chapter 3

Adrian bent down and picked up the emergency report.

The blood on the paper had long dried, but the edges were still stiff from the soaking.

"That's impossible."

He stared at the diagnosis on the report, his voice still straining to hold steady.

"The transplant team told me that a healthy adult can regenerate after donating the right liver lobe. Elena can't die from this."

Leon looked at him. "The doctors were talking about full monitoring, no postoperative hemorrhaging, and no severe emotional stress."

Adrian's fingers began to tremble.

"She's terrified of pain. Even as a kid, a little cut on her finger meant I had to comfort her for ages. There's no way she left on her own."

By the end, it sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

"She's putting on an act for me. She wants me to regret not going to pick her up."

Leon didn't explain further. He simply said, "The coast guard will be contacting you soon."

Adrian's head snapped up.

After leaving the firm, he pulled every road record he could find, tracking medical transport vehicles, airport clearances, and private flight plans.

Two weeks later, a private medical transport vessel sailing from the northern coast of France to a medical facility in the Mediterranean exploded in open water.

The hull burned for an entire day before sinking to the bottom of the sea.

Elena Bennett was on the passenger manifest.

In the coast guard's identification room, an officer pushed a sealed evidence bag across the table to Adrian.

Inside was a delicate necklace, charred black.

The pendant bore the intertwined initials of our names, fused together by the heat.

Adrian had put it on me himself on my twentieth birthday.

Adrian stared at the bag. His ramrod-straight posture slowly collapsed.

He reached for it, but his fingers shook so badly that it slipped from his grasp again and again.

Finally, his knees hit the cold tile floor, and he pressed the necklace against his cheek.

"Elena, this isn't funny."

His voice was hoarse, still carrying the same tone he used to lull me to sleep.

"I know you're punishing me. Come out. I'll come get you."

No one answered.

"I was wrong. I won't go to Celia's room anymore. I won't make you wait ever again.

"We'll have the church wedding exactly the way you want it. And I'll make you a named partner.

"Come back, please?"

He knelt in that identification room the entire night.

All his dignity, his pride, his composure: all of it collapsed before that charred necklace.

Thousands of miles away, in a private recovery clinic on the shores of Lake Geneva, I lay in a sterile ward.

When the transport vessel exploded, the blast threw me into the sea.

Leon's rescue team reached me before the coast guard, pulling me from the floating wreckage.

The fire had burned my face, the side of my neck, and both legs. Liver failure compounded with severe burns meant that nearly every day, someone reminded me that survival was not guaranteed.

The doctor placed the treatment consent form on my bedside table.

"At least twelve months of skin grafts, multiple rounds of facial bone reconstruction, followed by retraining for chewing and speech.

"The process will be extremely painful. You can choose conservative treatment, but full restoration of appearance and function will be unlikely."

I stared at the ceiling and said nothing.

Leon picked up the pen and placed it in my bandaged hand.

"Once you sign, your old face, your voice, and your old life will all be stripped away."

He asked, "Can you handle it?"

I gripped the pen and scrawled my name in shaky letters.

"Even if I can't, I will."

Every dressing change after that was torture I endured fully conscious.

The gauze had stuck to the new tissue, and the doctor had to peel it away layer by layer. Pain tore through every nerve, exploding from deep in the bone. I bit through my lip until my mouth was full of blood.

Leon stood outside the glass wall and spoke through the intercom. "If it hurts, scream. Don't bite yourself."

I spat out the blood.

"It doesn't hurt."

The real rot was what I'd left behind on that rainy night.

Three years was long enough to completely change a face and long enough to erase a name from every public record.

Leon's attorney restored the European citizenship I was entitled to through my mother, completed my legal name change, and had the records sealed to protect my privacy.

After that, Elena Bennett existed only in Adrian's memorial tributes.

My name was Vera Laurent.

Over those three years, Adrian became known in New York society as "the devoted widower."

The media wrote about how he would never remarry, how he went to the shore alone every year on the anniversary of the shipwreck, how he kept our apartment exactly as it was.

He still paid Celia's medical bills, but he never gave her so much as a smile.

After my final suture removal at the clinic, I looked at the woman in the mirror.

Striking features, calm eyes.

It was a face entirely different from Elena's.

Leon pushed the door open and set a new passport and a gold-embossed invitation on the table.

"Grant Architecture is holding its tenth-anniversary gala tomorrow night."

He extended his hand, a faint smile on his lips.

"I need a date."

I opened the passport and saw the name "Vera Laurent," my fingertip slowly tracing the photo.

This new life was legally mine, not a disguise someone else had handed me.

I closed the passport and took Leon's hand.

"Let's go.

"Back to New York."

I looked at myself in the mirror and smiled, truly smiled, for the first time.

"Let's pay a visit to that devoted husband the whole city can't stop praising."