Chapter 7

On the day of the surgery, Gabriel was at the hospital by five in the morning.

He helped Noah into his gown and put the passbook back into his son's hands. "Keep your money for your first car. Today Dad isn't going anywhere."

I very nearly believed fate would let us be.

At nine, the anesthesia began. At nine twenty, a gunfight broke out at a Moretti warehouse and a witness was taken hostage. The federal prosecutor demanded Gabriel appear in court immediately, or the protection agreement would be void and a dozen innocent relatives in the family would be exposed.

He stood outside the operating room and didn't move.

"Send my deputy," he said.

But the other end of the line played a recording: the hostage crying out that Sophia and Luca were in the warehouse too.

Gabriel looked at me, and for the first time there was something close to pleading in his eyes.

"I'll be back in forty minutes. There are six security staff here, and the surgical team won't leave. Elena, I have to stop more people from dying."

I didn't take payment, and I didn't stop him.

"Go," I said. "This is the last time."

He kissed the operating room door and turned away.

Ten minutes later, the hospital fire alarm went off. Someone, in the name of the Moretti legal office, reported a bomb in the underground garage, produced Gabriel's electronic seal, and ordered the hospital to evacuate the cardiac surgery team first.

The lead surgeon refused to leave. Right after, he received a live video of his daughter being kidnapped.

That was fake too, but no one knew it at the time.

The surgery was forced to stop. Noah's chest was still open, and the numbers on the bypass machine kept dropping.

I called Gabriel. Every line was diverted to a fake voicemail. My texts showed as read, and the only reply was one line: Evacuate according to the emergency plan, and stop creating chaos.

He hadn't written it.

At the time, I thought he had.

Then Sophia sent me a video. She sat in the safe house, Luca eating ice cream beside her.

"Sign the divorce agreement and give up your beneficiary rights to the Moretti trust, and the doctor will come back."

"This isn't for Gabe," she said softly. "It's for Luca. Victor is bankrupt. My son can only inherit everything the Moretti family has."

"Luca isn't Gabriel's son."

She smiled. "Blood doesn't matter. It's enough that everyone believes it."

The documents came through. I signed without reading a page.

Then I triggered the second plan I had prepared long before.

My mother had helped design St. Catherine's Private Hospital before she died. I knew the surgical floor had a fire corridor that didn't appear on the public drawings. For three months, using the "rent," I had anonymously funded an independent cardiac surgery team, standing by two blocks away.

Twelve minutes later, they came in through the fire corridor.

The hallway outside was full of reporters. Sophia had leaked in advance that I had deliberately halted my son's surgery to fight over property. Cameras, questions, and flashbulbs choked the exit.

I didn't explain. I only held Noah's cold hand and watched the second team reconnect the machines.

When the monitor let out its long tone, I thought I had died once myself.

After the replacement team took over, the hospital went into a real lockdown. The police found no bomb, but they found a remote module planted in the fire control cabinet. The reporters were still blocking the doors, and a secretly filmed video had already surfaced on social media, showing me stalling the surgery and extorting my husband.

The video came from the family waiting room. In it, I signed the divorce papers, but Sophia's threats couldn't be heard. All you could see was her crying and me pushing the papers back across the table. Public opinion reached its verdict quickly: a greedy mob wife using her sick child to fight for money.

I turned off my phone and stopped trying to clear my name.

The surgery lasted seven hours. When the doctor came out, his mask was soaked with sweat. He told me Noah's heart had stopped three times, and it was lucky that matched blood had been stocked in advance. That blood came from the backup blood bank I had set up with the very first "rent" payment.

I slid down the wall to the floor and only then noticed my knees and palms were covered in blood. When the alarm went off, I had thrown myself in front of the people trying to move Noah and shattered a glass door doing it, and I had never felt the pain.

Late that night, the lawyer brought the formal divorce papers. "Signing means losing a great deal," he reminded me.

"What I almost lost was already the most anyone can lose."

I signed my name and immediately applied for sole custody and a protection order. No thunder, no argument, no tears. Seven years of marriage ended with nothing but the scratch of a pen on paper.

Three seconds later, the heartbeat returned.