Chapter 4

When I got back to the hospital, Charlotte's heart rate plummeted. Alarms screamed.

Doctors and nurses flooded the room, faces white, voices trembling.

"She's crashing! Full anaphylactic shock , cardiac and pulmonary failure , heart rate dropping to zero!"

"Ten minutes, Mrs. Jones! Contact the donor , right now! There is no other option!"

Everyone fought. Every machine was thrown into the battle.

I watched Charlotte's tiny body convulse. I watched the color drain from her face. I watched the heart rate line go flat and cold, and my soul left my body.

I ripped my phone out with shaking hands and called Alexander.

This time, he picked up.

I grabbed the last thread holding me together and screamed with everything I had left.

"Alexander! Charlotte's heart rate is zero! She has ten minutes! Please come to the hospital , please save her , she is your daughter! Your own daughter!"

A few seconds of silence from the other end. Then his voice came through, colder than anything I had ever heard, buried beneath the sound of Sophie's laughter and a knife cutting through cake.

"Jones, would you stop? I'm here with Sophie and Leandro eating strawberry cake. I'm not getting involved in whatever is happening with Charlotte."

"If she dies, she dies. One less thing to worry about. Don't call me again."

Sophie's voice rang out deliberately, sharp and cruel.

"Alex, ignore her. This strawberry cake is to die for. That sick little girl can finally rest in peace~"

The line went dead. A flat dial tone.

In the same moment that tone filled my ear, the ICU doors opened and the doctor's voice reached me like a verdict from the end of the world.

"We were unable to resuscitate her… Charlotte passed away at 11:40 this morning. I'm so sorry, Mrs. Jones. We did everything we could."

The line on the monitor went flat and stayed there.

Charlotte's small hand slipped out of mine. Her tiny body lost the last of its warmth.

I stood there, frozen. My tears dried in an instant.

No pain. No crying. Only a hatred that had burned its way into my bones.

So he truly had been capable of watching his own daughter die in his indifference.

So eight years of love and five years of devotion meant less than a strawberry cake.

Less than one word of flattery from his first love.

So my Charlotte had gone to her grave without ever once being held by her father.

This time, everything inside me went quiet.

Alexander. Sophie. You killed my daughter.

I will destroy everything you have. I will burn your lives to the ground. I will make you feel every shred of pain this world has to offer.

You owe Charlotte her life.

I will collect it back from you a thousand times over, with interest.

That strawberry cake is your death sentence.

That five-year-old girl's life is the anniversary of your destruction.

From this day forward, I am not the woman who loved you.

I am the fury that will never stop coming for you. And you will spend your entire lives repaying this debt in blood.

I held Charlotte's cold little body and sat in the hallway outside the emergency room for a full day and night.

Still. Silent. Tearless. Like a statue with no soul left inside it, reduced entirely to ash.