“Eve, the kidnapping may not have been your fault, but you know the twins only wandered off because they were trying to find their daddy.”
“And you made up that story about your daughter dying just so he'd feel guilty and come back to you!”
Julius's face changed instantly. He shoved me away, seething：
“Eve Henson, are you done with this? You're so desperate for my attention you'd fabricate lies about your own daughter's life? You're out of your mind!”
“I'm warning you. If I ever hear you curse your daughter like that again, don't blame me for what happens next.”
He turned without a second's hesitation and walked away with Effie and the twins.
I scrambled to my feet and stumbled back inside, scooped my daughter up into my arms, and ran.
She must have sensed me close, because her lips moved, words breaking apart between the blood.
“Mommy, it hurts……”
“This……this is for……for Daddy……”
I looked down. In her small hand was a drawing, crumpled almost beyond recognition from how tightly she'd been gripping it. The portrait on it was unmistakable. Julius.
The pain in my chest nearly split me open. I bit down hard on my lip just to keep myself from falling apart.
I pulled her frail little body tight against mine, swiped roughly at my tears, and kept my voice as gentle as I could：
“Stella, don't be scared. Mommy's taking you to the hospital right now.”
I charged out and threw myself in front of a car to flag it down, and we raced to the hospital.
But when I burst into the emergency room, the doctor took one look at her vitals and his face went white：
“This is critical—she needs a heart transplant now, right now.”
I grabbed at his words like a lifeline：“There is one! There is! Her surgery was scheduled for tomorrow. Move it up, please, just move it up!”
The doctor sent a nurse to check right away. I had barely closed my hand around Stella's fingers when the nurse came back：
“Ms. Henson's daughter was indeed scheduled for tomorrow, but……but the donor heart has already been taken by the VIP patient upstairs……”
“Something about his child having a heart condition—they wanted the transplant for him instead……”
Whatever the nurse said after that, I couldn't hear anymore.
My head just—rang. One high, splitting sound, and everything went white.
One thought, and one thought alone, consumed me: I had to save my daughter. She was only three years old.
I seized the doctor's arm and screamed until my voice tore：
“Where is he? I'll go beg him. If he gives the heart back, I'll do whatever he wants—anything!”
The look on my face must have frightened the doctor, because he told me immediately: the top-floor VIP ward.
I left Stella in the observation room and ran without stopping, up to the top floor, and threw open the door to the ward. Julius was inside, his arm around Effie, each of them cradling one of the twins.
In that moment,
I froze.
The VIP the doctor had been talking about was Julius.
But I had no room left for heartbreak. I bent at the waist, low enough to beg：
“Please. Give the donor heart back to me. My daughter is downstairs waiting to be saved.”
Julius's brow creased, and he opened his mouth to speak, but Effie's tears fell first.
“Eve, it's bad enough you fight me for Julius every single day. Now you want to take the heart meant for my child?”
“You're doing this on purpose, aren't you? Lying about your daughter dying just to get Julius to look at you!”
Before her voice had finished ringing through the room, Julius was already in front of me, his hand locked around my throat.
“Eve Henson, you never learn. You'll say anything—anything—to claw for my attention. Now you're cursing your own daughter to die!”
