Chapter 1

To save the life of the son he had with his first love, my ex-husband drained every last drop of marrow from our daughter's body.

On that operating table, five-year-old Anna screamed for me, her voice raw with confusion and pain.

I stood helpless behind a glass partition, watching the light fade from her eyes until she was nothing but a cold, still corpse.

Now I had been thrown back to the moment before he came to take her away. I picked up the pen and signed the organ donor consent form with a steady hand.

"You want bone marrow? You'll have to harvest it from my corpse."

This time, I was going to make sure every single one of them paid the price.

*****

I died on the operating table, but I didn't disappear. My mind lingered, trapped inside the bright surgical light overhead.

The glare was blinding, so sharp it cut right through me. I floated there, weightless as fog, forced to watch everything happening below.

My daughter, Anna, lay on the cold metal table.

She was only five. Her small body was hidden beneath a green surgical sheet, nothing showing but a narrow strip of her thin back.

The anesthesiologist had given her the medicine. Her little head drooped to the side, her eyelids heavy as she whispered, so faint I could barely hear her.

"Mommy. Mommy... It hurts..."

The lead surgeon stepped closer, holding a needle longer than my hand. The tip caught the harsh light, cold and sharp, aimed at the bruised skin on Anna's back.

"Beginning bone marrow extraction," the doctor said, his voice flat and distant.

I wanted to scream, to throw myself down there and cover her with my own body. But I couldn't do a thing.

My spirit hurled itself toward the table again and again, passing straight through the cold instruments and the doctors' white coats. I couldn't grab anything. I couldn't stop anything.

The moment the needle pierced Anna's back, her small body jerked hard.

"Mommy!" Her cry tore through the room, sharp and heartbreaking, like a baby bird with broken wings. "Mommy. It hurts. Hug me, please."

I sank down beside the table, my voice cracking with grief as I cried out, "Anna, don't be scared. Mommy's here. Mommy's right here!" Let her hear me. Please, let her hear me.

But my voice disappeared into nothing. No one could hear me.

The needle pushed deeper, driving into the center of her spine. Dark red marrow slowly filled the syringe until fifty milliliters had been taken.

Anna's cries grew softer and softer, fading to nearly nothing.

At last, the spark in her beautiful eyes went out, little by little.

The frantic beeping on the monitor flattened into a single, steady tone.

That endless, shrill note stabbed at my heart, each pulse of sound ripping me apart.

"Oh, God. The little girl's heart stopped!" the nurse shouted, her voice shaking.

The room exploded into motion. Someone wheeled in a defibrillator, another injected adrenaline into Anna's IV, and others started CPR with desperate force.

I watched Anna's tiny body jolt with each shock, then slump back against the table, over and over.

"Keep going. Push more fluids! Her rhythm isn't coming back. Hit her again."

I lost all sense of time. The lead surgeon set down his tools, glanced at his watch, and spoke in that same cold, flat voice. "February fourteenth, twenty twenty-six, ten thirty-seven AM. The patient is deceased."

In that moment, my whole world shattered completely.

I screamed without making a sound, throwing myself at the doctor, desperate to claw his eyes out, to tear him apart. But my hands passed through him as if he were made of smoke.

I had no body. I was nothing but a ghost, forced to watch my daughter's bone marrow being stolen from her, powerless to save her.

The operating room door swung open.

Michael Reed walked in. He was my ex-husband and Anna's biological father. The man who should have protected her above anyone else. And the man who had sent her to this table.

Michael didn't look at Anna. He strode straight to the doctor, barely hiding his eagerness. "Did the procedure go well? Was the marrow viable? How's Ethan?"

Ethan Reed. The son of the woman Michael loved most. His precious boy.

He couldn't even be bothered to say our daughter's name.