Chapter 1

While I was being brutally torn apart by my enemies, my husband, Stanley Norman, was busy accompanying his precious lover for a follow-up checkup.

I called him for help, but he just sneered, "Quit your act. Aren't you tired of these games yet? If you really have the guts, why don't you just die for real?"

Five days later, a still-warm heart showed up out of nowhere on his operating table.

Stanley did everything to help the police, and quickly figured out it was from a young woman. The heart had been ripped out while she was still alive.

But he never even suspected it was my heart, the heart of the woman he despised the most, his own wife.

*****

Right before the heart surgery, a nurse found another heart sitting in the hospital's cold storage box.

One was perfectly preserved. It was the heart meant for the transplant. The other was mine, already starting to rot.

The killer had ripped out my heart and shamelessly shoved it into the hospital's cold storage box.

The nurses had never seen anything so gruesome. The stench of rotting flesh was so bad that it nearly made them throw up.

As the attending physician, Stanley had to stay composed, examining the heart closely to help the police with their investigation.

He put on several masks, fighting back the urge to vomit as he carefully inspected my heart.

It felt like I was right back on that day. The knife carved into my chest inch by inch, the pain so sharp that I couldn't even make a sound.

When Stanley's hand brushed against my heart, he suddenly paused, a faint pain throbbing in his own chest.

"Stanley, do you realize this is my heart?" I murmured.

Within ten minutes, Stanley took off his mask and shared his conclusion.

He analyzed, "Judging by the way this heart developed, the person it belonged to was a young woman, probably between 24 and 28 years old.

"There are obvious mottled marks around the edges, and from what I can see, the heart was violently taken out while the victim was still alive. This was a live extraction."

The nurses were stunned. "Who could actually rip out someone's heart while they're still alive? Is the killer some kind of monster?"

The cops on the scene were as shocked by Stanley's words. They quickly set up a perimeter to secure the area.

"I've been a detective for years, seen all kinds of cases, but a live heart extraction? That's a first," one of the officers muttered.

"Whoever did this was crazy enough to stash the heart in the hospital's cold storage box after the murder and even managed to erase every bit of security footage," another officer added.

"This person has to be either a hospital employee or someone who knows the place inside out," a third officer concluded.

One of the nurses, looking pale with fear, asked, "Why would the killer do something like this?"

Stanley stared at the mottled heart, his voice grave. "There's only one reason. The killer is trying to provoke us. It's all about revenge."

The nurses looked at each other in fear. No one dared to speak.

There were always patients' families who sometimes stirred up trouble in the hospital, but in the cardiac department, things have always been calm. There was no drama or trouble.

I wondered when Stanley would finally see the truth behind all this.

Out of nowhere, someone started clapping outside the police tape. Xavier Paterson, head of the detective squad, strode in through the doorway.

"No wonder you're the ace of the cardiac ward. Now you're even playing the coroner," Xavier teased with a crooked grin.

Stanley took off his mask and stepped aside, handing things over to the squad's forensic specialist for a second look.

Xavier gave Stanley a friendly nudge. "Zora actually invited me to your birthday party the other day. Never thought we'd meet here first, and over a murder case, no less."

"Don't bring her up. She disgusts me," Stanley snapped.

Xavier blinked in surprise. "You two still haven't made up? What happened to Quincy was a freak accident. It had nothing to do with Zora. Don't take it so hard, man."

As he spoke, Xavier pulled out his phone from his briefcase. "Speaking of Zora, she sent me some weird string of numbers a few days ago. I thought it might be a phone number, but it didn't work. Why don't you check it out?"

Xavier handed over his phone, but Stanley barely glanced at the chat log before looking away, completely uninterested.

"She sits at home all day like she's lost her mind, either calling me up claiming she's dying or rambling about weird things," Stanley said, his voice full of contempt.

"She's even sending you weird messages now to get my attention. She's honestly a joke. If she ever gets diagnosed as crazy, I wouldn't be shocked at all," he added.

Drifting above it all, I felt a blade slice right through my heart. The pain was so intense that I could barely breathe.

Turned out, in his eyes, I was a lunatic. Everything I had ever done for him was just some desperate stunt to make him look at me.

I had stuck with Stanley for ten whole years. All that meant nothing compared to Wynter Zimmerman, the woman who dumped him years ago.

Xavier still looked uneasy. "Zora is not the type to do something like that. Why not call her and ask what those numbers are about?"

"You're way too much of a cop. You actually buy into the crazy talk of a nutcase?" Stanley scoffed.

Getting annoyed by Xavier's nagging, Stanley pulled out his phone, unblocked me, and sent a few voice messages, his tone icy with disgust.

Stanley sneered, "You're always talking about dying, so why haven't you actually done it yet?

"If you're so bored, go check yourself into a hospital. Stop pestering my friends for no reason. It disgusts me even more."

This time, I was not faking it. I was really dead. That heart he found on the operating table was mine.