Chapter 3

I made it exactly four blocks before Dominic's black SUV pulled up beside me.

The window rolled down. His driver, Gerald, looked at me with pity. "Mrs. Carter, Mr. Carter asked me to bring you home."

"I'm not going home."

"Ma'am, he insisted —"

"Then tell him to come get me himself."

Gerald's eyes widened. In two years, I had never refused anything. He fumbled with his phone, and I kept walking.

The September morning air was crisp against my skin. Each step away from that mansion felt like peeling off a layer of dead weight. My chest still hurt, but it was the good kind of hurt — the kind that meant something was finally breaking free.

St. Albans Hospital was forty minutes by bus. I'd memorized the route years ago but had never been brave enough to take it.

When I walked through the glass doors, the smell of antiseptic hit me like a homecoming. My fingers twitched at my sides. God, I'd missed this.

Dr. Voss was waiting in her office on the seventh floor. She was exactly as I remembered — silver-streaked hair pulled into a tight bun, reading glasses perched on her nose, and a gaze that could cut through steel.

She looked me over, frowning. "You've lost weight. And what happened to your lip?"

"I fell." The lie tasted bitter.

She didn't push it. Instead, she slid a folder across the desk. "Residency paperwork. Sign here, here, and here. You start tomorrow morning, 6 AM sharp. Surgical rotation."

I signed without hesitation.

"One more thing," she said, leaning back. "There's a patient in the ICU — a VIP. Seventy-two years old, late-stage cardiac complications. Every surgeon on the East Coast has turned down the case. The family is desperate."

"Who's the patient?"

"Edward Blackwell."

I froze. Edward Blackwell — the patriarch of the Blackwell family. One of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the country. His grandson, Nathan Blackwell, practically controlled half the financial sector.

In my last life, Edward Blackwell had died on the operating table when a celebrated surgeon botched the procedure. The Blackwell family had sued the hospital into near-bankruptcy.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked carefully.

Dr. Voss removed her glasses and looked me dead in the eye. "Because I've seen your research. That technique you published last year — the one on micro-vessel cardiac repair — it's the only approach that could work for his condition. No one else in this country has your hands, Lila."

My pulse quickened. "I'm a first-day resident. No board in the world would let me lead a surgery on a patient like Edward Blackwell."

"They would if you passed the emergency certification exam. I've already submitted your application. The test is tomorrow afternoon."

Tomorrow. She'd planned this before I even called her.

"You knew I'd come back," I said.

She smiled — just barely. "I hoped."

That night, I checked into a motel near the hospital. The room was tiny, with peeling wallpaper and a rattling AC unit, but it was mine.

I spread my surgical notes across the bed and studied until my vision blurred. The cardiac repair technique was something I'd developed over three years of secret research. It was complex, risky, and had never been performed on a living patient.

But I knew it could work. I'd run the simulations hundreds of times.

Around midnight, my phone buzzed.

Twelve missed calls from Dominic. And one text.

[Come home. Now. Don't make me come find you.]

I stared at it for a long moment. In my past life, that text would have sent me running back, terrified of his anger.

I typed back: I filed for divorce. You'll receive the papers tomorrow.

Then I blocked his number.

But even as I set the phone down, a knot of unease tightened in my stomach. Dominic Carter was not a man who accepted rejection. And Vivienne — Vivienne would see my absence as an opportunity.

I didn't know what they'd do next. But I knew it would be fast, and it would be vicious.

I turned back to my notes, forcing myself to focus.

Tomorrow, I had an exam to pass, a career to reclaim, and a patient who needed me.

Everything else could wait.

At 5:47 AM, I walked into St. Albans in fresh scrubs, my hair pulled back, my jaw set.

The surgical wing was already buzzing. Nurses hustled past with charts, monitors beeped in rhythm, and the overhead PA system crackled with pages.

A senior resident named Dr. Kyle Park was assigned to show me around. He was tall, with an easy grin that didn't quite reach his eyes.

"So you're the mystery resident Voss fast-tracked," he said, looking me up and down. "No offense, but you don't exactly look like someone who can handle a scalpel."

"No offense taken," I said. "I'll let my work speak for itself."

He smirked but didn't push it. As we walked through the ICU corridor, he gestured toward a private room at the end of the hall.

"That's the Blackwell suite. Armed security, round-the-clock nurses, and a family that will sue you into oblivion if you so much as sneeze wrong. Stay away from that room unless Voss personally sends you in."

I glanced through the glass. An elderly man lay connected to a web of monitors, his chest barely rising.

Edward Blackwell. In my last life, he'd been dead within the week.

This time, I was going to save him.

But as I turned away from the glass, I caught sight of someone standing at the nurses' station — tall, dark-haired, with a face so sharp it looked carved from stone.

Nathan Blackwell. Edward's grandson. The man who, in my last life, had destroyed St. Albans Hospital in his grief.

And he was staring right at me.