
Three years ago, I threw myself in front of a car to save my husband, Arthur. The crash ended my career as a violinist and left my heart failing. I thought he remembered what it cost me. For the next three years, I lived on medication and postponed surgeries while the billionaire I had saved promised that no one would ever put me second again. Then his first love came back. Arthur reassigned my doctors, delayed my medication, and gave her every resource I needed. Tonight, while I lie open on an operating table, he sends my matching donor heart to her suite.

The matching heart arrived on the third morning of the wait. I saw the cooler come down the corridor toward the operating wing, and for one moment I forgot to breathe. Dr. Evans walked beside it, his face unreadable. Arthur stood at my bedside with his back to the door, still promising me the things he promised best. "After this, Chloe, we're going to Vienna. I mean it. I'll buy you the concert hall if you want it." Three years ago I had thrown myself in front of a car to save his life. That was the official version, the one repeated at charity dinners and in his mother's toasts. The true version had more splinters in it: the headlights, the sound my left hand made when it hit the pavement, the way Arthur had stood over me in the emergency room and asked the doctors, before anything els
