He Ordered My Death, Then Autopsied My Body.

Chapter 4 The Titanium Root

The fire had destroyed my face, skin, and hair until Declan could stand over me without knowing his wife. The titanium in my jaw remained exactly where he had placed it.

Declan snatched the bag hard enough to bend its seal. The technician stepped back and nearly caught his heel on a fallen instrument. Declan’s fingers had stayed steady through the autopsy, but now he missed the edge of the sterile dish on the first try.

He tipped the implant root onto the dish and pushed it under the high-powered digital microscope. Once the controls were beneath his hand, years of training took over. He adjusted the focus, increased the magnification, and centered the base of the implant.

At a thousand times its size, the implant base filled the wall monitor. A row of marks sharpened into characters, each one cut by a precision laser.

ST-V-01.

*Sterling-Vance-01.* He had made only one. After the accident shattered my jaw five years ago, he designed the implant himself. In the hospital, he held my hand and promised the titanium would outlast both of us.

Declan stopped with one hand on the focus dial. He did not blink or draw another breath. On the black border of the monitor, his reflection stared at the engraving he had designed.

Three heartbeats passed.

He struck the steel table with his fist. The sterile dish jumped beneath the lens, and instruments rattled in their drawers.

“A fake!” His voice broke on the word. “A black-market forgery. Someone planted it.”

He dragged both hands through his hair and paced between the table and the monitor, searching the room for anyone who might agree with him. “Chloe knew the serial number. She had a copy made to frame me. This is a trap.”

No one answered. The code remained on the monitor.

His phone rang before he could touch the microscope again. Mia’s name lit the screen, and after one look at the code, he answered on speaker.

“Declan, they’re gone! All three European consortiums pulled out!” Mia shouted.

Declan looked from the phone to ST-V-01.

“They invoked Clause 7B, the part requiring Chloe to oversee every international transition. They’ve classified Sterling Empire as high risk without her. The stock is in freefall after-hours. What do we do?”

Red after-hours figures scrolled across his phone while Mia waited for an answer. Each refresh drove the Sterling share price lower.

Before Declan could respond, Dr. Finch, head of toxicology, entered with a one-page report stamped URGENT in red.

Finch held the report out to Declan. His gaze moved once toward my abdomen, and he did not wait for Mia to stop talking.

“The stomach contents weren’t antidepressants,” Finch said. “They were high-dose progesterone and folic acid.”