Her Silent Heart

When the kidnapper fired the gun, I shielded Scott with my body.

The bullet pierced my heart, and I was sent overseas to have my heart exchanged with an artificial one—one that ran on a battery.

Because of this heart, Scott married me, and my friends congratulated me for finally having my wish granted, for finally marrying my childhood sweetheart.

Later, when I laid there on the operating table with my chest cut open, he was kissing another woman under the moonlight.

I didn't react to this in the slightest, recovering my heart in silence.

Scott resented my numbness, grabbing my shoulders as he demanded, "Wendy, aren't you angry about this?"

He didn't know the reason, and to be honest, it was quite simple. Why be angry when my heart was on the verge of giving out?

Every passionate day he spent chasing after love…

Was another tick in the countdown to the end of my life.

While I was having a check-up at the hospital, I received a message from my best friend, Mary.

"He's showing that woman off to us again! Are you just going to sit there and let him?"

I wanted to reply, but a sudden tightness gripped my chest, almost making me double over with pain. Steadying myself against the wall, I took a few deep breaths, only regaining my composure after a long while.

At that point, I just switched my phone off, no longer having any energy to reply.

Meanwhile, the doctor helped me into the consultation room with my medical report in hand. Shaking his head, he said, "Your condition is still quite bad, Miss Palmer. You have to be mentally prepared. Don't let your emotions get too intense, or else you'll…"

I smiled and nodded lightly at the doctor as I shoved a handful of pills in my mouth. "Yes, I understand. I've been using this artificial heart for years now, after all."

Six years ago, Scott and I went overseas on vacation. However, enemies of his family had set an ambush in advance, and the two of us got kidnapped.

When the kidnappers decided to shoot Scott and kill him, I shielded him with my body, and the bullet pierced me right through my heart.

Luckily, the police arrived just in time and rushed me to the hospital.

My heart had been so badly damaged that there was almost no chance of survival, but on the verge of death, a professor finally decided on implanting an experimental artificial heart into my chest.

From then on, each and every beat of my heart has relied on that artificial heart.

After we returned from overseas, Scott married me, proposing to me with an 8-karat pigeon blood ruby ring. "Wendy, you've lost your heart, but let me give you mine. I will treasure you and never hurt you."

However, now, I knew that his love was just as fake as the artificial heart beating in my chest.

We were already in our fifth year of marriage, and he'd already started keeping women around him since three years ago.

Whenever he held me, I almost threw up, suffocated by the overwhelming scent of the perfume, left on him by other women. Occasionally, I would find faint lipstick marks on his shirt, and whenever I stared at them too long, he would push my head aside.

"It's nothing worth looking at," he'd say.

I knew that all those women were nothing but playthings for him.

But recently, things changed. He finally found someone he was serious about.

Her name was Roanna Sterling, and she was both sweet and alluring—just the right type of girl that satisfied Scott's desires.

She'd already been together with Scott for three months by now, and he'd even bring her to official gatherings, showing her off to our mutual friends as if he was giving a silent proclamation.

My friends all messaged me, asking me what was going on, but I was never in the mood to reply to them.

Walking out of the hospital, I saw Scott's car. Wrapping my clothes tightly around myself in the bitter cold, I walked toward it across the hospital plaza.

Roanna saw me first, and she immediately stopped playfully teasing Scott, her face as red as a ripe peach. Then, she leaned against his shoulder with a smile as sweet as honey and whispered something to him, prompting him to turn around and see me outside the window.

Rolling down the window, he asked, "Mom said you came to have a check-up today, so she wanted me to come fetch you. Are you alright?"

"Same as always," I replied curtly."

"I figured as much…" He nodded, and Roanna chimed in, grabbing onto his arm and swaying it coyly.

"Yeah! Her heart's made of metal, after all, so she'll be fine!"