His Dying Wife Was a Fake,But He Chose Her Anyway

Lavinia sobbed on stage, the picture of fragile innocence. "Please, Beatrice, I don't need the kidney anymore. Just don't make Mom and Dad angry..."

Curt Henson's voice boomed across the ballroom. "Security! Drag this ungrateful daughter to the operating room!"

A dozen bodyguards closed in at once.

Ivan's lips curved into a cold smile. He didn't say a word.

Black-clad bodyguards surged through the crowd behind him.

In under three minutes, every last one of the Henson security detail was on the ground, groaning in pain.

Ivan pulled out a small red booklet and flung it straight into Josephine's face.

Smack.

"Read it carefully. She is my lawfully wedded wife."

"Kidnapping Mrs. Stephens to harvest her kidney?" His voice dropped to a lethal register. "The Hensons have some nerve."

The entire ballroom went silent.

The steel seal on the marriage certificate was unmistakable.

Not a stand-in.

Not an impersonator.

Mrs. Stephens.

Murray staggered as though struck by lightning, unable to process what he was hearing. He lunged forward like a man unhinged.

"Liar! You're lying to me!"

He seized my shoulders and wrenched me toward him.

Riiip.

The black silk scarf tore clean off.

Crystal chandelier light poured down, illuminating my neck and collarbone.

Murray's gaze froze. His pupils contracted violently.

Below the pale line of my collarbone, the skin was covered in clusters of dark purple lumps, hard and raised. They were the ruined tissue left behind by thick dialysis needles driven into the same flesh over and over again.

Where my collar gaped open, a vicious scar stretched more than four inches across my chest. That was the mark of emergency open-heart surgery to resuscitate a failing heart.

Murray stopped breathing. The color drained from his face.

"What... is this..." His lips trembled, his voice splintering apart.

He remembered what the doctor had told him three months ago: "All her indicators are normal. She's faking it to avoid donating her kidney."

If she'd been faking, how could there be a scar from a surgery that pulled her back from death? How could there be needle marks horrifying enough to turn a person's stomach?

The ballroom doors slammed open.

A squad of fully armed officers strode in.

The lead detective held up an arrest warrant, his voice cutting through the hall like a blade:

"Where is Lavinia Henson?"

"You are suspected of bribing a physician to forge medical records and of lacing Beatrice Henson's emergency medication with poison over an extended period. You are under suspicion of attempted murder!"

"Take her."