Chapter 1
On the third day after donating a kidney to me, Evan Whitmore kissed the nurse making her rounds right in front of me.
I lay frozen in my hospital bed, tears spilling down my face.
“Crying already?”
After the nurse left, he sighed helplessly.
“I wasn’t planning to hide it from you.”
“You just never noticed.”
He opened the photo album on his phone and handed it to me.
The latest picture had been taken ten minutes earlier, while I was in the bathroom vomiting until I could barely stand.
He and the young nurse had been tangled together on my hospital bed.
My teeth chattered. I forced the words out of my throat.
“If you don’t love me anymore… why did you donate a kidney to save me?”
His lips curved slightly.
As if I’d told a joke.
“Claire, we’ve been married ten years. What does love have to do with anything?”
His kidney was perfectly healthy inside me, yet it felt as though it were feeding on my flesh and blood.
He casually wiped a smear of lipstick from his mouth.
His gaze passed over me and settled on the nurse outside the door.
“She’s young. She’s sensitive about being called the other woman.”
“Just pretend you don’t know. Don’t embarrass her.”
The album titled “Caregiving Journal” contained more than nine hundred pictures.
My numb fingers kept scrolling. There seemed to be no end.
The night before my surgery, Evan had been kissing the nurse in the hospital’s on-call room.
The day I nearly died, she had pulled him close for a selfie.
They’d flashed peace signs beneath the red SURGERY IN PROGRESS light.
Kissing. Hugging. Holding hands…
At last, I reached the oldest photo.
It was from three months earlier, the day I was admitted.
The nurse and Evan had their heads together, discussing my CT scans.
My suffering had brought them together.
My tears dried. My hands stopped shaking. All I felt was sick.
Seeing that I’d finally calmed down, Evan spoke slowly.
“I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want it affecting your surgery.”
“After you got sick, I couldn’t sleep. It felt like part of me had died, too.”
“Luckily, she was so full of life.”
When he mentioned Lily Parker, his eyes softened.
“Being near her made me feel alive again.”
He bent down and gently pressed against the incision on my lower abdomen.
“The doctor said the surgery went well. My kidney is doing great in there.”
He looked up at me.
“Claire, I’ve been waiting for you to get better.”
“Then I can keep her by my side openly. Finally live for myself.”
His eyes held absolute certainty.
It was the same look he’d worn years ago, kneeling in his family’s private chapel, insisting he would marry me.
“Mrs. Whitmore, time to change your dressing!”
The door opened, and Lily came in carrying a medical tray.
She wore pink scrubs.
Her high ponytail exposed the pale curve of her neck.
Evan went to meet her, reaching out to ruffle her hair as naturally as breathing.
“Tired after last night’s shift?”
Lily shook her head with a playful pout.
They flirted as if I weren’t there.
My IV bag was empty. Blood had started backing up into the tubing.
A sharp pain stabbed at the needle site.
Lily glanced at it, then pressed a cotton swab against the swollen back of my hand.
“Mr. Whitmore is so good to you.”
She inserted a new needle, her voice full of envy.
“He must love you so much to give up a kidney for you.”
“What’s one kidney worth?”
I suddenly laughed.
“Not as much as your nine hundred photos.”
Her hand froze. She looked helplessly at Evan.
He stepped forward and shielded her behind him.
“I told you not to make things difficult for her. Don’t humiliate everyone.”
“If you can’t accept it, get a divorce.”
I had loved the man standing before me for fifteen years.
The year my family went bankrupt, my father jumped to his death.
Our creditors dragged me onto the stage at an underground auction, offering me as the final lot to settle his debts.
Evan burst in a second before the hammer fell.
Under the blinding spotlight, he lifted me onto his back and carried me out.
“Your family’s gone. I’ll protect you now.”
His family paid thirty million dollars to settle the matter.
They punished him in their private chapel, beating him so badly they nearly broke his legs.
I knelt outside, crying. Through a crack in the door, he comforted me in a hoarse voice.
“They’re just legs. As long as you’re safe, I’d give my life.”
Over the next five years, he fought his way to the head of the family.
The day he proposed, he placed the family’s bloodstained signet ring in my palm.
“Nothing can stop us from loving each other now.”
“No one can force us apart.”
At twenty-three, Evan couldn’t have known.
Ten years later, he would be the one to tear us apart.