Chapter 3

The next afternoon, using a hospital conference as an excuse, I met Logan Reed in an unassuming corner café.

He was younger than I had imagined.

I pushed the sealed plastic bag containing the tea blend and soaked napkins across the table.

He didn't pick it up immediately. Instead, his sharp eyes studied my face for ten full seconds.

Then he asked to see my hands, inspecting my fingernails closely.

Finally, he pulled out a compact penlight, waving it across my field of vision to gauge my pupillary response.

"Dr. Hayes."

He tucked the light away, his voice dropping low.

"This isn't an anxiety disorder."

"You are being systematically poisoned."

Even though I had already suspected it, hearing the word "poisoned" out loud made my head erupt in a deafening buzz, leaving my thoughts completely blank.

Noticing my reaction, Logan continued calmly.

"It's a specialized alkaloid synthesized from a rare South American mushroom. Completely odorless, totally tasteless."

"Micro-dosing over an extended period won't kill you outright, but it systematically breaks down your central nervous system."

"It induces severe anxiety, paranoia, emotional volatility, and eventual hallucinations."

"Once the threshold builds up in your system, abruptly cutting it off triggers intense withdrawal symptoms identical to acute schizophrenia."

"Medically, it's nearly impossible to detect in standard panels."

"Legally, it creates a flawless paper trail."

The full picture snapped into place.

That Mental Health Guardianship Authorization was the legal cell he had built for me.

The second I "lost my mind," he could take that contract along with the clinical diagnosis from his bought-and-paid-for Chief Medical Consultant to smoothly seize every scrap of wealth under my name.

My salary, my properties, my future earnings as a top-tier surgeon.

While I would spend the rest of my days confined behind the walls of a private asylum, treated as a genuine lunatic.

A violent surge of bile rose in my throat; I clamped a hand over my mouth, fighting the urge to vomit.

"Mr. Reed."

I lifted my head, the tears completely gone from my eyes, replaced by a cold, burning vengeance.

"Find three things for me."

"First, the distribution chain for this poison, including the supplier and every broker involved."

"Second, every piece of evidence showing how he launders money through that fish."

"Third, all of his offshore accounts and hidden assets."

Logan looked at me, a faint, knowing smirk playing on his lips.

"Sounds like Dr. Hayes is gearing up for major surgery."

I stared out the window, every syllable laced with steel.

"No."

"He wanted to amputate my entire life. So I'm going to excise his malignant tumor first."

"I want him ruined, disgraced, and left with nothing!"

From that day forward, my "condition" took a dramatic turn for the worse.

I began bursting into sudden, shrill screams in front of his high-profile business partners.

During dinner parties he hosted, I would sit and hold vivid conversations with empty chairs.

Once, right in front of his parents, I even used a net to haul the multimillion-dollar "Moonshadow" out of the aquarium, cradling the gasping koi in my arms while singing it a nursery rhyme.

Julian's face turned completely livid, yet he had to play the devoted partner, assuring his parents, "Summer is just under immense pressure. Her mind has been a bit clouded lately."

He showered me with gentle comforts while pressing me harder and harder to sign the guardianship paperwork.

He genuinely believed the fish was hooked, thoroughly broken, and ready to be reeled in.

He had no idea that every single night, after he fell into a deep sleep, I used a pinhole camera to copy every file on his computer.

I had only one real target: the black leather-bound ledger in his study's hidden safe, the one notebook he never let out of his sight.

I knew his true, illicit bookkeeping lived inside those pages.

Yet every combination I attempted on that safe failed.

I didn't dare guess again.

Then I recalled that every time he walked up to open the safe, his eyes would instinctively drift toward a painting hanging on the wall.

It was an ink wash painting, also depicting a koi leaping upward.

He had told me it was a gift from a professor who mentored him in college, intended to inspire him to climb the social ladder.

I had never questioned the story.

Until one weekend when he flew out on a business trip, and I carefully lifted the painting from the wall.

The forensic technician Logan brought in swept a UV blacklight over the back of the canvas.

A faint row of numbers and a name written in plain English letters glowed beneath the beam.

Victoria Lane, followed by a specific date.

My brain detonated.

Victoria Lane.

Julian's college sweetheart. His eternal, untouchable first love.

I had seen that name once in an old photo album, which he brushed off as just a casual classmate.

And that date was the day she died.

She had passed away from leukemia because her impoverished family couldn't afford a bone marrow transplant.

So when he whispered, "Her pedigree is priceless," he wasn't talking about the damn fish.

He was talking about his pure, tragic first love, the woman who died penniless in his arms.

And me? A cardiothoracic surgeon who clawed her way up from an ordinary working-class background through sheer grit—in his eyes, I was never anything more than a crude, utilitarian substitute for Victoria.

He poisoned me, plotted to steal everything I owned, and treated my mother's life like trash.

Perhaps from the very beginning, he never loved me at all. He only coveted the immense value a top specialist could generate, the resources he felt Victoria was unjustly denied.

Nausea twisted my gut so violently I thought I'd choke on my own bile.

That night, I slipped into the study once more.

Using that date of death, I keyed the combination into the keypad.

Click.

The heavy safe door swung open.

Inside, resting quietly on the velvet lining, was the black ledger.

With trembling fingers, I opened the first page.

The horrors laid out in ink made my entire body shudder in pure revulsion.