chapter 4

When Vincent came back from his vacation with Serena, my cosmetic surgery was already over.

He got the call that I was dead, dropped everything, and rushed to the hospital. But all he found when he got there was a black body bag in the morgue freezer.

"That's impossible... how is that even possible..."

Hospital security had to hold him back. Serena was standing right there crying her eyes out, but he didn't care. He kept grabbing at the doorframe and trying to force his way inside.

"I was only gone for a few days. How did this happen? How is she just... gone?"

Christy blocked the morgue entrance.

"She developed an infection during the cosmetic surgery. We did everything we could to save her, but we couldn't bring her back."

"An infection? How could she get infected? Did you people screw something up?"

"Mr. Laurent, I heard you ignored the doctors' warnings and gave her a tattoo before her wounds had even healed. Is that true?"

Vincent's whole body froze when he heard that.

His eyes went wide and he looked like he wanted to defend himself, but no words came out.

He didn't recognize Christy. When I first met him, Christy was already studying abroad in Frostholm, and we'd only kept in touch online after that.

So right now, Vincent just stared at this cold woman in the white coat standing in front of him, and his eyes immediately turned red.

"Your insistence on rushing forward caused Ms. Collins to develop a blood infection. That consent form you signed without proper examination basically became her death sentence."

Vincent pushed for the face transplant surgery as fast as possible—to punish me for "hurting" his precious Serena. So he signed the surgical consent forms without ordering a full medical workup on me first.

But luckily, everything was going exactly according to the plan Christy and I had made.

Faking my death wasn't hard at all. We just needed to tamper with the heart rate monitor halfway through the surgery, and that would do the trick.

All Christy had to say was "Oh no, there's something wrong with the patient's blood," and the entire medical team would panic right on cue.

She was the head surgeon and a renowned expert, so nobody would question her judgment or double-check anything she said.

While everyone scrambled out of the operating room to get help and notify my family, Christy swapped me out with a corpse we'd prepared ahead of time.

The body's face was mangled and bloody enough that you couldn't make out any features, and with Christy overseeing everything the whole time, nobody would suspect a thing.

After that, she moved to a different room and finished the real surgery on me.

Right now, my face was wrapped up in bandages, and I was standing in the middle of a crowd of curious patients and visitors who'd gathered to watch the drama unfold.

I watched Vincent screaming and fighting to get into the room so he could see me one last time, but Christy held out her arm and blocked him from going any further.

Honestly, seeing him like that felt pretty satisfying.

"Ms. Collins gave me specific instructions before the surgery," Christy said calmly. "She told me that if anything went wrong during the procedure, I would have full authority to handle her remains."

Christy pulled out the authorization letter I'd signed with my own hand.

Vincent's jaw dropped. He stared at the paper like he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

"Why would she... I'm her fiancé. Why would she give a complete stranger control over her final arrangements instead of me?"

Christy shook her head, her expression cold and detached.

"The last thing Ms. Collins said to me before she went into surgery was—"

She paused for effect. "I, Avery, never want to see Vincent again for as long as I live..."

Vincent froze. The meaning behind Christy's words seemed to hit him all at once, and the muscles in his face started twitching.

His eyes turned bright red, and tears filled them almost instantly.

"She... she really said that?"

Vincent's legs gave out under him, and he would've collapsed right there on the floor if Serena hadn't grabbed him and held him up.

But then Christy waved her hand and signaled for the funeral home workers to take the body away, and that seemed to snap Vincent out of his daze. He scrambled to his feet and lunged forward.

"No, you can't take her away from me. Let me see her one more time... just once..."

Vincent's hands gripped the black body bag tight, and he was dragged across the ground until his knees scraped raw.

That was when Christy finally stopped walking.

She looked down at Vincent and quietly unzipped the body bag.

She lifted the white cloth and brushed away the frost, and what was underneath made my stomach turn.

The face was so mangled and swollen that you couldn't even recognize it anymore.

Serena took one look and her face went completely pale, then she crouched down and started throwing up.

Vincent swallowed hard and fought back his own nausea, then he carefully brushed the hair away from the corpse's forehead. He was trying to find that unfinished tulip tattoo.

Suddenly, he let out this broken, agonized cry.

His whole body went rigid and he fell straight backward, and before he could even get the word "Avery" out, he completely passed out.