Chapter 1

The mortuary was cold, too cold. It seeped into my bones, a chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning. My father, Professor Miller, the man who taught ethics at the local university, lay on a steel table.

They said it was a car accident. Quick. Painless.

I stood beside him, the scent of lilies and formaldehyde thick in my throat. His face was peaceful, too peaceful. My hand reached out, trembling, to brush a stray gray hair from his forehead.

That' s when I saw it.

Just below the collar of the crisp white shirt the mortician had dressed him in, a thin, raised line. A scar. Fresh. Surgical.

My breath hitched.

"What is this?" I asked the mortician, my voice barely a whisper.

He looked flustered, avoiding my eyes. "Mrs. Miller... uh, Ms. Miller, sometimes, with trauma..."

"This is not from trauma," I said, my voice gaining an edge I hadn't used in years. "This is a surgical incision. What happened here?"

He stammered something about hospital procedures, about respect for the deceased.

Lies. All lies.

I left the mortuary, the image of that scar burned into my mind. My past, the one I had fought so hard to bury, clawed its way to the surface. I still had contacts.

I called one. An old one. A private investigator who owed me.

"Find out about my father," I said. "Arthur Miller. Died two days ago. Car accident. But there's something wrong."

He didn't ask questions. He just said, "I'll call you."

The call came twelve hours later. I was sitting in my father' s study, surrounded by his books, the smell of old paper and pipe tobacco a comfort and a torment.

"Sarah," the PI' s voice was grim. "Your father's heart... it was transplanted."

The room tilted. "What? Who? How?"

"The recipient is a Chloe Davis. She's currently stable. The consent forms... they were signed by an Ethan Hayes."

Ethan. My fiancé.

Chloe. My best friend.

The books on the shelves seemed to blur. My father' s heart. Beating in Chloe' s chest. Chloe, who was now pregnant with Ethan' s child.

The betrayal was a physical blow, knocking the air from my lungs. My father, dead. His heart, stolen. Given to my best friend, who was sleeping with my fiancé.

And Ethan signed off on it.

The cold I felt in the mortuary was nothing compared to the ice forming around my own heart now.