After six grueling hours, Rose Harrison was finally pulled back from the brink. She was wheeled out of surgery and placed into the quiet, sterile vacuum of the intensive care unit.

"Keep a close watch on her," Dr. Derek Gardner said, his voice etched with exhaustion. "The immediate danger has passed, but the long-term effects—neurological or otherwise—are anyone’s guess."

Maximus Anderson gave a curt nod.

The news that the surgery had been a success brought a strange, hollow relief to his chest. But as he looked down at her battered, unconscious face, that relief soured into a familiar, cold resentment. The devil looks after his own, he thought. She would survive just to be a thorn in his side.

He knew she needed absolute rest, but he couldn't help himself. He stepped into the ICU, his eyes scanning her pale features with a predatory, mocking intensity.

"Attempted suicide?" He sneered down at her. "Quite the performance, Rose. Is this your latest attempt to manipulate me?"

Only the rhythmic, mechanical hum of the ventilator answered him.

He remembered the sharpness of her tongue in the past, how she would bite back at every opportunity. Now, broken and hollowed out by her own doing, she looked pathetic. He walked out, satisfied by the silence.

Ten minutes later, Delilah Kelly slipped into the room. Her eyes were hard, fixed on the woman in the bed with a venomous intent.

"So, you’re not dead yet?" She stood over Rose, her expression oscillating between a twisted, manic joy and a flash of bitter sorrow. "You know he only loves me. Why did you have to steal him away?"

The sight of Rose—the woman who had trapped her lover in a marriage—set Delilah’s heart aflame with jealousy. She reached for the IV line snaking into the back of Rose’s hand. Her fingers traced the plastic tube, cold and clinical, before she gripped it.

Snap.

She yanked it free.

The skin on Rose’s hand tore, bright red blood welling up from the raw puncture. Even in her coma, Rose’s brow furrowed, a flicker of agony crossing her face as her body recoiled from the sudden loss of fluids.

Delilah laughed, a sharp, ragged sound. "Suffer for me, my dear 'best friend.' Your time is running out."

She scanned the room, confident in the shadows, and slipped out before anyone could witness her handiwork. She didn't want to be in the room when the body went cold. She had no idea, however, that the room’s corner-mounted security camera had captured every second.

Without the support of the IV, Rose began to twitch and gasp, her throat emitting a ragged, strangled noise.

Penny Shaw, the night-shift nurse, was doing her rounds when she heard the erratic, desperate sound. She hurried into the ICU, her heart hammering against her ribs, only to freeze at the sight of the dangling, severed IV line.

It hadn't fallen out. Someone had ripped it out.

The realization sent a chill down her spine. Patients in deep comas didn't have the motor control to tear their own lines out. She pressed the emergency call button and scrambled into a corner, hiding, terror clouding her judgment.

Moments later, the hallway erupted with the heavy thud of boots. Dr. Gardner and a medical team surged into the room, their faces hardening as they took in the carnage. They moved with surgical precision, stabilizing Rose and re-hooking the lines, though they now draped her in a mask of oxygen and monitors, turning her into a prisoner of the medical machinery.

The doctors shared a grim, knowing look, their silence thick with suspicion. Who would want a frail, dying girl dead enough to hunt her in her own hospital bed? It was a classic, cutthroat power play. In the world of the elite, the blood didn't stop flowing just because you were off the battlefield.