Laura struggled to speak, her throat dry, rasping. “Paul,” she murmured weakly. “Did it work? Did your mother… get the kidney?”

Without answering, Paul stepped forward and dropped a thick envelope onto her chest. It landed right over her surgical wound. The weight wasn’t heavy, but the pain it triggered made her gasp, a sharp, bitter reminder of the physical cost she had paid for love she believed real.

“That’s your divorce agreement,” he said casually. “I’ve already signed it.”

Laura stared at him, convinced she must have misunderstood. Divorce? The word didn’t belong here—not now, not after everything she had done. It clanged against her chest, competing with the ache in her ribs, twisting her understanding of loyalty and love.

“But I just gave you my kidney,” she whispered, her voice fragile and unsteady. “I saved your mother.”

Dorothy let out a brittle, humorless laugh. “You didn’t save anything, dear. You were useful for what you had to offer. Now that it’s gone, so are you.”

The room seemed to spin. Laura clutched the sheet beneath her, trying to steady herself as everything she believed unraveled. She looked at Dorothy—composed, precise, every detail of her appearance controlled even in illness, as if suffering itself had been styled, each movement deliberate, cruelly elegant.

Vanessa smiled, raising her left hand so the light caught the large diamond ring on her finger. “Paul and I are engaged,” she said smoothly. “And I’m pregnant.”

Laura’s heart faltered, then slammed painfully back into rhythm. She searched Paul’s face for any trace of the man she thought she knew, any sign that this was some kind of cruel misunderstanding. But his expression remained cold and distant, an iron mask that denied all hope of redemption.

“We were never really married, Laura,” he said flatly. “You were a solution. My mother needed a kidney, and you were a match. That’s all you ever were.”