Lucian's POV...
Her words rang in my ears.
Pay for sex.
I couldn't breathe.
Not from my heart. From the weight of it. Twenty-one years of searching, of waiting, of building empires with her name carved into my chest like a scar I couldn't heal. I kept a rotting teddy bear on my nightstand like a shrine. A grown man, praying to a child's toy.
And this is what she says to me.
My heart stuttered. A skip. Then another. The familiar flutter I've learned to ignore, to hide, to breathe through.
Ventricular Arrhythmia.
The doctors use fancy words. I use simpler ones: my heart is dying. Every day. Every beat could be the last.
I look normal. I talk normal. I walk normal.
I'm so rich I could buy countries. But health? The one thing money can't steal.
