Chapter 7
The hospital records office called me back the following afternoon.
Their voice was professional, careful.
“Ms. Hart, after reviewing the file, we can confirm that your brother Nathan Hart’s heart was transplanted into a patient named Evelyn Cross the day after the accident.”
For one awful second, the world went silent.
My phone slid against my ear.
I could hear my own heartbeat thundering.
Nathan’s heart.
Inside Evelyn.
I hung up and sat motionless at my desk, staring at nothing.
Memory rose like floodwater.
The day Nathan died.
I had called him that night from a side street downtown, frightened and crying after a group of drunken men started following me.
My battery had been dying.
I remembered sobbing, “Nathan, please come get me.”
He had laughed softly, trying to calm me.
“Stay where you are, bug. I’m coming.”
He never made it.
Instead, Isaac had appeared.
He had driven the men off, wrapped his coat around my shoulders, and brought me home while I shook in the passenger seat.
That was the night he became my hero.
The night I started falling for him.
And hours later, we learned Nathan had died in a crash on his way to reach me.
At the time, the police said it was an accident caused by a drunk driver.
The man went to prison.
The case was closed.
But now my skin crawled.
Nathan had been on his way to save me.
Evelyn needed a heart.
Isaac had been there just in time.
I suddenly couldn’t breathe.
Mia crouched beside my chair as I doubled over.
“Caroline. Caroline, look at me.”
“Nathan’s heart,” I whispered. “Evelyn has Nathan’s heart.”
Her face changed.
“Oh my God.”
I looked up at her, tears burning my eyes.
“What if his death wasn’t random?”
The room went still.
Mia stood slowly.
Then she said, “We find out.”
I sent Evelyn a message that evening from a new number.
I told her I had found something Nathan had left behind for her.
She responded almost immediately.
Where?
We met the next day at a quiet tea room on the edge of the city.
She arrived in cream cashmere, elegant and composed, but the moment she sat down, her eyes went to the journal in my hand.
Her calm cracked.
“That was his,” she whispered.
I slid it across the table.
“He wrote about you constantly.”
Her fingers trembled as she opened it.
For several minutes, she said nothing.
Tears dropped silently onto the pages.
I watched her without speaking.
Finally, I asked, “After Nathan died, what did my family leave for you?”
She looked up, confused.
“What?”
“You never came to see us. We never saw you. We never gave you anything. So what exactly did you receive after he died?”
A flicker of unease crossed her face.
“I don’t understand.”
I leaned forward.
“You received his heart.”
The color drained from her face.
For a second, she looked as if she might faint.
Then she laughed shakily.
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking.”
Her hand flew to her chest.
“No. Isaac found a donor for me. He told me the man was already dying. He said—”
She stopped.
Her breathing turned ragged.
I held her gaze.
“The donor was Nathan.”
She shoved back from the table so violently the chair scraped.
“No.”
“It’s true.”
“No.” Her voice rose. “No, Isaac would never—”
But something in her expression betrayed her.
A memory.
A detail.
A lie falling into place.
She grabbed her bag with clumsy hands and backed away from the table.
“Evelyn,” I said sharply.
But she turned and fled.
I let her go.
Outside, my private investigator, who had been waiting in an unmarked car, began following her.
By nightfall he called me.
“She went straight to Isaac.”