I reminded her again. "Hospital policy requires a family member's signature. Or what about your fiancé?"
My tone stayed flat. Routine. Clinical.
Sophie's face contorted. "You'd better keep your mouths shut. If a single word of this leaks, I'll make sure none of you ever see another sunrise."
I raised an eyebrow but didn't press further.
I'd seen this kind of thing plenty of times in this hospital.
I simply placed the consent form in front of her. "Think it over and decide quickly. Time waits for no one—once your surgery is done, I still need to get back to my wedding..."
My words were cut off by a man's voice from behind.
"Wedding? Who are you marrying?"
"We've been divorced three months and you're already getting married?!"
Rhys stood at the operating room entrance, four bodyguards in black flanking him like a wall.
His tailored suit accentuated his tall frame, his presence radiating an almost suffocating pressure.
"Leonora, do you hear me talking to you?"
"What's this? Three months divorced and you've already forgotten your ex-husband?"
His gaze swept past me. Before I could respond, his expression shifted the moment he spotted Sophie on the operating table.
She lay there with an oxygen tube, her face deathly pale.
Pain flickered through Rhys's eyes instantly, and his voice turned glacial. "Leonora, what did you do to her?"
"She was perfectly fine when she left this morning! What have you two been doing behind my back?!"
Sophie raised a trembling hand toward him. "Rhys! She's trying to kill me!"
Her voice came out hoarse and broken. "She took a scalpel and twisted it inside me! She said, 'After this cut, you'll never have children again!' I begged her to stop, but she kept going until I nearly died from the pain..."
Before she could finish, violent coughs wracked her body. Her chest heaved, and the cardiac monitor shrieked its alarm.
Gasping for breath, she screamed with every ounce of strength she had left: "So you're Rhys's ex-wife!"
"Rhys, she's jealous! Jealous that I can give you children! Jealous that I'm going to be Mrs. Abbott!"
I dropped the blood-soaked gauze into the medical waste bin, then picked up the surgical record and waved it slowly in front of Rhys. "Mr. Abbott, a ruptured abscess in her lower body triggered sepsis. If your fiancée had arrived forty minutes later, she'd be in the morgue right now."