“She has less than twelve hours before systemic toxic shock shuts down her liver,” Dr. Oay said, looking directly into my eyes:
“And Thad just handed you an executed, unconditional property and marital dissolution agreement.”
A slow, radiant smile broke across my face—a smile that held zero fear, zero grief, and zero tears.
“Thaddius thought he was discarding an empty shell, Priyanka,” I whispered, reaching into my leather overnight tote on the chair and pulling out my grandfather’s 1952 twenty-ounce Scottish tweed hacking jacket:
*SLIP.*
I pulled the heavy wool over my shoulders, adjusting the lapels where the miniature bronze surveyor’s transit pin gleamed beside my collarbone:
“He thought I was Coraly Ashworth—the polite, orphan girl who took inventory of mortuary embalming fluids and kept the accounts for his funeral parlors.”
I looked at the chronometer on my wrist.
`09:14:02 CST.`
“Priyanka,” I said softly, my voice dropping sixty decibels into the silence of Room 414:
