By the next day, the information Lucian released was everywhere.

“STELLA WHITMORE MAY HAVE BEEN MURDERED” reached the top of the trends.

Pearl’s old photographs and medical records followed.

Some platforms warned viewers before displaying the images.

But the recording spread farthest.

She trembled and cried.

“My face and eyes came from Stella Whit—”

The name was unfinished.

People understood anyway.

Some placed old photographs of me beside Pearl’s and compared every detail.

“Wait. The features are shaped differently, but the hairline and skin texture are identical.”

Her fans fought back.

“Good skin looks like good skin. Does everyone with a nice complexion suddenly have stolen skin? You’ve been reading too many thrillers.”

“Fine. Ignore the skin. What about the red mark beneath her left eye? Same place. Same shape, even magnified. How many people have that exact mark? I’ve got better odds of winning the lottery.”

“Does nobody else find this terrifying? Stella disappears. Pearl suddenly comes home. Nobody heard anything about a biological daughter all these years, while Stella was adopted. Now one is missing and the other has a new face. Think about it.”

Pearl’s fans kept defending her.

The arguments raged.

In Lucian’s car, I leaned into the front passenger seat to read Miles’s tablet with him.

Despite her fans, opinion was turning toward suspicion of the Whitmores.

The police would have to investigate.

If this continued, the truth might finally emerge.

Since dying, I hadn’t had a more satisfying morning.

Miles stretched his neck and glanced out the window.

He stopped.

“Sir. I think that’s Tessa’s family.”

Lucian remained focused on his phone.

He had seen her mutilated body, but he showed no particular response.

Empathy had never been one of his strengths.

I looked outside.

Tessa’s parents walked together, supporting each other.

Her mother carried an urn.

Ahead stood the Temple of the Thousand Lights.

They must have been taking her ashes there for prayers and safekeeping.

Her ghost followed close beside her mother.

She was fainter than before.

Nearly transparent.

She could disappear at any moment.

Perhaps she would be reborn soon.

Good.

She would be free.

I wished her happiness in the next life with all my heart.

I still had a road to walk.

Until Julian and Vivian paid in blood, I wasn’t leaving.

As I turned away, Tessa sensed me.

“Stella!”

Traffic had stopped ahead.

I slipped through the car door to meet her.

“I’m so glad. I didn’t know how to find you.”

“What is it?”

“I remembered something. You asked whether I knew who got my organs. I never saw him, but before I died, I heard someone say, ‘Careful. Mr. Sterling needs the liver intact.’”

Sterling.

I couldn’t immediately place the name.

Then I saw her legs.

They were gone.

I grabbed her.

She looked down and smiled.

“It hurts a little.”

She was smiling.

I wanted to cry.

She turned toward her parents, who were still walking toward the temple.

She tried to hold back her tears.

“Goodbye, Mom. Goodbye, Dad.”

“Perhaps you’ll find each other again,” I said. “In another life.”

She shook her head.

“There isn’t another life for me, Stella.”

“What?”

I thought she was going to be reborn.

She was disappearing forever.

I tightened my grip, terrified.

It did nothing.

Everything below her waist was gone. The arm in my hand began dissolving.

“No. Please.”

Grief and rage broke out of me.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I shouted at the sky. “Why do you keep doing this to us? Is being kind and powerless a crime?”

“It’s all right.”

With her remaining hand, she wiped my tears.

“I chose this.”

She looked at the enormous world around us.

Then at the backs of her parents, already farther away.

Her smile turned sad.

“This world hurts too much. I don’t want to come back.”

I couldn’t answer.

It did.

It hurt so much.

“When I first saw you, you felt familiar,” she said. “You look like an older girl I knew at the orphanage. She was kind to me. Looked after me.”

She lightly touched the red mark on my face.

“If she grew up safely, she must have been as beautiful as you.”

Her eyes moved past me to the black Maybach.

Her smile deepened.

Her fading arms closed around me.

“Let me leave you a present.”

Before I could understand, she vanished in my arms.

A tiny white crystal remained, like a snowflake.

It floated toward my chest and melted into me.

I didn’t know what it was.

My spirit tingled and warmed.

Then the car began moving.

The tether drew me back inside before I could think.

Miles was answering a call.

His expression changed.

“You’re certain?”

After receiving confirmation, he turned.

“Sir. Julian was released this morning.”

Lucian’s thumb stopped moving on his phone.

“Who authorized it?”

I wondered the same thing.

He hadn’t expected the transfer alone to put Julian in prison permanently.

But a financial case this large, reported by Lucian personally, should have taken time to investigate.

At least a couple of weeks.

It had barely begun.

“Theodore Sterling. Chairman of Redwood Bank. He personally vouched for him and posted a guarantee covering the full eight point four billion.”

Theodore Sterling.

Tessa’s last words returned to me.

Mr. Sterling needed her liver.