The city passed in a blur outside the car window.
Isabella sat in the back seat of the silver sedan, her arms crossed beneath her navy-blue coat. The streets of Fourth Locality slipped by—narrow alleyways giving way to sleeker roads, old steel signs replaced by glimmering digital billboards as they moved closer to the city's upper zones.
Amelia sat beside her, scrolling through her phone, airpods in, humming to herself like they weren't escorting their own sister to the unknown. Arthur Lin's focus remained fixed on the road, and Fiona Lin alternated between checking her makeup in the rearview mirror and complaining about the traffic.
No one said goodbye that morning. No farewell. No apologies. No closure.
Mildred had only pulled her into a hug, whispered, "You owe them nothing, Bella. Not even a backward glance."
So Isabella didn't look back.
Her fingers tightened slightly in her lap. She had been given a name that didn't belong to her, raised in a family that didn't want her, and trained in shadows by people who had loved her in the only way they could—by making her powerful.
She was going to meet her biological family. People she didn't know. People who'd lost her the day she was born. People who hadn't fought hard enough to find her. She didn't expect warmth. She didn't expect love.
Honestly, she expected nothing.
But fate had other plans.
As they neared the hospital crossing, emergency sirens and flashing lights lit the street in crimson and white. Paramedics rushed from the entrance of St. Helene's General, nurses wheeling in a collapsed elderly woman on a gurney. Several men in suits surrounded the scene, arguing with hospital staff.
"Traffic," Arthur muttered, annoyed, tapping the steering wheel.
"Of course," Fiona sighed dramatically. "Some old hag probably passed out from skipping breakfast."
Isabella's gaze locked on the scene in front of the hospital. Something about it—about the panic, the futility in the doctors' gestures—triggered something deep and sharp in her.
Not pity. Not panic.
Purpose.
"You don't wait to be invited to save a life," Mildred's words echoed in her memory.
Her hand moved to the seatbelt.
Fiona turned, eyebrows raised. "Where do you think you're going?"
Isabella didn't answer. She pushed open the door, stepped onto the pavement, and started walking—calm, steady, unshaken—toward the chaos.
Arthur shouted her name. Amelia rolled her eyes. Fiona cursed under her breath.
But Isabella didn't pause. Not once.
Because the moment she saw the woman on that stretcher—unmoving, struggling to breathe—something shifted.
She didn't know who she was saving.
She didn't know that man with sharp eyes and clenched fists who watched helplessly as doctors failed his grandmother.
She didn't know that in just minutes, everything about her life would begin to change.
All she knew was this:
A storm had arrived.
And Isabella Lin was going to walk straight into the eye of it.
Next Chapter Teaser: When doctors fail, she bets everything on her skills—and catches the eye of the man whose life she unknowingly already belongs to...