"Alex! Open your eyes, I said, open your eyes!"
Olivia’s scream pierces the air, tearing through the old chapel’s walls covered in dust and smoke. Her trembling hands press against Alexander’s torn chest. Warm blood seeps from between her fingers, soaking the lace of her white wedding gown, now stained deep red.
"Medical team! Move in now!" Daniel’s voice booms from the shattered doorway.
Two military uniformed medics rush forward, carrying emergency bags and a defibrillator. They grab Olivia’s shoulders, forcefully pulling her away from Alexander, who remains stiff and unmoving.
"Let me! Stay with him!" Olivia screams wildly, kicking and clutching the medics’ arms with her remaining strength. Tears flood her face, her screams shattering the cold Scottish mountain silence.
"Miss Carter, calm down! They need to insert the needle and defibrillate immediately!" Daniel restrains Olivia from behind, holding her tightly even though his own ribs ache painfully.
"Clear!"
"Charge to two hundred joules! Clear!"
Alexander’s tall body is lifted rigidly off the floor before being slammed back down. The monitor flashes a straight line, emitting a monotonous, heartbreaking sound.
"Charge to three hundred joules! Clear!"
"Come back, Alex, please come back," Olivia whispers hoarsely, her voice devoid of hope in the midst of pure desperation. She kneels on the wet ground, staring at the pale face of the silver-haired man now ghostly white.
"Heartbeat returns! Weak, forty beats per minute!" the medical doctor yells as he places an oxygen mask over Alexander’s face. "Inject two vials of epinephrine! We need to stabilize his blood pressure before transporting him to the medevac helicopter!"
Olivia collapses onto Daniel’s chest, exhaling a sharp, breathless relief that feels like a knife in her chest. But that relief doesn’t last long.
In the corner of the altar, Ethan cries in fear, pointing toward the old bell tower behind the chapel. "Mommy, there’s a bad guy up there."
An old man steps out into the light, moving forward slowly under the burst of the helicopter’s searchlight that cuts through the ruined chapel ceiling. His silver-tipped cane taps the stone floor rhythmically.
"Father...?" Olivia whispers, her voice filled with disbelief and burning pain.
The old man stands tall in his expensive wool coat. His wrinkled face shows no surprise or regret for the bloody chaos surrounding him. In his left hand, he holds a small remote with a blinking green light.
"You’ve always been such a troublesome child, Olivia," Richard says calmly, emotionless, as if scolding a small child who spilled milk.
"Are you working with Julian?!" Olivia shouts, standing tall and blocking Richard from Ethan’s view.
"Julian is just an emotional young man easily manipulated by revenge," Richard replies casually. "He thinks he’s controlling everything. But in reality, he’s the one providing all the funding and access to the lab to fake his own death five years ago with Carter Corp’s money."
Daniel glares, raising his gun at Richard. "So you’re the one funding Julian all this time?!"
"Of course," Richard answers unflinchingly. "Alexander is too honest and too dangerous for the Carter family business. He refuses to compromise at the London port. I need Rington Group to be led by someone with a legal flaw I can control completely."
"You sacrificed your own grandson for that rotten business?!" Olivia screams, her chest rising and falling with pure rage.
"Ethan is a valuable asset," Richard replies, eyeing the boy with a calculating look. "With the custody papers you signed, Julian’s death, and Alexander’s tonight’s paralysis, all shares of Rington Group and Carter Corp will automatically merge under my guardianship."
Richard raises the small remote in his hand.
"The device on Ethan’s foot isn’t connected to a bomb, Olivia," Richard says softly, almost threatening. "It’s a radio frequency transmitter linked directly to the automatic pacemaker implanted in Ethan’s body during his emergency surgery last night."
"If the indicator light turns red," Richard whispers, pressing his thumb on the main button, "then the electrical signal to Ethan’s heart is cut in three seconds. The boy will die of sudden cardiac arrest without any trace of poison or external injury."
"Devil!" Daniel shouts, raising his gun to shoot.
"Don’t shoot!" Olivia yells, grabbing Daniel’s arm. Tears flow down her face again as she watches Richard slowly press the button halfway.
"That’s a very wise choice, Olivia," Richard sneers. "Hand him over to me now. You and Alexander can rot here in Scotland, while I take the rightful heir of Rington Group back to London."
At the same time, the medical team carefully lifts Alexander onto a stretcher and heads for the exit. The man is still unconscious, but his eyelids flutter softly behind the oxygen mask.
Alexander’s bloodstained fingers slowly move, feeling the floor beside the stretcher. There, a fallen smoke grenade from one of Julian’s dead guards lies on the cement floor.
"What is this?!" Richard screams in panic, coughing and closing his burning eyes.
"Daniel, take Ethan!" Olivia takes advantage of the chaos, rushing to grab Ethan from the wooden chair, cutting the thin chain around his ankle with a commando knife. Meanwhile, Olivia rushes toward Richard, swinging her elbow into his wrist.
The small green-lit remote slips from Richard’s hand, flying into the cracked stone floor and smoking.
"No!" Richard screams hysterically, kneeling and trying to reach the gap in the stones.
"Run to the helicopter! Hurry!" Daniel yells, carrying Ethan and pulling Olivia by the arm to break through the chapel door.
They leap into the military medevac helicopter, whose blades are already spinning at full speed. The stretcher with Alexander is strapped to the ceiling hooks, while the medical team continues to pump oxygen into his lungs.
The helicopter lifts off, leaving behind the burning St. Jude’s Castle beneath the dawn sky.
From inside the cabin, Olivia looks down. She sees Richard Carter standing on the chapel’s broken steps, screaming hysterically and pointing his stick at the fleeing helicopter.
But Olivia’s relief shatters into pieces when the doctor treating Alexander suddenly yells in panic.
"His blood pressure drops drastically! Internal bleeding in the pericardium!" The doctor presses down on Alexander’s chest with bloody hands. "We need open-chest surgery now! He won’t make it to Edinburgh!"
"Perform the surgery here!" Daniel orders from the front seat.
"I can’t do open-heart surgery on this unstable helicopter without compatible blood donation!" the doctor panics. "His blood type is extremely rare—AB Negative Rhesus!"
Olivia freezes. "AB Negative Rhesus?"
"Only one in ten thousand people has this blood type!" the doctor shouts, looking at the monitor as Alexander’s heartbeat weakens further. "Without a donor within ten minutes, his heart will stop forever!"
Olivia unfastens her wedding gown’s lace without hesitation.
"Take my blood," she says firmly, no longer trembling with fear. "If he dies, I have no reason to live either."
The doctor stares at Olivia in shock. Quickly, he inserts the needle into her vein. The thick red fluid flows through the tube into the transfusion bag connected to Alexander’s arm.
Olivia’s face gradually turns pallid. Her vision begins to blur as her blood is forcibly pumped out. She grips Alexander’s cold fingers, pressing them to her wet cheek.
"Hold on, Alex..." she whispers, her voice growing faint. "I give you my life, so don’t ever leave me."
But just as Olivia’s sight begins to fade into darkness, her satphone rings loudly with a high-priority emergency tone.
Daniel answers the call, listens for five seconds, then his face turns ghostly pale.
"Daniel... what is it?" Olivia whispers with her last bit of consciousness.
Daniel slowly turns to look at her, eyes wide with terror she’s never seen before.
"Maritime radar just detected a luxury yacht off the Scottish coast." His voice trembles. "Julian didn’t jump into the sea to kill himself. He managed to get on that ship with Victoria Ashford, and they just activated the patent toxin documents for Ethan on the black market!"