He Healed Her Broken, Brilliant Heart

For seven years, I was his secret. His brilliant, naive Elodie. Last night, he held me and called me his future.

Today, his sister, my best friend, showed me the pictures from his engagement party.

My life's work, a revolutionary bio-printed kidney, was meant to save his dying fiancée. But then I overheard his real plan. If my research failed, he had a backup.

"She's got a nice pair of kidneys," he told his friends. "Perfect match."

He'd secretly filmed our most intimate moments, blackmail to force me onto the operating table. I wasn't his love. I was his insurance policy. A spare part.

He thought he had me cornered. He underestimated his "naive little scientist."

So I faked my death and disappeared.

Five years later, I'm back, my name on the cover of every scientific journal. And he's about to find out that the woman he tried to butcher is now the one who holds his entire world in her hands.

Chapter 1

Elodie POV:

For seven years, I was his secret. His brilliant, naive Elodie. Last night, he held me and called me his future. Today, his sister, my best friend, showed me the pictures from his engagement party.

The sterile, clinging scent of antiseptic and polymer gel followed me out of the lab, a perfume I' d worn for most of my adult life. As a biomedical engineer, my world was a precise, controlled environment of bio-printers, hydrogels, and the tantalizing promise of creating life from scratch. I lived in a world of data, of cellular scaffolds, of organs that grew in petri dishes instead of bodies. It was a world I understood, a world I could control.

People, on the other hand, were a chaotic, unpredictable variable I mostly avoided.

My only exception, my one great, sprawling, secret indulgence, was Barrett Ball.

For seven years, he had been the hidden corner of my hyper-focused life. The venture capitalist who ostensibly funded my research, the charismatic older brother of my best friend, the man whose touch could unravel the tightly-wound coil of my scientific mind. He was my anchor and my storm, all at once.

I pushed the door to my apartment open, the exhaustion of a sixteen-hour workday settling deep into my bones. The latest batch of kidney prototypes had shown a ninety-two percent viability rate. We were close. So close.

"You're finally back!"

A whirlwind of blonde hair and Chanel No. 5 slammed into me. Anona Ball, my best friend and the unwitting link to her brother, squeezed the air from my lungs.

"Anona," I wheezed, my arms pinned to my sides. "Can't... breathe."

My body, accustomed to the quiet solitude of the lab, recoiled from the sudden, enthusiastic contact.

"Let her breathe, Nona," I managed to get out, patting her back awkwardly.

She pulled back, grinning, not a hint of offense in her bright blue eyes. "Sorry, El! I' m just so excited to see you. You' ve been buried in that lab for