The Cold Surgeon's Contract Bride novel Chapter 766

He had officially transitioned into lecture mode, but my patience was completely shot. I needed to find Ferris and confront him about everything I had just heard.

I muttered a polite excuse, brushing him off, and hurried out of the department.

The second I hit the corridor, I whipped out my phone, opening my text thread with Ferris. My thumbs flew across the screen. "Did you pull strings to get me hired?"

Right as I hit send, a blur of motion rushed toward me. I jerked my head up in shock, but before I could react, a pair of arms locked tightly around my waist.

A muffled, desperate sob pressed into my chest. "Selena, I finally found you."

"...Tiffany?" I blinked in utter confusion, finally recognizing the girl leaning out of her wheelchair to cling to me.

It was Tiffany Thorne.

Her grip on me was fierce, and a fresh wave of tears soaked right through my sweater.

"What are you doing all the way out here? You need to go back to bed. Your incisions haven't healed; you shouldn't be wandering the halls," I scolded gently, recovering my wits and rubbing her back in a soothing motion.

Even though Theodore was the architect of my family's destruction, and Caspian had just orchestrated my abduction, seeing Tiffany so fragile and broken shattered my defenses.

Tiffany was a victim in all of this, too—used and discarded by Theodore. Her entire empire had burned to the ground, her father had fled the country with her mother, and Caspian, her protector, was sitting in a jail cell. She was entirely alone.

"Selena, my mom left without me. Caspian just vanished into thin air. I went to your department over and over but you weren't there. I'm so scared. Everyone abandoned me. I'm an orphan now," she wailed, her voice cracking beneath the weight of her grief.

The word 'orphan' hit me like a physical blow. A lump formed in my throat, and the sting of unshed tears burned my eyes.