Chapter 5 - TWO FATHERS, ONE CHILD, AND A BULLET BETWEEN THEMAdrian ordered his guards to barricade the trauma wing.
Then he walked into the hallway alone.
I followed him.
“You are staying with Ethan,” he said.
“I spent seven years running from your family. I’m done hiding.”
“This is not bravery, Claire.”
“No. It’s motherhood.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he handed me a small pistol.
“Safety is here. Point at the center of the body. Do not hesitate.”
The weapon felt heavy and wrong in my hand.
We found Damian waiting in the surgical atrium beneath a glass ceiling.
Sprinklers rained over broken chairs and abandoned gurneys. Smoke drifted through the air.
Damian stood beside a wheelchair.
In it sat an elderly man connected to an oxygen tank.
Adrian stopped.
“Father.”
Sebastian Blackwood lifted his head.
The man had supposedly died fifteen years earlier.
Yet there he was, pale and skeletal, with the same merciless eyes as his sons.
“You look disappointed,” Sebastian said.
Adrian raised his gun.
“I buried you.”
“You buried an empty coffin.”
Damian moved behind the wheelchair.
“Our father built everything on lies.”
Sebastian smiled faintly.
“Empires are lies powerful men force others to believe.”
I stepped forward.
“What did you do to Ethan?”
Sebastian looked at me as though I were a specimen under glass.
“Your son is the first successful carrier of the Blackwood mutation.”
“I don’t care what you call it.”
“You should. His blood repairs damaged tissue at an extraordinary rate. Damian’s organs are failing from injuries sustained twelve years ago. Ethan can save him.”
Adrian’s gun shifted toward Damian.
“You came to drain the blood from a seven-year-old child?”
Damian’s expression sharpened.
“I came to take what was made for me.”
“He was not made for you,” I said.
Damian looked at me.
“You were chosen because you carried a rare immune marker. Adrian was chosen because his body tolerated the mutation. I supplied the final sequence.”
Adrian’s voice fell to a deadly whisper.
“He is not yours.”
“Genetically, the test disagrees.”
“Fatherhood is not a laboratory percentage.”
Damian’s smile vanished.
For the first time, anger replaced his calm.
“You had everything. The empire. The name. Her.”
Adrian’s eyes narrowed.
“You never knew Claire.”
“No. But I watched you with her. Father sent men to terminate the pregnancy. I redirected them.”
I stared at Damian.
“You helped me escape?”
“I needed the child alive.”
The truth was colder than cruelty.
Even my rescue had been part of their design.
Sebastian lifted one trembling hand.
“Enough. Bring the boy.”
Adrian pointed the gun at his father’s heart.
“You will never touch him.”
Sebastian gave a tired smile.
“Then Damian dies.”
“That is not my concern.”
“It should be. The same mutation that is destroying Damian has begun inside you.”
Adrian did not react.
I did.
“What?”
Sebastian nodded toward Adrian’s sleeve.
“Ask him why his hands tremble. Ask why he has lost feeling in two fingers. Ask why he has been coughing blood for six months.”
I looked at Adrian.
He avoided my eyes.
“Is that true?”
“It changes nothing.”
“It changes everything!”
Damian stepped closer.
“Ethan’s blood could save both of us.”
“At what cost?” I demanded.
Sebastian answered calmly.
“All of it.”
The pistol shook in my hand.
“You mean he would die.”
“To save the Blackwood bloodline,” Sebastian said, “one child is a reasonable price.”
Adrian fired.
The bullet entered his father’s chest.
Sebastian stared down at the spreading blood.
Surprise crossed his face before his body sagged sideways in the wheelchair.
Damian roared and raised his weapon.
Adrian fired again.
Damian’s gun flew from his hand.
Before anyone could move, the glass ceiling exploded.
Ropes dropped through the shattered panels.
Federal agents descended into the atrium.
“Weapons down!”
Adrian’s guards appeared from every entrance.
Damian’s men emerged from the smoke.
Dozens of guns pointed in every direction.
Then Ethan’s voice came through the hospital speakers.
“Mom?”
My heart stopped.
The security monitor changed.
Ethan stood alone in the trauma room.
Behind him was Dr. Vale.
Alive.
Smiling.
The man we had seen die had been wearing a prosthetic mask.
May you like
The real doctor placed a scalpel against Ethan’s throat.
“Bring me Adrian and Damian,” Vale said. “Or the miracle child dies in sixty seconds.”
