Chapter Seven

Seraphina Vance’s POV

 ‘The Bloodline Trap’

​The smell of antiseptic hit my throat before my eyes could make sense of the fluorescent glare above me. It was sharp, chemical, and suffocating.

​I pressed my back against the cold glass panel of the observation gallery, staring down into the intensive care unit of St. Jude’s Private Wing. Inside, wires crisscrossed over the frail chest of Chloe, my half-sister. The rhythm of the heart monitor was jagged, spiking with short, frantic beats that set off red warnings on the overhead screens.

​"She collapsed forty minutes ago," my father’s quiet voice echoed behind me.

​Harrison Vance didn't touch my shoulder. He stood two paces back, his hands clasped behind his tailored coat, staring at the glass as if he were inspecting a failing investment rather than his dying daughter.

​"She was stable yesterday, Harrison," I said, my voice barely a whisper above the low hum of the medical machinery. I was nervous and didn't trust him, so my tummy twisted. "Her test results are stable, " said the doctor. 

​"Human bodies don't follow board schedules, Seraphina," he murmured. His tone was smooth, stripped of all panicked edges, the exact voice he used when he was about to orchestrate an execution in the boardroom. "Her kidneys are failing. The red cell destruction has spiked. If we don't get a transplant within forty-eight hours, she won't see the end of the week."

​I turned slowly to face him. The dim hallway lights cast long, skeletal shadows across his sharp jawline. "Where is Lucian?"

​"Lucian is dealing with the mess you left in Zurich," Harrison replied smoothly, his eyes narrowing just a fraction. "Or did you think I wouldn't notice the quiet paper trail you left behind before coming back here? He's angry, Seraphina. He's torn. And right now, he cannot protect you from the reality of this room."

​Before I could answer, the double doors at the end of the corridor hissed open.

​Dr. Jonathan Sterling stepped out, pulling his surgical mask down around his neck. Sterling was the chief of hematology, a man whose career, research labs, and lifestyle were entirely funded by the Vance Foundation. He carried an iPad, his fingers twitching slightly against the casing.

​"Harrison," Sterling began, his voice practiced, tight with artificial gravity. He glanced at me for a split second, his eyes sliding away toward the floor almost immediately. "We ran the emergency Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) panel against the private donor registry we cross referenced last night."

​My breath hitched in my chest. I took a half step forward, my hands instinctively clenching into fists inside my coat pockets. "Did you find a donor?"

​"We didn't just find a match," Dr. Sterling said, fixing his gaze on Harrison, completely ignoring my presence. "We found an anomaly. In fifteen years of transplant medicine, I have never seen a non sibling match this precise. It's a ninety-nine percent genetic alignment across all major loci."

​The air in the corridor felt suddenly thin, as if the oxygen were being sucked out through the ventilation shafts.

​"Who?" Harrison asked quietly. "Name your price, Jonathan. Buy the donor out."

​Dr. Sterling finally looked directly at me. His eyes were completely unreadable, cold as steel.

​"We don't need to buy anyone out, Mr. Vance," Sterling said, raising the screen to display a detailed blood typing ledger with a single name highlighted in deep crimson at the bottom. "The donor is already in the building."

​I looked down at the screen.

​Seraphina Cross Vance. HLA Match: 99.4%. Status: Immediate Compatibility.

​A cold, paralyzing weight dropped directly onto my heart.

​"That's impossible," I breathed, backing away until my shoulders slammed against the icy glass of the observation window. "We don't share the same mother. The genetic variance between our lines makes a full match statistically near zero. I was tested six months ago and I wasn't even a partial match!"

​"Initial screenings miss deep allele matches when blood counts are diluted, Miss Vance," Dr. Sterling stated smoothly, not a single flicker of hesitation in his delivery. "The lab resequenced your sample with our high resolution protocol. The results are absolute. You are her only survival vector."

​"Look at her, Seraphina," Harrison whispered, stepping closer to me. He pointed a long finger toward the glass.

​Inside the room, Chloe’s body convulsed slightly, a high pitched alarm screaming from the monitor as two nurses rushed to her bedside, pumping medication directly into her IV line.

​"She is nineteen years old," Harrison said into my ear, his breath cold against my skin. "Your blood line ruined her mother's life. Now, your marrow can save hers. Or will you let your hatred for me kill an innocent girl?"

​My chest heaved as I stared at Chloe's pale, trembling hand spilling over the edge of the white sheet. The guilt clawed at my lungs, thick and heavy, but deep beneath it, a violent alarm was ringing in my mind.

​Six months ago, I was incompatible. Today, I am a miracle.

​"I need to talk to Lucian," I gasped, reaching into my bag for my phone. "I won't sign any consent form until Lucian is in this room."

​"Lucian signed the emergency medical proxy three hours ago," Harrison said, pulling a folded piece of paper from his inner coat pocket and holding it up to my face.

​My eyes locked onto the bottom of the page.

​There, in sweeping, familiar dark ink, was Lucian's signature authorizing any mandatory donor extraction deemed necessary by the chief physician.

​My phone suddenly vibrated in my palm. A single text popped up on the lock screen from an unknown, encrypted number:

​Don't let them put you under. The lab results are fake.

​I raised my head in terror, but before I could take a single step toward the elevator, two heavy set guards in dark grey suits stepped out of the stairwell, blocking the exit.

​Dr. Sterling pulled a glass vial and a prefilled syringe from his coat. "We need to begin the preparation protocol now, Seraphina. For Chloe's sake."