Chapter 5: Botched Scars and Uninvited Guests

Ethan’s grip around Emma’s wrist was like a band of forged iron. His dark eyes burned with dangerous, lethal suspicion, searching her face for any trace of panic. Even flat on his back, bleeding into the expensive rug, the raw power radiating from him was suffocating.

"Who trained you?" Ethan growled, his voice a low, gravelly snarl that vibrated in his chest. "You step into my house looking like a drowned rat, but you navigate trauma medicine like a battlefield surgeon. Are you an assassin sent to finish what that car crash started? Or a corporate spy trying to keep me compliant?"

Emma didn't attempt to yank her wrist free. She simply looked down at him, her expression completely unbothered by his brute force.

"If I were an assassin, Mr. Johnson," Emma said, her voice smooth, icy, and dripping with dry sarcasm, "I wouldn't have broken my own hairpin to pick your lock, nor would I have stopped your femoral bleed. I would have sat comfortably in your kitchen, enjoyed your stolen wine, and waited four minutes for you to bleed to death on your own carpet. It requires far less effort."

Ethan froze. The sheer audacity of her sharp comeback caught him entirely off guard. A muscle twitched in his jaw as he stared at her, searching for fear and finding only absolute, unyielding coldness. Slowly, reluctantly, his fingers loosened around her wrist, though his eyes never left hers.

"Don't flatter yourself," he spat out, though the savage edge in his tone faltered for a fraction of a second. "I don't trust you."

"Good. Trust is an expensive commodity, and we are on a tight budget," Emma replied flatly.

Without waiting for his permission, she reached out and carefully extracted the sharp fragment of crystal from his thigh with swift, surgical precision. Ethan gritted his teeth, a low hiss escaping his lips, but he didn't make a sound.

Emma pulled a clean strip of linen from the tray she had brought earlier and began wrapping the wound. As she leaned in close to secure the bandage, her dress shifted, exposing more of his lower torso and the base of his back.

Her breath caught subtly.

There, running along the base of his lumbar spine and extending down the side of his right hip, was a thick, jagged surgical scar. To an ordinary person, it was just the ugly reminder of a catastrophic car accident. But to Emma’s trained eyes—eyes that had spent years studying advanced neurological procedures—the scar tissue told a horrific, hidden story.

The incision line was uneven, and the surrounding tissue showed distinct signs of localized chemical necrosis. It wasn't the mark of a surgeon trying to repair severed nerves. It was the distinct, deliberate signature of a botched procedure—an intentional, crude operation designed to clamp the nerve pathways and introduce a slow-acting neurotoxin to freeze the muscles permanently.

Someone didn't just injure him, Emma realized, her pulse quickening as the diagnostic pieces clicked together in her mind. They operated on him after the crash specifically to ensure he would never walk again.

Her fingers hovered for a second too long over the scar tissue on his hip, her analytical gaze locking onto the irregular raised skin.

Ethan noticed the sudden shift in her focus. His eyes narrowed instantly. "What are you staring at?"

Before Emma could open her mouth to speak, the heavy mahogany doors of the suite were kicked wide open with a loud, obnoxious BANG.

"Ethan, my dear cousin!" a sleazy, theatrical voice boomed through the dimly lit room. "I brought the paperwork for the logistics transfer. Your little bride's family assured us she’d have you in a good mood, but looking at you on the floor, it seems—"

Daniel Johnson strutted into the room, flanked by two burly men in cheap suits. He was dressed in a flashy, tailored velvet jacket, a smug, greasy smirk plastered across his face. But as his eyes fell upon the scene in the center of the room—Ethan lying on the floor, covered in blood, with Emma kneeling beside him bandaging his thigh—Daniel’s smirk widened into open, cruel delight.

"Well, well, well," Daniel sneered, taking a slow step forward and clapping his hands mockingly. "Look at the great Iron Monarch of Veridia City. Crawling on the carpet like a wounded dog in front of his bargain-bin wife."

Ethan’s entire frame stiffened instantly. The wounded pride that flared in his eyes was blinding, but he didn't lower his head. He slammed his palms against the floor, forcing his powerful upper body upward into a seated position against the sofa, his dark eyes burning with pure, murderous hatred aimed directly at his cousin.

"Get out of my room, Daniel," Ethan barked, his voice echoing like thunder despite his physical state. "You have no authority here."

"Authority?" Daniel laughed loudly, pulling a thick stack of legal documents from his inner coat pocket and slapping them against his palm. "I have all the authority I need, cousin. Uncle Arthur and the board have already agreed. Since you're clearly incapacitated—and mentally unstable, given this pathetic display—you are signing over your remaining fifteen percent of the Johnson Group’s voting shares to me. Today."

Daniel stepped closer, completely ignoring Emma as if she were nothing more than a piece of cheap furniture. He tossed the heavy legal stack onto the floor right beside Ethan, kicking a pen toward him with the toe of his expensive leather shoe.

"Sign it, Ethan," Daniel taunted, leaning down with a vicious, arrogant grin. "Or I’ll have the board declare you legally incompetent by nightfall and throw you into an asylum. You’re broken, cousin. Accept it."

Sitting on the floor, trapped by his paralyzed lower body, Ethan clenched his fists so hard his knuckles popped. The sheer humiliation of being cornered in his own home by a parasite like Daniel was agonizing.

Beside them, Emma slowly stood up from the floor. She wiped the blood from her hands with her handkerchief, her posture impeccably straight, her eyes locking onto Daniel with a cold, terrifying stillness.