CHAPTER 6 The Devil's Bargain

The elevator doors were closing when my phone buzzed again. I looked down at the screen — another message from Karem. This time it was a video. I pressed play with shaking fingers, and my heart stopped.

It was my mother. She was sitting in a chair, her face pale and tired but she was alive, and she was looking around a room that looked nothing like her hospital room. The walls were dark, the lighting dim, and she was wearing the same hospital gown she'd had on when I left her, but there was something different about her eyes — they were scared, and I had never seen my mother look scared before, not even when she was at her sickest, not even when the bills were piling up and she thought she was going to die.

I watched her mouth move, watched her speak words I couldn't hear, and I knew she was saying my name.

Then the video ended.

And Karem's voice came through the speaker.

"Come home, Hazel. You know where to find me."

I stood in the elevator with the doors trying to close around me, my chest heaving, my hands shaking, and I made a decision I knew I would regret for the rest of my life.

I stepped out of the elevator and walked back into the penthouse.

---

Damien was still there, standing in the middle of the living room like a man who had just watched his whole life fall apart. His face was pale and his hands were shaking and when he saw me walk back through the door he looked like he was seeing a ghost.

"Hazel—"

"He took her," I said, my voice flat and hollow. "Karem took my mother."

Damien's expression shifted from surprise to horror to something I couldn't read. He stepped toward me, his hands reaching out, and I let him take my face in his palms, let him look into my eyes like he was searching for something he'd lost.

"I'll fix this," he said. "I'll call him. I'll—"

"You'll what, Damien?" I pulled away, and the distance between us felt like a canyon. "You can't fix this. You've never been able to fix anything. You've just been hiding from him."

His jaw tightened. "That's not true."

"Then prove it." I looked at him, really looked at him, and I saw the boy he'd been and the man he was trying to become and the fear that had been holding him captive since before I ever knew his name. "Come with me. Face him. Face your father."

"Hazel—"

"Don't. Don't tell me you can't. Don't tell me you're afraid." I stepped closer, close enough to feel the heat of him, close enough to see the cracks in his armor. "I'm afraid too. I've been afraid my whole life. But I'm still going. Because she's my mother and I would walk through fire for her. So would you? Would you walk through fire for me?"

He stared at me, his dark eyes searching mine, and I saw the war happening behind them — the fear, the guilt, the desperate need to be something more than his father's son.

"I would burn the whole world down for you," he said finally.

"Then come with me."

---

The drive to Karem's estate was the longest of my life. Damien sat beside me in the back of the car, silent and tense, his hand wrapped around mine like I was the only thing keeping him tethered to the ground. I stared out the window and watched the city disappear, watched the tall buildings give way to trees and open space, watched the world turn dark and quiet around us.

"This is it," I said. "This is where it ends."

Damien squeezed my hand. "Or where it begins."

He was right. He didn't know how right he was.

---

Karem's estate was a fortress — iron gates, stone walls, security cameras everywhere. The car pulled up to the front entrance and I stepped out into the cold night air, my heart pounding so loud I could barely hear anything else. Damien was beside me, his jaw set, his eyes hard.

We walked through the massive doors and into a world that felt like a palace designed by a devil.

Karem was waiting for us in the grand foyer, his silver hair gleaming under the chandelier, his ornate cane in hand, and beside him stood the woman I had seen at the penthouse — Victoria, the old friend of the family — but there was someone else too, someone standing just behind them in the shadows, someone I couldn't quite see.

"You came," Karem said with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I knew you would."

"Where is she?" I asked.

"All in good time, Hazel. All in good time." He gestured toward the living room, and I walked forward, Damien at my side, feeling like I was walking into a cage I would never escape.

---

The living room was vast and cold, filled with expensive furniture and paintings that looked like they had been stolen from museums and memories that didn't belong to anyone. I stood in the middle of it, my hands clenched at my sides, and I waited.

Karem settled into a chair, the picture of ease, while Victoria perched beside him like a bird of prey. But my eyes kept drifting to the shadows behind them, to the figure I still couldn't quite make out.

"Where is my mother?" I asked again.

"Safe," Karem said. "For now."

"What do you want?"

"I want what I've always wanted, Hazel." He leaned forward, his cold eyes boring into mine. "I want control. I want legacy. I want my son to stop fighting me and accept his place in this family."

"His place?"

"Damien is my heir. He always has been. But he's been... distracted." Karem's gaze flickered to me. "By you."

"So this is about me?"

"This is about everything. But yes, you are a part of it." He smiled again, and it was the kind of smile that made my skin crawl. "You made him weak, Hazel. You gave him hope. You made him believe he could be something other than what he was born to be. And I can't allow that."

"So what do you want?" I asked. "You want me to leave?"

"I want you to make a choice. I want you to choose your mother — or choose my son."

The words hung in the air between us, heavy and suffocating.

Damien stepped forward. "Father—"

"Stay out of this, Damien." Karem's voice was sharp, cutting. "This isn't your choice to make."

"I said I wanted to hear her voice," I said. "Before I choose. I need to know she's alive."

Karem considered me for a long moment, and I could see him weighing the options behind his cold eyes. Then he nodded toward the door behind me. "She's in the room down the hall. You can see her — but not yet. First, you answer my question. Who do you choose?"

I opened my mouth to speak, to tell him I would do anything, say anything, agree to anything if it meant my mother was safe.

But before I could, the figure stepped out of the shadows.

And I felt my heart stop.

"Hello, Hazel," the figure said. "It's been a long time."

I stared at her, at the woman I had known my whole life, at the person I had trusted more than almost anyone else in the world.

My mother's nurse.

The one who had been taking care of her for years. The one who had held her hand when I couldn't. The one who had promised me she would keep her safe.

The one who had betrayed me.

"You," I whispered.

"Me," she said, and she smiled — a cold, cruel smile I had never seen on her face before. "Did you really think I was just a nurse, Hazel? Did you really think anyone was helping you for free?"

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. I could only stare at her as the world tilted beneath my feet.

"Karem has been paying me for years," she said. "Long before you ever signed that contract. I was just waiting for the right moment — and you handed it to me on a silver platter."

"You—" I couldn't form the words. "You helped him. You helped him take my mother."

"I helped him take everything. Your mother, your peace, your marriage." She stepped closer, her eyes cold and triumphant. "And now you're going to make a choice. You're going to choose — and you're going to lose."

I felt Damien's hand on my arm, steadying me, grounding me.

"Hazel," he said, his voice soft and fierce. "Look at me."

I turned to him, my eyes burning, my heart shattered.

"I'm with you," he said. "Whatever you choose, I'm with you."

"I thought Karem was the one holding the leash," I said. "I was wrong."

I turned back to the room, my gaze sweeping over Karem, over Victoria, over the nurse who had betrayed me.

"Now I see the real trap. Karem was the face of it. But the teeth? The teeth were hers. The teeth were always hers."

I thought Karem was the one holding the leash. I was wrong. The person standing behind him, the one who had been there all along, the one who had helped him take my mother — it wasn't a stranger. It was someone I knew. Someone I trusted. Someone I thought was on my side. And when she smiled at me, I realized the real trap wasn't Karem's.

It was hers.