Chapter 6

Damian knew he hadn’t treated her well.

He knew she cried at night.

Knew she kept her smile small around him.

Knew he hadn’t given her a single reason to stay. But she was carrying his child now. That made her untouchable.

Protected.

His.

And if someone had dared...

No.

He wouldn’t think it.

He couldn’t.

He dialed his second in command.

“Mobilize everyone,” he ordered. “I want every syndicate in the city watching the streets, harbors, airports, tunnels. She’s been taken.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And if anyone touches her…” Damian’s voice dropped to a lethal whisper, “…kill them.”

Across the city, Seraphina sat quietly in the back of Adrik’s car, hands wrapped protectively around her stomach.

Through the window, the night blurred past, shadows of a life she was leaving behind forever.

“You’re safe now,” Adrik murmured, glancing at her in the rearview mirror.

She nodded, though her heart ached strangely.

Damian didn’t love her.

He didn’t protect her.

He didn’t choose her.

But she had loved him.

Once.

Her hand trembled as she whispered to her belly, “He won’t hurt us anymore.”

By the time Damian mobilized 200 men, accessed every camera in the city, and interrogated half of his guards.. 

A call came in.

A car was found.

Burned.

Twisted.

Destroyed.

Only a few miles away from his estate.

Damian felt the world tilt under his feet.

No.

No, no, no...

He was already moving.

He wasn’t breathing by the time he reached the crash site.

The vehicle was upside down, flames licking at its sides. The smell was awful, burning rubber, scorched metal… something else.

“Sir,” a guard said quietly, “there was… a body inside.”

The crack in Damian’s chest widened into something violent.

His hand curled into a fist until his knuckles split.

A body.

A woman’s body.

Unrecognizable.

Damian’s pulse pounded in his ears.

His heart, cold for years, clenched painfully.

He swallowed, voice raw. “…Seraphina?”

The guard didn’t answer.

Damian turned his face away from the fire, jaw trembling, breath unsteady. Because for the first time in his life... he regretted being heartless.

He regretted every cold word.

He regretted hurting her.

He regretted pretending she didn’t matter.

He regretted letting fear bury whatever he never allowed himself to feel.

And he whispered a word that tasted like defeat.

“Forgive me.”

The flames had died down hours ago, but Damian still stood at the wreckage long after the investigators left.

Everyone kept glancing at him carefully, terrified to speak.

Terrified to breathe wrong.

Terrified of a man who looked like a king moments away from slaughtering his entire court.

He didn’t move.

He didn’t blink.

He stared at the twisted metal as though he could force it to give him back his wife.

He hated that word.

Wife.

Because the truth stabbed deeper with every passing second.

Seraphina had been more than he let himself feel.

A softness in a house of sharp edges.

A warmth he pretended he didn’t need.

A quiet heartbeat that made him, for reasons he refused to analyze, stay outside her bedroom door some nights just to know she was inside.

He’d walked away every time.

Coward.

Idiot.

Fool.

Now she was gone.

Taken from him.

Burned into unrecognizable ash.

His breath trembled.

His men had never seen Damian Blackwell shaken.

Until tonight. 

“Sir, we can’t confirm...”

“I don’t need confirmation,” Damian snapped, voice cold enough to freeze blood. “It was her.”

“But the body...”

“I. SAID. IT. WAS. HER.”

The guards went silent.

Damian dragged a trembling hand through his hair, jaw clenched so tight it throbbed.

His world felt like it was collapsing inward, a pressure building in his ribs that felt like grief.

But grief was weakness. And weakness was fatal.

He swallowed it down, burying it with the rest of the emotions he’d spent a lifetime suffocating.

“Find me the ones who did this,” he ordered.

His voice was steel wrapped in murder.

“I want every enemy family investigated. Every faction watched. Every informant interrogated until their tongues bleed.”

He inhaled sharply.

“If someone touched her, if someone took her from me...” His eyes hardened to stone. “...I will bury their lineage.”

The guards scattered, terrified.

Damian walked toward his car slowly, like a man carrying a thousand pounds of rage on his shoulders.

He reached into his coat, pulled out a single object, and stared at it under the streetlight.

The pregnancy test wrapper.

Found in her trash.

She was pregnant.

Her child.

His heir.

Gone.

His grip tightened until the plastic crumpled.

The night wind pressed against his face, cold and merciless.

He shut his eyes.

For years, he’d been untouchable.

For years, he’d been feared.

For years, he’d convinced himself that caring for someone was death.

But Seraphina was death.

Not because she destroyed him.

Because he destroyed her.

Meanwhile thousands of miles away, the private jet hummed steadily through the night sky.

Seraphina sat curled into the leather seat, hands gently pressed to her stomach. Her eyes were red, her body exhausted, her heart heavy.

Adrik sat across from her, watching her carefully.

“You should try to sleep,” he murmured.

“I will,” she whispered, though she didn’t close her eyes.

She felt… suspended.

Between two lives.

Between two selves.

Seraphina Vale.

Damian’s bride.

Dr. Sera Voss.

A woman no one would recognize.

“Thank you,” she said softly, voice cracking. “You risked everything.”

Adrik smiled faintly. “You’d have done the same for me.”

She would have.

And she did. Every time he broke down in med school. Every time he failed an exam and she tutored him through the night. Every time he thought he didn’t belong.

He leaned forward slightly. “Sera… tell me something honestly.”

She looked up.

“Do you regret leaving?” he asked gently.