Chapter 15 up

Chapter 15 up
"Andre..." Felicia whispered, her voice hoarse and broken.
Andre started. He immediately grasped Felicia’s hand, kissing the back of it repeatedly, his breath hitching. "I'm here, darling. I'm right here. Don't move too much yet; you’ve just come out of surgery."
Felicia struggled to piece together what had happened. The pier... the spilled coffee... and a pain that felt as if it were splitting her body in two. Instinctively, her left hand moved slowly toward her abdomen. Her stomach had felt slightly different over the past few weeks—a lingering intuition she hadn't yet voiced amidst the chaos of the battle in the Alps.
She felt a terrifying emptiness there. Her stomach was flat, cold, and wrapped in surgical bandages.
"Andre," Felicia’s voice began to tremble. Her eyes searched his face for certainty. "The baby... our child..."
Andre didn't answer. Instead, he bowed his head deeply, his shoulders shaking violently in a silent sob. That silence was the most lethal answer Felicia could receive.
"Tell me, Andre! Tell me they’re okay!" Felicia cried out, though her voice was nothing more than a painful rasp. She tried to sit up, but the searing sting of her surgical stitches forced her back onto the pillow.
"I'm so sorry, Felicia..." Andre finally spoke, choked by a sob that finally broke through. "The doctors... they couldn't save them. We lost the baby. Six weeks... they were only six weeks old."
Felicia’s world seemed to shatter into formless shards. The scream trapped in her throat exploded into a harrowing wail of despair, a sound of such pure agony that the nurses outside the room bowed their heads in sorrow. She gripped the hospital sheets until her nails turned white.
All the victories at The Citadel, the trillions of dollars she had frozen, and the destruction of Mariana—it all felt like trash now. What was the point of ruling the world if she couldn't protect the tiny life growing in her own womb?
"It’s because of me..." Felicia sobbed. "I’m the one who forced myself into that pipe. I’m the one who killed them, Andre! I’m a horrible mother!"
"No! Don't you ever say that!" Andre pulled Felicia’s body into a careful embrace, trying to absorb her grief into his own. "It wasn't you, Felicia. You didn't do this."
The door opened softly. Elena entered, her face colder than the Alpine ice. Behind her, Ratna looked withered, her eyes swollen from endless weeping. Elena walked to the bedside and placed her tablet on the side table.
"He’s right, Felicia. This wasn't because of the Alps," Elena’s voice was as sharp as a scalpel.
Felicia looked up, her wet eyes staring at her sister in confusion. "What do you mean?"
"I performed a biopsy on the coffee residue from the pier and your blood samples," Elena swiped the tablet screen, revealing an unnatural chemical structure. "You were poisoned with a high dose of synthetic Misoprostol disguised in your coffee sweetener. Someone knew you were pregnant, even before you realized it yourself. Someone wanted to ensure the Mahendra bloodline stopped right here."
Felicia’s sobbing stopped abruptly. Her grief evaporated, replaced by a chill far more dangerous—a pure, crystalline rage that froze her blood.
"Who?" Felicia asked. Her voice was no longer that of a grieving woman, but the voice of an executioner.
"Viktor Volkov," Elena replied. "The name on the card from The Citadel. He’s the Obsidian Circle’s 'cleaner'—the one tasked with removing 'undesirable assets.' And the traitor who slipped the poison into your coffee... was one of the servants at our safe villa who turned out to be a Volkov sleeper agent."
Felicia stared at the ceiling. She remembered how she had planned a future where she could be "normal Felicia" again. Now, that dream was buried alongside the child she would never hold.
"Andre," Felicia called out without turning.
"Yes, darling?"
"Help me sit up."
Andre assisted her with extreme gentleness. Felicia leaned back, staring straight at Elena. Her eyes, once full of tears, were now hollow, filled only with a dense, impenetrable darkness.
"We aren't rebuilding that orphanage yet," Felicia said flatly. "Use all of the compensation funds for one thing: put a price on Viktor Volkov’s head. I want him brought to me alive. I want him to feel exactly what I felt when my womb was forcibly emptied by his poison."
"Felicia, you need rest..." Ratna tried to soothe her daughter.
"I’ve rested enough for twenty years, Mother," Felicia cut her off coldly. "This world treated me as used goods, then they treated me as a pawn, and now they have taken my child's life. They made a massive mistake. They left behind a mother who no longer has anything left to lose."
She turned toward Andre. "Are you with me, Andre? Until the end?"
Andre gripped Felicia’s hand, his eyes burning with the same vengeful fire. "Until they are all begging for death, Felicia. Until the end."
That night in Geneva, Felicia’s gentleness was buried forever. Behind the sterile hospital walls, a woman was born who would become the nightmare of every remaining member of the Obsidian Circle. This war was no longer about money or family honor. This was a blood feud.
"Elena," Felicia called out before her sister left the room.
"Yes?"
"How long until I can hold a weapon again?"
Elena looked at her sister with a mix of pride and dread. "The doctor said two weeks. But I know you can do it in three days."
"Two days," Felicia corrected. "Prep the team for Moscow. We’re going to pick up Volkov from his own cage."