CHAPTER 104:Time to Bleed Again

CHAPTER 109:The Child of Damian
ISABELLA

The park smelled like cut grass and fear. Julian’s small body trembled against my ribs; each breath she took hit my sternum like a tiny, urgent drum. I hugged her tighter until her cheek left a warm print on my shoulder. My hands went numb and I liked it numbness kept panic from spreading.

Valentina stepped forward as if she owned the light around her. The smile on her face was slow and precise, the kind that counts the seconds before a blade drops. She looked at Julian and then at me, and the expression on her face scrubbed my insides raw.

“Get away from her,” I said, but the words came like a cracked radio: static, then sound.

Valentina’s laugh cut through the afternoon. The sound was small and sharp, like a glass being tapped. “You know why I’m here,” she said, eyes taking the child in slowly, clinically. She liked the way she watched things like specimens on a slab.

My spine went rigid. I could feel every heartbeat as if it were someone else’s. Around us, my guards formed a loose circle, palms on holsters, eyes on the woman who had ruined my life. I kept Julian pressed to me. She smelled of milk and sunscreen and, bizarrely, of Damian.

“What do you want from me?” I asked. The words were steadier than I felt.

Valentina tilted her head. “You know what I want,” she said, voice butter-slick and cold. She moved with a predator’s economy a hand smoothing her coat, a single step closer. “I don’t want her knowing… where she comes from. She doesn’t need to inherit your dirt.”

Julian squirmed, small fists bunching at the fabric of my blouse. She whimpered, and my throat closed on something I couldn’t swallow.

I felt the world contract to the distance between us. My mind spit out a dozen possible moves a shove, a sprint, a sweep kick I hadn’t used since I taught myself to fight for the first time but all of them would risk the child.

“If you want something from Damian, take it from him,” I snapped. My voice cracked like dry wood. “Not from her.”

She smiled wider, and the light in her eyes went black. “She is his blood,” she said, and for a second I saw the veins under her skin, the way she catalogued traits like trophies. “Imagine how sweet it would be to remove the reminder.”

A guard stepped forward. I saw the muscles in his jaw ripple. He mouthed the order back to me without sound. I swallowed. “Kill her,” I said aloud, and my stomach felt like it dropped into a pit of glass. Saying it made it real; saying it made me the thing I hated a commander of violence. But I would rather be that than watch Julian fall.

Gunfire answered like a terrible echo. It wasn’t one shot. It was a curtain of them. My guards crumpled toward the grass in angles that didn’t make sense. The world fractured in a thousand small, ridiculous noises: a child screaming, the slap of a body against earth, a bottle smashing somewhere.

Valentina’s men spilled from her car like dark water. She walked through them with patience, as if wasting a good murder on clumsy hands were an offense. When she reached us, she didn’t look triumphant; she looked satisfied, like someone who had folded a page in a book they owned.

I tightened my fingers around Julian’s wrist and tried to pull her into the car. My palm met another hand stronger and a flash of pain flared at the base of my skull. The light behind my eyes went soft, like someone had dimmed the world.

They pulled Julian from my arms as if she were a thing to be tested, not a person who cried “Mummy!” into the air. I shut my eyes and fell. The pavement was rough against my cheek; blood tasted metallic in my mouth. I watched, helpless, as little feet were dragged toward Valentina’s waiting car.

“Please,” I mouthed into the dirt. “Please”

The world folded into a small, unbearable shape: Julian’s voice, tiny and sharp, lancing through me.

I wanted to run. I wanted to die. I wanted Damian.

VALENTINA

I felt the weight of the child against my chest like an answer to a question I didn’t need to ask. Her tiny breath hitched, then steadied — automatic, trusting. She didn’t know she was in the arms of the one her mother feared most. The rhythm of her heartbeat pressed against me, fragile and steady, like something daring me to break it.

I placed her in the backseat, carefully, almost tenderly not because I cared, but because precision mattered. I watched her lashes flutter, her small fingers curl into a fist, her lips part slightly as if she might call out for her mother. The sound didn’t come. Good. Silence was cleaner. Easier to control.

The plan had been simple frighten Isabella, remind her she’s never safe, leave her trembling in her perfect little world. But the moment I saw the girl’s face, everything changed. Possibilities bloomed. Leverage. A key. A hook.

Men like Damian and Vincent they were all the same. Predictable. Weak when you touched what they loved. I’d watched men crumble this way before; watched them bleed out their pride just to keep something breathing. This little girl would make them dance for me.

I slid into the driver’s seat and locked the doors. The sound of the click filled the silence like a gunshot. Outside, the park was chaos bodies on the ground, smoke rising from gunfire, headlights cutting through dust. My men moved through the mess with quiet efficiency, trained shadows in motion. One of them appeared at my window, his voice low as he whispered the next location.

I didn’t look relieved relief is for people who doubt. I only felt that sharp thrill again, the one that always came when I was two steps ahead. Hunger. Purpose. Control.

My fingers rested on the steering wheel, and for a moment, I imagined the look on Damian’s face when he realized I had his daughter. I could already see it the panic in his eyes, the fury trying to cover the fear. Men like him always think they’re untouchable until someone touches the wrong thing.

“This is how you force ghosts into daylight,” I whispered to myself, eyes fixed on the rearview mirror where the child slept, her tiny chest rising and falling. “You hold what they can’t live without… and you make them come to you.”

The engine roared to life, low and satisfying beneath my hands. As the car rolled forward, I didn’t look back. I didn’t need to. The game had already begun, and I always finished what I started.