Chapter 2 - THE BLOODLINE DEBT
The sound of the shattered champagne glass echoed through the grand lobby like a pistol shot.
The elderly man standing near the marble pillar was Arthur Kane, the seventy-two-year-old patriarch of the Kane dynasty and Victoria’s father. His face had turned a sickly shade of grey.
Damian didn't even turn his head toward Arthur. His dark eyes remained fixed entirely on Elena.
"Dr. Mercer will examine your friend, Mia," Damian said quietly, his voice carrying an authority that brooked no argument. "She will receive the best medical care in this city. But you are coming with me."
Victoria stepped between them, her voice shrill with indignation. "Damian! Are you insane? She’s a low-level waitress! My dress is ruined, she insulted me, and you're treating her like royalty!"
Damian turned his gaze to Victoria. It was a look so devoid of warmth that Victoria stumbled half a step backward in shock.
"Victoria," Damian said softly, his tone icy enough to freeze the blood in her veins. "If you ever lay a hand on another employee in my hotel, I will strip your family of their commercial holdings before midnight. Get out."
Victoria’s jaw dropped. "Damian... we're engaged!"
"We were engaged," Damian corrected her smoothly. "Consider the arrangement terminated."
Gasps rippled through the gathering crowd of high-society elites. Victoria stared at him in disbelief, then turned and rushed out of the hotel lobby, her eyes brimming with humiliated tears.
Damian extended his hand toward Elena. "Miss Hart. Please."
Elena looked at his gloved hand, then at the terrified face of the hotel manager who was bowing repeatedly in the background. She felt a wave of dizziness washed over her. Five months pregnant, exhausted, and now standing in the middle of a war between titans, she knew she had no choice.
She placed her hand in his.
Damian’s grip was firm yet surprisingly gentle. He led her down a private service corridor toward a secure elevator reserved exclusively for the hotel's penthouse suite.
As the heavy bronze doors closed, Elena leaned against the wood paneling, clutching her stomach. "Who are you?" she whispered. "And why did you say your father spent eleven years searching for me?"
Damian adjusted his silk cuffs, staring straight ahead at the elevator's digital floor indicator.
"Fourteen years ago, my father, Gabriel Vale, was ambushed in the industrial docks of Brooklyn," Damian said, his voice flat and precise. "He was shot three times. I was fourteen years old, sitting in the back of his car. The shooters came to finish the job. I threw myself over my father's body."
Elena held her breath.
"One of their bullets hit my shoulder," Damian continued, turning his head to look at her. "The other hit a twelve-year-old girl who happened to be delivering her father’s lunch box through the alley. That girl dragged my bleeding body into a rusted dumpster, pressed her own shirt against my chest wound, and gave me her blood until the paramedics arrived."
Elena’s hand crept up to her left wrist, her thumb tracing the faint crescent scar.
"The girl was shot in the arm," Damian said softly. "The bullet left a crescent-shaped scar on her wrist. When my father woke up in the hospital three days later, he swore a debt of blood. But when my men went back to the docks to find the girl and her family... they had vanished."
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The elevator chimed, opening into a breathtaking penthouse suite overlooking the rainy Manhattan skyline.
Damian turned to face her completely. "My father died two years ago, Elena. His final wish on his deathbed was for me to find the girl with the crescent scar and give her half of the Vale empire."
