Chapter 6

Arthur’s POV

The pain was a living, breathing monster.

It tore through my skull. It shredded the flesh of my thigh.

I opened my eyes to the blinding, sterile lights of a private hospital room. The smell of antiseptic burned my nostrils. My jaw was wired. My leg was heavily bandaged, throbbing with an agonizing, relentless pulse.

Zoe did this.

My beautiful, fragile wife had shattered my face with crystal and put a bullet in my leg.

The heavy wooden door pushed open. Marcus, my head of security, stepped into the room. His clothes were soaked with rain. His face was pale, bruised, and bleeding.

"Sir," Marcus choked out, standing at attention despite his injuries.

"Where is she?" I demanded. My voice was a harsh, guttural rasp through my wired jaw. "Where is my wife?"

Marcus swallowed hard. He looked down at the pristine white floor. "We lost her, sir."

I tried to sit up. White-hot agony flared in my thigh, forcing me back against the pillows. "You lost her? I gave you the exact coordinates of her vehicle!"

"We found the SUV," Marcus stammered, his hands shaking. "It was parked at a fortress deep in the coastal woods. A ghost property. It doesn't exist on any map. The second we breached the gates, we were ambushed."

"Ambushed by who?" I roared.

"An elite private army," Marcus whispered. "They were heavily armed. Highly trained. They slaughtered half our men in seconds. We had to retreat."

A ghost property. An elite army.

My mind raced. Who had the resources to repel my men so effortlessly?

For a fleeting second, a ghost from my past flickered in my mind. Alexander. My older brother. The golden boy. The rightful heir to the Sterling empire.

Years ago, I destroyed him. I wanted the power. I wanted the throne. So, I framed him for a massive, unforgivable theft. I planted the evidence. I made our father believe Alexander had betrayed our bloodline.

Alexander was banished. He was stripped of his name and his wealth. He disappeared into the shadows, never to be seen again.

No. It couldn't be him. Alexander was a broken, penniless exile. He was gone.

"Call the police," I hissed, gripping the white bedsheets. "Put out a nationwide Alert. Tell them Zoe kidnapped Lily. Tell them she is armed and dangerously unstable."

Marcus shook his head slowly. "We cannot involve the authorities, sir."

"Why not?"

"The hidden cameras in your dining room," Marcus said quietly. "They recorded everything. They recorded you forcing the peanut powder into her mouth. They recorded your confession about the surgical extraction of her baby. If the police search the house, if they find those servers... you will go to prison for the rest of your life."

The air vanished from my lungs.

He was right. I had built a cage of surveillance to monitor my wife, and now that very cage was a loaded gun pointed directly at my head.

I couldn't use the law. I couldn't use the police.

I had to hunt her in the shadows. I had to tear the city apart with my bare hands.

Suddenly, the private cell phone resting on my bedside table vibrated.

The screen glowed with an unknown number.

I snatched it. "Who is this?" I snarled.

"She is magnificent, isn't she?" a voice echoed through the speaker.

It was heavily distorted. It sounded like grinding metal, masking the caller's true identity.

"Who the hell is this?" I demanded. My blood turned to absolute ice.

"She fought you," the distorted voice mocked. "She broke you. And then she drove straight into my arms."

"If you touch her, I will kill you," I breathed. The threat was not a warning. It was a blood oath.

"You don't own her anymore, Arthur," the mystery man chuckled darkly. "She signed the papers. She is my property now. And you will never see her again."

The line went dead.

The dial tone hissed in my ear.

I stared at the black screen. My chest heaved. A violent, suffocating tremor violently shook my entire body.

For eight years, I had worshipped a ghost. I had built shrines to Serena. I had harvested a living child just to keep a piece of my first love alive.

But as I lay in this hospital bed, bleeding and broken, the image of Serena faded into nothing but dust.

I didn't see Serena's face.

I saw Zoe.

I saw the feral, magnificent rage in her eyes when she swung that crystal vase. I saw the breathtaking dominance in her posture when she aimed my own gun at my chest and pulled the trigger.

She wasn't just a vessel. She wasn't an incubator.

She was a queen.

And she was mine.

The obsession hit me with the force of a freight train. It was dark. It was twisted. It was a violent, all-consuming fire that burned away everything else in my soul.

I didn't want Serena. I wanted the woman who had tried to kill me.

"Marcus," I whispered. A dark, psychotic smile stretched across my ruined face.

"Yes, sir?"

"Gather every mercenary we have on the payroll," I commanded. "I don't care what it costs. Find that ghost property. Find the man on the phone."

I crushed the cell phone in my grip.

"I am going to butcher him. And then, I am bringing my wife home."

Zoe’s POV

The gunfire outside the estate had finally stopped.

The heavy, suffocating silence returned to the grand foyer. The smell of rain and gunpowder hung thick in the cold air.

Alexander’s men had repelled Arthur’s forces. For now, we were safe.

I stood by the heavy wooden table. My hands were still shaking. The adrenaline was slowly fading, leaving behind a hollow, agonizing exhaustion.

I looked down at the marriage contract. My signature, Zoe Sterling, stared back at me in stark black ink. The final page was signed. The deal with the devil's brother was done.

I had traded one monster for another, all for the chance to see my baby.

"Take me to her," I whispered, looking up at Alexander. He was wiping a streak of blood from his tactical shotgun. "I did what you asked. Take me to Zandra."

Alexander set the weapon down. He looked at me, his stormy gray eyes softening for the first time.

He opened his mouth to speak.

But before he could say a word, a sound echoed from the top of the grand staircase.

It was small. It was fragile. It was a sound that made my heart completely stop beating.

"Mommy?"