Chapter 180: The Devil’s Answer
Ana quickly dragged the back of her trembling hand across her cheeks, scrubbing away the dampness as she struggled to pull herself upright against the pillows. She swallowed hard, forcing a weak, fragile shield over the raw wound Damian had ripped open.
"I’m fine... really," Ana whispered, her voice raspy and strained as she avoided Victoria’s searching gaze. "It was just... Damian and I had a minor argument. That’s all. I’m just a little shaken up from the medication."
Victoria’s sharp eyes narrowed in disbelief. A minor argument did not leave a woman curled into the fetal position, weeping like her chest had been carved out.
Victoria straightened, turning a piercing look onto her daughter. "Valerie? What happened between them?"
Valerie threw her hands up, looking completely bewildered and thoroughly shaken. "I don’t know, Mom! When Julian and I left the room, Damian was just sitting there looking like he wanted to murder the club staff. Julian went back in with the feds. I had no idea Damian came back in here, let alone said anything to her."
Before Valerie could finish, the heavy wooden door was shoved open with brutal, impatient force.
Damian strode into the suite, his linen shirt rolled to the elbows, the violent adrenaline from his standoff with the federal agents still humming through his broad frame. He stopped dead in his tracks two steps past the threshold.
His obsidian eyes instantly locked onto the bed.... taking in his mother standing vigil beside Anastasia, and his sister hovering near the mattress, with Ana’s cheeks still glistening and flushed from crying.
Damian’s jaw clenched so hard a cord of muscle jumped beneath his stubble. "What the hell is going on here?"
Victoria didn’t flinch. She turned on her son with all the cold, terrifying poise of an empress who had survived thirty years of syndicate warfare. Her chin lifted, her icy gaze slicing right through his domineering aura.
Victoria held her son’s combustible glare for two agonizing seconds before her sharp gaze flicked toward the hospital bed. Anastasia was watching them with wide, exhausted eyes, pale as chalk and visibly trembling beneath the thin blanket.
Victoria’s jaw set into an immovable line. She wasn’t going to turn a sickbed into an execution arena.
"Outside. Now," Victoria ordered, her voice a low, freezing command that brooked no defiance.
She didn’t wait for his answer. She turned on her heel and strode out into the corridor.
Damian’s jaw ticked violently. He cast one lingering, suffocating look at Anastasia... his obsidian eyes dark with an unreadable, possessive storm... before turning his back and following his mother out.
********************
The heavy wooden door swung shut behind them, muffling the quiet hum of the ICU suite and leaving Valerie hovering anxiously by Ana’s bedside.
Out in the wide, sterile corridor, Julian and the armed guards stationed down the hall immediately stepped back, recognizing the lethal storm brewing between the Sterling mother and her son.
𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞
The moment the suite door latched, Victoria whipped around, her composure dropping into sharp, matriarchal fury.
"What venom did you just spit at that girl to leave her weeping alone in the dark?"
Victoria hissed, keeping her voice low enough to avoid echoing through the ward, but laced with enough venom to strip paint from the drywall.
"She was hooked to a ventilator three hours ago, Damian! She nearly choked to death on that floor!"
Damian scoffed, crossing his broad arms over his chest as a bitter, defensive sneer twisted his lips. "She doesn’t need to be coddled, Mother. She’s alive, isn’t she? If she’s crying, it’s because she doesn’t like hearing the reality of her own reckless stupidity."
"Reckless stupidity?"
Victoria stepped directly into his space, tilting her chin up to look her towering son dead in the eye, utterly unimpressed by the predatory aura that made hardened syndicates flinch.
"She was the target of a premeditated chemical attack! She is a victim, Damian, not a delinquent soldier in your private security detail. You treat that woman like a caged asset you can beat down with your tongue the second your own panic gets the better of you."
"That is none of your business," Damian growled, his gravelly voice vibrating low and dangerous against the corridor walls. "Her safety is under my roof. Her life belongs under my protection, and how I handle her is between me and her."
"Protection?"
Victoria let out a cold, cutting laugh that struck him right in the ribs.
"You call this protection? You don’t protect her, Damian. You suffocate her. You are so terrified of losing control that you’re going to snap her neck just trying to keep her in your fist. You look and sound just like your father when the walls start closing in."
The words hit like a detonator.
Damian’s obsidian eyes darkened to absolute pitch, the muscle in his jaw jumping violently.
His fists clenched so tightly the bruised skin over his knuckles split once more, the air in the empty corridor turning freezing cold as the ghost of his ruined past reared its head between them.
Victoria held his venomous glare, her eyes narrowing as she searched the fractured, volatile darkness carved into her son’s face.
"Answer me one thing, Damian," Victoria pressed, her voice dropping into a quiet, chilling gravity that cut straight through his defensive walls. "Do you even love that girl? You parade her around the city, you plaster your claim across the media, and you tell the entire syndicate world she belongs to you. But this? Screaming at a sick woman, terrorizing her until she weeps in the dark? That isn’t love, Damian. That is madness."
Damian threw his head back and laughed... a dry, bitter sound that held no humor, only sharp, jagged disdain.
"Love?"
Damian sneered, his gravelly voice dripping with venom.
"Save the cheap sentimentality for Valerie, Mother. Stop meddling in matters you know nothing about. This right here is the exact reason I kept Anastasia shielded from you and the rest of this family the day we signed the papers. The second you enter the frame, you start prying into things that don’t concern you."
"I am not scheming to break you two apart!"
Victoria countered fiercely, her aristocratic composure tightening with genuine, aching maternal worry.
"I care about this family, Damian. And against all odds, I care about that poor girl who is currently bleeding under your weight. If there is no love between you two... if all you have to offer her is a gilded cage and your own suffocating paranoia... then have the decency to let her go."
The corridor went dead silent.
Damian didn’t look at his mother. His eyes drifted downward, fixing on the cold, sterile tiles beneath his boots. His hands remained shoved deep into his pockets, the tension coiled in his broad shoulders wound so tight it threatened to snap.
He didn’t scream. He didn’t scoff. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely a rough, hollow rasp that barely grazed the quiet air.
"I will," Damian muttered, the words heavy and cold as lead. "When the time is right."