Vengeance in His Bed

"Now that the girl has already been marked by the Grefo beast," Bellero delivered coldly, his voice entirely devoid of warmth as he took a slow sip, "the next natural step in their biological alignment is her getting pregnant. And since you failed to claim her... since your soft, weak methods proved completely useless... the only option remaining on the board is killing her."

Damian’s head snapped up, his golden eyes flashing with a dangerous fire. "There is absolutely no need to kill an innocent girl, Bellero!" Damian hissed, his voice trembling with a volatile mix of rage and disgust. "Look at what just happened back there! The doors are rapidly closing in on us! It won’t take long before Dorrent comes looking for blood and answers after the spectacle Enock just created in the middle of the street!"

Bellero let out a mocking scoff, setting his glass down with a heavy click. "You are a complete fool, Damian," the old Mafia God sneered, his wrinkled features twisting into an ugly mask of condescension. "A foolish boy who stands by and watches the woman he was supposed to marry get owned and branded by someone else! Do you think I am going to sit back and watch Jannah give those arrogance-filled Grefos Enigma children? Never! She would rather die... she would rather end up six feet under, exactly like her pathetic mother, Frost!"

Bellero leaned forward, his eyes burning with a psychopathic finality. "I will stop at absolutely nothing until I see that girl dead, Damian. She is of no use to us anymore. Her womb belongs to the enemy, so her life is officially forfeited."

Damian let out a bitter, cold laugh that sounded entirely hollow, leaning back against the leather headrest as he glared at his father. "With your barbaric, outdated ways of handling things, Bellero... that is precisely why you never won this war from the very start. You lost Frost, and now you’re losing everything else. Look at yourself! Even the mechanic you hired to do your dirty work just exposed you in broad daylight! The reign of the great Mafia God is finally coming to an end, and you are too blind to see it."

Bellero’s jaw locked tight, a sharp vein pulsing against his temple. "Nothing is coming to an end, you ungrateful brat!" Bellero barked, his voice dropping into a terrifying register. "Nothing... except the Nenth bloodline! With the death of Jannah, the entire Enigma story will be wiped clean from the ledger. And as for Enock..." A chilling, monstrous smirk cut across Bellero’s lips. "...he just has to have his brain permanently destroyed with a concentrated dose of neural chemicals in that facility. By tomorrow morning, he will never say a single sentence that makes sense to anyone in this city."

Damian’s chest heaved. The unadulterated evil radiating from the old man made his stomach turn in revulsion. He slammed his hand against the glass partition.

"Stop the car!" Damian commanded the chauffeur sharply. "Stop the car right now! I am alighting!"

"You are not going anywhere!" Bellero roared, his hand shooting out to grip Damian’s wrist with surprising, iron strength, pinning him to the seat. "You are staying right here with me in this! You are a Boren, and you will sit through the execution of this strategy whether you like it or not!"

"I am not ready to be involved with a killer!" Damian yelled back, violently wrenching his wrist out of his father’s grip. "I am a physician! I take lives back from death, I don’t orchestrate executions!"

"You already ARE involved!" Bellero countered, leaning into Damian’s face, his eyes wide and unblinking. "My blood runs through your veins, boy! Every single luxury you enjoy, every free clinic you run, was paid for by the rivers of blood I spilled! You have no choice but to sit still beside your father!"

Damian went quiet, his breathing ragged as he stared at the monster sitting next to him. His mind began to spin at a terrifying speed, desperately searching for a way to break free, a way to warn Jannah, a way to protect her life before his unhinged father sent his assassins to put a bullet through her heart.

Bellero narrowed his eyes, reading the sudden, quiet calculation behind his son’s gaze. He leaned back, pointing his cane at Damian’s chest.

"You better not be sitting there thinking of sabotaging my plan to get rid of that girl, Damian," Bellero warned, his voice a razor-sharp whisper of absolute authority. "Because I swear to God... if you try to cross me on this, I will eliminate you too."

Damian’s eyes flashed with rebellion. He tilted his chin up, staring into the eyes of the Mafia God without a single shred of fear left in his body.

"You will have to kill me first, Bellero," Damian delivered flatly, his voice a razor-sharp line of finality. "You will have to put a bullet through my skull before you ever get a single hand on Jannah Nenth."

Bellero let out a short, quiet chuckle. He looked at his son with a terrifyingly calm, patronizing tenderness.

"I won’t have to kill you, my stubborn boy," Bellero murmured softly, his cold fingers reaching out to lightly pat Damian’s pale cheek. "I can just easily make you join Enock in that psychiatric ward. A few neural injections, and my brilliant doctor son will be sitting in a padded room staring at the ceiling for the rest of his life."

Damian recoiled from his touch, his lips curling into a look of disgust as he looked at the old man.

"No wonder Frost would never choose you," Damian spat out, the words slicing through the heavy air of the sedan like a scalpel. "No wonder she ran into the bogs with a penniless Beta rather than give her heart to you. You are so completely, irredeemably heartless, Bellero."

Bellero’s face went entirely dead. The fake tenderness vanished, replaced by a fury that turned his eyes completely pitch black. He leaned over, his voice dropping into a growl.

"Keep quiet...And watch out how I let history repeat itself boy!"