Chapter 4 - THE HEART THAT BELONGED TO ANOTHER
Damian stared at Leon as if the words were spoken in another language.
“My father is dead.”
Leon laughed weakly.
“Is he?”
Viktor moved closer.
“Where is Mikhail Volkov?”
Damian’s mother whispered, “Mikhail died in Prague.”
“No,” Leon said. “A body died in Prague.”
Gabriel grabbed the front of his shirt.
“Explain.”
Leon’s eyes gleamed.
“Mikhail Volkov was diagnosed with a hereditary heart disease thirty years ago. He spent millions searching for a donor compatible enough to avoid rejection.”
Damian’s face changed.
His hand moved instinctively to his chest.
Leon saw it.
“Yes,” he whispered. “A son is often an excellent match.”
The truth hit all of us at once.
Damian’s father had not raised an heir.
He had raised a replacement heart.
Damian’s mother covered her mouth.
“That is why he wanted another child.”
Gabriel stiffened.
Leon turned toward him.
“And that is why he kept you hidden. One son for inheritance. One son for spare parts.”
Gabriel’s face drained of color.
Damian looked at him.
For the first time, they did not resemble enemies.
They resembled brothers.
Leon continued, delighted by the horror he had created.
“When Damian’s mother escaped, Mikhail abandoned the original plan. But then his condition worsened. He staged his death, built a private surgical facility beneath the old harbor hospital, and waited.”
“For what?” I asked.
“For Damian to become weak enough to disappear without suspicion.”
The poisoning.
The fake nurses.
The medicine.
All of it had been preparation.
Damian’s mother stepped toward Leon.
“You helped him.”
“I served the rightful head of the family.”
Damian’s voice turned deadly.
“My father planned to cut out my heart.”
Leon smiled.
“He still does.”
A low mechanical sound rolled beneath the chapel floor.
Viktor looked down.
“Move!”
The marble tiles split along a hidden seam.
Gas hissed upward.
Gabriel’s agents shouted, but the white vapor spread too quickly.
I covered Lila’s mouth and nose with my sleeve.
Damian reached toward us.
Then the chapel disappeared.
I woke to the sound of a heartbeat.
Slow.
Mechanical.
Not mine.
My eyes opened beneath harsh white lights.
I lay strapped to a hospital bed.
Lila was beside me, asleep under a silver blanket.
“No.”
I fought the restraints.
A glass wall separated us from a vast underground operating room. Stainless-steel instruments gleamed beneath surgical lamps. Monitors displayed Damian’s name, blood type, and heart scans.
He lay unconscious on an operating table.
Gabriel was restrained to another bed.
Damian’s mother and Viktor were locked inside a glass chamber across the room.
A man stood between the operating tables.
He was thin and pale, supported by a polished cane. His face was older than the portrait hanging in Grayhaven’s west salon, but unmistakable.
Mikhail Volkov.
Damian’s father.
He looked at me through the glass.
“Mrs. Bennett.”
His voice came through a speaker above my head.
“You have caused my family considerable inconvenience.”
I pulled against the straps.
“Let my daughter go.”
“She is perfectly safe.”
“Liar.”
He smiled.
“Noah said the same thing.”
My blood turned to ice.
“You killed him.”
“Noah entered a world he did not understand.”
“You burned him alive.”
Mikhail’s expression did not change.
“He refused to surrender the evidence.”
I looked at Lila.
“And now you think she has it.”
“I know she had it.”
“The agents took the card.”
“Yes. An insignificant copy.”
My eyes narrowed.
Mikhail tapped his cane against the floor.
“Noah was clever. He knew the memory card could be found. So he created a second archive.”
“Where?”
Mikhail looked at Lila’s hearing device.
My breath stopped.
“The device was replaced after Noah’s death,” I said.
“By a charity clinic funded through one of his accounts.”
I remembered the appointment.
A kind technician.
A free upgraded device.
A donor who wished to remain anonymous.
Noah had arranged it before he died.
Mikhail walked toward the glass.
“The archive inside that hearing device contains account numbers, judges, senators, police chiefs, and businessmen who purchased access to my routes.”
“You will never get it.”
He smiled.
“I already have.”
A nurse stood near Lila’s bed holding the pink hearing device.
Rage tore through me.
“Give it back!”
Mikhail ignored me.
A surgeon entered the operating room.
“Mr. Volkov, the donor’s cardiac function is unstable. If we proceed now, the organ may not survive.”
Mikhail looked at Damian.
“Then stabilize him.”
“The poisoning caused inflammation.”
“Use the brother if necessary.”
Gabriel lifted his head.
His voice was hoarse.
“You won’t survive either heart.”
Mikhail turned.
“Genetic compatibility says otherwise.”
“No. The disease is not hereditary.”
Mikhail’s cane stopped.
Gabriel smiled despite the blood on his lip.
“That was the secret Noah found.”
Mikhail’s eyes sharpened.
“What are you talking about?”
“Your doctors lied to you thirty years ago.”
Damian began to wake.
His eyelids fluttered.
Gabriel continued.
“You do not have inherited cardiomyopathy. You have chronic heavy-metal poisoning.”
Mikhail’s face changed for the first time.
“Impossible.”
“Your own council poisoned you for decades. Slowly. Just as you poisoned Damian.”
Damian opened his eyes.
He saw his father.
Every monitor around him began to race.
Mikhail gripped his cane.
“Prepare the operation.”
The surgeon hesitated.
“Sir—”
“Now!”
Then Lila woke.
She looked around, frightened.
I signed desperately through the glass.
Stay calm.
She saw the device in the nurse’s hand.
Then she noticed Damian.
His chest rose unevenly.
She slipped from beneath the blanket.
The nurse grabbed her arm.
Lila bit her hand.
The woman cried out.
My daughter ran.
Barefoot and silent, she darted beneath the equipment and crawled under Damian’s operating table.
Mikhail shouted.
“Get her!”
Lila reached the central power cord.
She had seen me unplug appliances that way a hundred times.
She pulled.
The surgical lights went black.
The locks released.
Backup alarms screamed.
Gabriel tore one hand free from his loosened restraint. Viktor smashed a chair against the glass chamber. Damian rolled from the operating table, dragging tubes from his arms.
I kicked the nurse as she rushed past and grabbed Lila.
Gunfire erupted in the dark.
Mikhail fled through a steel door.
Damian staggered after him.
“Damian!” I shouted.
He looked back.
His face was white with pain.
“Take Lila and go.”
“You can barely stand.”
“He killed Noah.”
“That does not mean you have to die too.”
For one heartbeat, something unspoken passed between us.
Then Damian touched Lila’s cheek.
“I promised I would find her.”
Lila pressed her hand over his heart again.
Slow.
Weak.
But alive.
She signed, Come back.
Damian nodded.
May you like
“I will.”
Then he followed his father into the darkness.
