Chapter 7 - The Price of Treason
Damian didn't look like a man anymore; he looked like an ancient deity of destruction. Seeing Mikhail’s hand around Nora’s throat and Sofia screaming on the bed broke the final shred of his civilized restraint.
He didn't fire his gun—he wanted to feel the betrayal break in his bare hands.
Damian closed the distance like a shadow, his hand clamping around Mikhail’s wrist with the force of a hydraulic press. He twisted backward, and the sound of Mikhail’s forearm bones snapping echoed sharply over Sofia’s cries.
Mikhail roared in agony, dropping Nora to the floor. Nora gasped, drawing in deep, ragged breaths of air, immediately crawling toward the bed to pull Sofia into her arms, covering the child's eyes and ears.
"Don't look, Sofia. Listen to my voice," Nora whispered, her voice cracking as she began to hum the yellow song through her tears. "Just listen to the song..."
Behind her, the battle was brief and merciless. Mikhail was a trained killer, but Damian was a man possessed by a father’s demonic wrath. Damian drove a brutal elbow into Mikhail’s jaw, shattering the bone, then caught him by the throat, driving the giant man through the heavy glass window of the bedroom balcony.
The thick, reinforced glass shattered into a thousand glittering diamonds, raining down onto the balcony floor. Damian pinned Mikhail over the low stone railing, forty stories above the New York streets. The cold wind and rain whipped through the broken room, tearing at their clothes.
"Please... Damian..." Mikhail choked out, his boots dangling over the terrifying drop. "We were brothers..."
"You stood in my home. You put your hands on the woman who gave my daughter a life. You tried to sell my flesh and blood to the people who want me dead," Damian said, his voice lower than the wind, deadlier than the fall. "You are no brother of mine."
Damian didn't drop him. Dropping him was too easy.
Instead, he pulled Mikhail back onto the balcony floor, slamming him face-first into the shattered glass. Two of Damian’s loyal secondary guards rushed into the room, their weapons drawn, their faces pale as they saw the carnage.
"Take him to the warehouse at the docks," Damian ordered, his voice dripping with absolute venom. "Call Dominic Lucchesi. Tell him I’m coming for the rest of his family tonight. And call my medical team for Nora."
Damian walked back into the bedroom, his hands covered in Mikhail’s blood, his chest heaving. He looked at Nora, who was sitting on the floor, holding Sofia, her neck already blooming with dark purple bruises. Despite her own trauma, she was still humming, her small body shaking as she kept the child safe from the horror.
Damian dropped to his knees, his bloody hands hovering over them, afraid to touch them, afraid to bring his violence any closer to their light.
"Nora..." he breathed, his voice cracking with a raw, agonizing emotion. "I’m sorry. I broke my promise. I brought the war inside."
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Nora stopped humming. She looked up, her blue eyes meeting his dark ones through her tears. She reached out her small, trembling hand, ignoring the blood, and placed it over his heart.
"You saved us, Damian," she whispered. "Now make it quiet. Please."
