Chapter 175: The Devil’s Woman Has A Pathetic Luck

​Damian stood in one swift movement, scooping Ana’s limp form effortlessly into his arms and tucking her face against the crook of his neck. His obsidian eyes swept the room, burning with lethal, terrifying vengeance.

​"Julian, secure your car and follow. Dimitri, get the car running. Run every red light between here and Mount Sinai," Damian commanded, his voice dead, flat, and chillingly absolute. "If anyone gets in our way, ram them off the road."

​He didn’t spare another glance for the shattered pastry or the room around him. Cradling his suffocating wife tight against his chest, Damian charged down the private stairwell, ready to tear the city apart to keep her breathing.

Tires shrieked against the wet asphalt as the heavy car violently banked around a crowded downtown corner, mounted police sirens wailing from the grille.

Dimitri slammed the throttle flat, clipping the side mirrors of idle taxis and blasting through intersection after intersection without touching the brakes. Behind them, two black tactical SUVs cleared the rear flanks, running interference against the blaring city gridlock.

​None of the chaos outside mattered in the backseat.

​Damian sat rigidly against the black leather, his arms locked like an iron cradle around Ana’s shuddering frame. Her head lolled back against the hollow of his shoulder, her ivory knit dress torn open to the ribs, her chest rising and falling in erratic, paper-thin gasps.

The epinephrine had bought her time, but her skin was still burning with a mottled fever, her pulse fluttering beneath his thumb with a terrifying, hollow fragility.

​"Anastasia," he rasped, his voice raw and gravelly against her damp hairline. "Stay with me. Keep breathing."

​Her lashes twitched, her glazed hazel eyes opening for half a second before rolling back into the dark. Her cold, trembling fingers brushed weakly against the lapel of his linen shirt, searching for an anchor before going limp.

​Damian stared down at her face, and for the first time in his ruthless, calculated life, a cold, sickening sensation seized his chest.

​It was an unfamiliar, venomous emotion that paralyzed his breath.

​Fear.

​He had stared down loaded barrels, watched his father’s empire teeter on the edge of destruction, and dismantled syndicates with a detached, chilling calm. He was Damian Sterling. He didn’t bleed, he didn’t panic, and he sure as hell didn’t feel terror.

She was supposed to be an acquisition... a stubborn, defiant pawn tied to an old blood debt and an offshore vault.

​It wasn’t supposed to feel like this.

​His heart was hammering against his ribs with brutal, violent desperation, every nerve screaming that if the faint, fragile whistle of air left her lungs, the entire world around him would cease to exist. He wasn’t holding collateral; he was holding the only thing keeping his own blackened soul anchored to the earth.

​"Dimitri, faster," Damian ground out, his knuckles turning stark white where he gripped her waist.

​"Two blocks out, Mr. Sterling!" Dimitri shouted over the screaming engine.

​The convoy slammed to an ear-splitting halt beneath the fluorescent floodlights of the Mount Sinai emergency bay, rubber smoking against the concrete.

​Before the security team could even clear the perimeter, Damian kicked the car door open, surging out into the humid night with Ana cradled against his chest.

He took the double automatic doors at a dead sprint, driving his heavy boot straight into the sensor frame when they didn’t slide fast enough, splintering the glass edge and bursting into the pristine trauma center.

​"Get a crash cart and a ventilator right now!" Damian’s roar echoed through the sterile hall like thunder, commanding the entire ER floor.

​Nurses froze, orderlies scattered, and the chief trauma physician bolted from the central desk as Damian slammed through the bay, his obsidian eyes burning with a lethal, unhinged authority that left no room for hesitation.

"Anaphylaxis to tree nuts, one epi dose administered five minutes ago. If she stops breathing under your hands, I will tear this hospital down brick by brick. Move!"

The double doors of Mount Sinai’s private trauma wing burst open with a harsh clatter as Julian, Clara, and Valerie rushed into the sterile corridor.

​Damian was pacing the floor like a caged beast. His linen shirt was unbuttoned, stained with sweat, and his knuckles were split from ramming the entryway doors.

His chest heaved with ragged, lethal adrenaline as he stared through the reinforced glass window of Trauma Bay 1, where a team of six doctors and nurses worked feverishly over Anastasia’s prone, intubated body.

​The moment Valerie’s trembling figure entered his peripheral vision, the predator snapped.

​"Damian..." Valerie started, her voice shaking, tears running down her pale cheeks.

​Damian closed the distance between them in three predatory strides. He towered over his sister, his obsidian eyes burning with a terrifying, unhinged ferocity that made the armed guards down the hall instinctively step back.

​"You did this," Damian snarled, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that rattled through the hallway like thunder. "You and your pathetic, reckless little rebellion. You dragged her out into the open, paraded her around the city, and forced tequila down her throat until she couldn’t stand. I told you to stay behind locked doors, Valerie. If she dies in that room, I swear to God you will never step foot in this city again."

​Valerie flinched, shrinking backward as a choked sob caught in her throat.

​Before Damian could take another step, Julian stepped directly into the breach. Julian planted an open hand flat against Damian’s broad chest, refusing to yield an inch despite the deadly warning flickering in Damian’s eyes.

​"Stand down, Damian!" Julian commanded, his own tone sharp, authoritative, and immovable. "Back off her right now!"

​"Get your hands off me, Montgomery," Damian warned, his jaw ticking violently, ready to rip Julian’s throat out.

​"She didn’t poison your girl, Damian! Think with your head, not your bloodlust," Julian shot back, stepping firmly between the siblings. Behind him, Clara pulled a weeping Valerie into her arms, keeping her shielded. "Valerie ordered standard club fare. How the hell was she supposed to know a kitchen with three Michelin stars would cross-contaminate a pastry with tree nuts? It was a freak accident!"

​"There are no accidents," Damian ground out through clenched teeth, his gaze snapping back toward the bay where the steady, rhythmic beep of the cardiac monitor fought against the hum of the ventilator. His voice dropped to a chilling, razor-thin whisper. "Not when it comes to Anastasia. Not in my world."

Julian kept his hand firmly against Damian’s chest, holding the line until he felt the rigid, murderous vibration in the other man’s muscles loosen by a fraction of an inch.

​"You want blood, Damian, but tearing your own sister apart isn’t going to save Anastasia," Julian said, his voice dropping into the cool, calculating cadence of an elite operative. "If you believe this wasn’t cross-contamination, then we treat it as an attempted homicide. Right now."

​Damian didn’t look away from the glass partition. Through the pane, the doctors were securing an IV drip, hanging bags of high-dose corticosteroids while the cardiac monitor leveled out into a stable, rhythmic chime. His jaw remained locked tight, but the wild, blind fury in his dark eyes hardened into lethal, razor-sharp focus.

​"The club’s management answers to city regulators," Julian continued, pulling out his encrypted smartphone with his free hand. "I’m calling Special Agent Ford and the regional field office directly. I’ll have federal forensic units and hazardous materials teams sweep Nocturne before the management can wipe the prep stations. We seal the refrigeration units, run gas chromatography on the powdered garnish, and pull every second of security footage from the pantry, the prep line, and the service stairs."

​Valerie lifted her head from Clara’s shoulder, wiping the mascara from her cheeks, her voice small and trembling. "Damian... I swear to you, I only ordered what they had on the reserve list. I asked for honey glaze. I would never..."

​"Quiet, Valerie," Julian commanded gently, sparing her a brief, reassuring glance before turning his steely gray gaze back onto Damian. "Let the feds tear the kitchen down to the studs. If it’s an idiot line cook who didn’t sanitize a cutting board, you’ll have your answer. And if someone deliberately put bitter almond on that plate..."

​Julian let the sentence hang, the air between them turning freezing cold. He didn’t need to finish it.

​Damian slowly turned his head, his obsidian eyes empty of humanity, reflecting only the harsh, fluorescent glow of the trauma ward.

​"Call them," Damian rasped, each syllable dripping with venom. "Lock down the perimeter. Secure the staff. If a single crumb in that kitchen was placed there with intent... I don’t want the feds to arrest them, Julian. I want you to leave them in the room with me."

***********************

The sterile, rhythmic hiss of the oxygen cannula was the only sound breaking the heavy silence of the private suite.

​Damian pulled a heavy leather armchair right to the edge of the mattress, dropping into it with a low, exhausted groan that sounded more like a growl. He dragged both hands down his face, the dark stubble on his jaw scraping against his palms, before letting his forearms rest on his knees.

​His obsidian eyes fixed on her pale, sunken face, his jaw ticking in raw, simmering frustration.

​"Pathetic," he muttered into the empty room, the word laced with venom and disgust. "You and your goddamn luck, Anastasia."