What blood owes
1211 Words
CHAPTER 8
*****
Maree
Warmth.
That was the first thing I felt.
Not comfort… just warmth pressing against my skin, pulling me slowly away from the darkness I’d sunk into.
I didn’t open my eyes yet.
I couldn’t.
My body felt like it was floating inside fire and ice at the same time. My throat burned, my wrists throbbed, my back… I didn’t want to think about my back.
Voices whispered around me.
Soft footsteps.
Machines humming.
The scent of antiseptic stung my nose.
A hospital?
No.
Not hospital.
Something cleaner. Quieter. Colder.
Empire Emergency Unit.
A private underground ward only meant for the Mafia empire.
I was alive.
Barely.
But alive.
And someone… someone was sitting next to me. I could feel their presence like a silent weight in the room.
Their breathing was steady, but tense.
Familiar.
Him.
I forced my eyes open.
Light stabbed straight into my skull and I flinched. A shadow leaned forward immediately.
Damon.
His elbows rested on his knees, hands clasped together like he’d been praying—or trying not to break something.
There was a bruise on his knuckles.
A c***k in the wall behind him.
A chair tipped over like he’d kicked it.
His eyes lifted the moment I moved.
Not cold.
Not mocking.
Not cruel.
Just… tight. Sharp. Filled with something I didn’t understand.
“You’re awake,” he said.
His voice was low, rougher than usual, like he hadn’t used it all night.
I swallowed only to realize how dry my throat was. “W-where…?”
“You’re safe,” he said quickly. “For now.”
Safe.
A strange word from him.
One I didn’t trust.
A soft memory flashed through me—the scent of him catching me before I hit the floor. The whisper of his arms around me.
I blinked hard.
Then winced.
Everything hurt.
I turned my head slightly and saw tubes, bandages, IV lines. My wrists were wrapped in clean white gauze. My back felt like a hundred knives had been stitched into my skin.
“What… happened?” my voice was barely a breath.
Damon pushed a hand through his hair, exhaling like he’d been holding that air for hours.
“My father happened,” he said quietly.
A shadow passed over his face. Something wounded. Angry. Exhausted.
Then he spoke again.
And for the first time, Damon didn’t sound like a boss.
He sounded like a man who had been forced to watch something he couldn’t stop.
---
Damon
He didn’t look away from her.
He couldn’t.
Seeing her alive—breathing—was the first thing that calmed the storm tearing through his chest since last night.
He shouldn’t have gone into that room.
He shouldn’t have carried her out.
He shouldn’t have brought her to the Empire Unit.
But he did.
And now he couldn’t undo any of it.
He leaned back slowly, studying her face, the bruises blooming along her jaw, the faint tremble in her fingers.
He hated it.
He hated all of it.
Her voice brought him back. “Why… why were they hurting me? What did I do?”
“You were born,” he said, bitterness curling at the edges of the words. “That’s enough in this world.”
Her eyes widened, confusion swimming through the pain.
He continued.
“My father—Don Alec—left the estate last night after giving orders to the guards. They were told to break you. To send a message to Spencer.” A pause. “Your father.”
Maree’s breath hitched.
“My… father?”
Damon nodded slowly. “Your real father. The one you don’t remember.”
She blinked, stunned, silent.
He swallowed hard, speaking carefully.
“There’s a feud—older than me, older than you. Decades old. Your father killed my mother in a betrayal nobody saw coming. And my father retaliated the only way he knows how.”
Her expression shifted—pain, confusion, disbelief all tangled together. Damon forced himself to keep going.
“He razed your bloodline. Every branch, every ally, every person with the Spencer name. Except you.”
“Me?” she whispered, trembling.
“You were hidden,” Damon said. “Your father placed you in Mama Zee’s care—your cousin—because she was the last person Don Alec wouldn’t suspect.”
Maree blinked rapidly, chest rising unevenly. Damon watched her carefully. He needed her to understand.
“Your father has something we want. Something that belongs to us. Land. Rights. Properties. Old tributes. He’s refusing to hand them over. And Don Alec doesn’t tolerate refusal.”
“So… k********g me was just… leverage?”
“Yes.”
“And t-torturing me… is to make him surrender?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head, tears leaking down her temples.
“I didn’t even know these people,” she whispered brokenly. “I didn’t even know I had a family. I didn’t even know I had a father.”
Damon clenched his jaw.
“I know.”
He reached for the chair beside the bed, pulled it closer, then sat again.
“You weren’t supposed to suffer like that last night,” he muttered.
Maree stared at him, voice small and cracking. “Then why didn’t you stop it?”
He didn’t answer.
Because he couldn’t.
Not when Don Alec’s orders were law—not even Damon could break that without risking a war inside the house itself.
Silence wrapped around them for a long moment.
Her fingers twitched weakly against the sheets. Her throat bobbed as she tried to force out words.
“You… you…”
Her breathing shook.
Her lips trembled.
Damon leaned forward.
“What is it?”
She tried again, voice faint.
“You—you… me… an…”
The last syllable died on her tongue.
Her eyes fluttered.
And she went still.
- Writer
