HIS BILLOIN DOLLAR BRIDE

Chapter Ten

"Five seconds, Damian," Julian barked, his thumb hovering like an executioner's blade over the plastic toggle of the detonator. The tiny green LED indicator pulsed against the shadows of the corridor, casting a sickening hue over the rows of abandoned medical carts. "Make your choice. Your dynasty, or her mother."

The auxiliary battery on the dialysis machine let out a weak, desperate beep inside the freezing room. Three percent. Sarah’s chest barely rose beneath the fogged plastic of her oxygen mask.

Eva didn't scream. She didn't let panic paralyze her. Her eyes locked onto Damian’s back, the damp white fabric of his shirt stretched taut over muscles coiled like a spring. The suffocating space between them was charged with a sudden, devastating clarity. He had just signed a dissolution paper because he believed she was a corporate operative sent to destroy him. Now, his entire empire rested on whether he stepped forward to save the ledger or stayed to protect the family of the man his grandfather had ruined.

Damian didn't look back at her. He didn't have to.

"You always were a terrible strategist, Julian," Damian murmured, his voice a low, vibrating growl that cut through the hiss of the dying ventilator.

In a single, explosive motion, Damian didn't run toward the bomb—he lunged sideways, his heavy boots shattering the glass observation panel separating the corridor from Room 402. The shower of crystalline shards rained down as he grabbed the heavy iron tire iron from the floor, hurling it through the air with lethal velocity.

The iron bar struck the primary tactical guard’s wrist just as Julian pressed the button.

A sharp, electric snap echoed through the hall, but the expected explosion didn't follow. Damian had used the diversion to throw his entire body mass into the corridor, tackling the guard holding the hardwired receiver line. The countdown on the explosive charge froze at two seconds as the wires were violently ripped from the terminal block.

"Eva! The mask!" Damian roared, his hand wrapping around Julian’s throat, slamming him into the concrete wall with a force that loosened the plaster.

Eva was already moving. The monitor beside her mother's bed flatlined with a continuous, piercing hum as the last drop of battery drained. Darkness took the screen. Eva grabbed the manual silicon bag-valve mask from the wall hook, sealed the blue plastic rim firmly over her mother’s pale face, and squeezed.

One. Two. Three.

She forced the oxygen into Sarah’s lungs using the sheer strength of her hands, her green eyes fixed on the hallway. Through the shattered observation window, she watched the man who claimed to have no heart tearing through Julian's mercenary detail with a brutal, single-minded savagery. He wasn't fighting for a boardroom clearance code. He was fighting to keep the hallway clear so she could breathe.

Damian delivered a crushing blow to Julian's jaw, throwing his cousin over a metal gurney. The remaining guards fled toward the service elevator as the sound of distant sirens finally punctured the storm outside. The metropolitan police reinforcements were breaking through the sector blockade.

Damian stepped back into the room through the broken partition, his breathing ragged, his knuckles torn and dripping blood onto the linoleum. He didn't look at his cousin's unconscious form. His gray eyes locked onto Eva’s hands, rhythmically pumping the plastic bag.

"The main breaker is clear," he said, his voice raw as he crossed the space between them. He reached out, his large, warm hand covering her trembling fingers on the respirator mask. The heat of his skin was a violent shock against the sub-zero chill of the room. "Let me take over. You're losing leverage."

"I have enough leverage to keep her alive, Mr. Knight," Eva whispered, her breath hitching as his chest brushed against her shoulder, crowding her against the gurney. The scent of rain, blood, and unyielding cedarwood filled her senses, sending a sharp, illicit wave of heat straight to her core despite the horizontal flatline on the machine. "You signed the dissolution. You shouldn't even be in this room."

"The dissolution requires a notary seal at the high court, Francesca," Damian murmured, his lips bare inches from her ear as his hands replaced hers on the oxygen bag, his grip steady and unhurried. He squeezed the bag with a perfect, mechanical rhythm. "Until that clock strikes noon, your heartbeat belongs to my ledger. And I don't liquidate assets during a hostile takeover."

Eva looked up at him, her chin tilting to meet his dark, unreadable gaze. The raw s****l tension that had built between them through the night was no longer a hidden current—it was a weapon. "You still think I came to the gala to steal your throne."

"I think you are the most dangerous variable I have ever encountered," Damian whispered, his gray eyes darkening as they traced the curve of her mouth. "But right now, you're the only one keeping me anchored to it."

A sudden, deep thrum vibrated through the floorboards. The overhead fluorescent tubes flickered, hummed, and then exploded with bright, white light as the hospital’s main power grid finally surged back to life.

The dialysis machine let out a cheerful chime, its automated systems rebooting as the screen illuminated with green vitals. Sarah’s heart rate stabilized, the mechanical ventilator taking over the heavy lifting from Damian’s hands.

Eva let out a breath she felt she’d been holding since the Mayfair gala, stepping back from the bed. They had won the hour. Her mother was breathing.

Then, the door to Room 402 opened slowly.

It wasn't the police. It wasn't the medical director.

A man in a worn, gray wool coat stepped into the room, his hair silvered at the temples, his face mapped with the deep lines of a man who had spent two decades hiding in the shadows of the continent. He carried a heavy, faded leather document satchel beneath his arm, his hands scarred from years of manual laboratory labor.

Eva’s breath caught violently in her throat. Her body went entirely rigid as her mother let out a weak, muffled sob from beneath the oxygen mask.

"Silas," Sarah whispered.

Silas Brooks looked at his daughter, his green eyes an exact, mirror replica of Eva’s own. He didn't look at his wife; his gaze shifted slowly to the young billionaire standing by the bed, his expression hardening into a look of ancient, absolute hatred.

"You look just like your father, Damian," Silas said, his voice smooth and carrying the dangerous weight of a founder who had returned from the dead. He reached into his satchel, pulling out a pristine, red-sealed document—the original 1998 master charter of Knight Enterprises. "But you’re sitting on my throne. And I didn't come back to London just to watch you divorce my daughter. I came to take back the fifty-one percent your grandfather stole from my bloodline."

Damian’s jaw set, his hand instinctively sliding down to wrap around Eva’s waist, pulling her back into his side with a fierce, possessive grip that contradicted the sudden ice in his eyes. He looked from the dead founder to the woman in his arms, the realization crashing through his defenses.

"You knew," Damian hissed, his grip tightening until it was painful. "You knew he was alive."

Eva looked at her father, then at the billionaire holding her captive against his chest, the trap closing around her from both sides. She had the journal in her pocket, the photo in her safe, and now, the architect of the entire war standing in front of her. She had to choose between the man who had just saved her mother's life, or the father who had returned to burn the kingdom down.