Seraphina's POV
"What is it?" Damien demands. "Seraphina, what happened?"
I can't speak. Can't breathe. Can't do anything except stare at the photo of my father bleeding in a hospital bed.
Damien grabs my shoulders and turns me to face him. His eyes search mine for answers, but I don't have any. I just have a photo and a deadline and the understanding that someone is using my father to break me.
"Show me," he says quietly.
I hand him the phone. The color drains from his face as he reads the message. His entire body goes rigid.
"Who sent this?" His voice is pure ice.
"I don't know. The number—"
"Trace it." Damien doesn't move his eyes from the screen. He's speaking to someone I can't see. Within seconds, Toby appears in the doorway. Damien tosses him the phone. "Now."
Toby disappears.
I'm shaking. "My father—"
"Is being protected." Damien's hand cups my face. His thumb traces my cheekbone like he's trying to memorize my features before something destroys me. "I'm going to find out who did this. And they're going to regret every breath they take."
"How did they get him? How do they even know about him?"
"Because I let them." His voice is flat. "I've been so focused on you that I got careless. I exposed the one weakness Maggie warned me about."
He releases me and walks to his desk. He pulls up a holographic display—security footage from the hospital where my father is. I can see him in a private room. He's awake. He's looking at his phone. He's reading the same message he received.
"He's alive," Damien says. "For now."
"What do you mean 'for now'?" Panic rises in my throat.
"I mean someone just declared war." He manipulates the footage, rewinding. A figure enters my father's room. They're masked, but they move with purpose. They inject something into his IV line. My father convulses. Machines start alarming.
"No," I whisper. "No, no, no—"
The figure injects something else. My father stops convulsing. Goes still.
"What did they give him?" I'm backing away from the screen. "What did they do?"
"Something that will kill him in exactly 24 hours unless I provide the antidote." Damien doesn't look at me. He's studying the footage frame by frame. "Unless you provide the antidote."
"Me? I don't have—"
"No. But your testimony does." Damien finally looks at me. His expression is absolutely lethal. "They want you to go to the police and tell them everything. About Madison. About me. About the manipulation. They want to destroy me by using you."
"Who? Who would do this?"
"Victor Constantine." Toby's voice comes through a speaker. "We've identified the poison. It's from Constantine's distribution network. This is definitely him."
Victor Constantine. The rival crime lord. The one who tried to use me as leverage before. The one Damien thought he'd destroyed.
"He's supposed to be dead," I say.
"He is." Damien's smile is terrible. "Or at least, he will be very soon. But first, we have a problem."
"What problem?"
"You." Damien walks toward me. "In 24 hours, you have to choose. Either you go to the police and betray me, or you let your father die."
"There has to be another option. There has to be—"
"There isn't." His voice is gentle, which makes it worse. "Victor is counting on me to choose you over the empire. He thinks if I save your father, I'll expose myself trying to get the antidote. He thinks I'll be vulnerable."
"So what do we do?" My voice is breaking.
"We do what Maggie would do." Damien takes my hand and pulls me close. "We make a choice that saves everything and loses nothing."
"How?"
He doesn't answer. Instead, he leads me to a room I've never seen before. It's filled with technology. Screens. Equipment. Medical supplies.
On one wall is a photo. A man who looks like Damien, but older. Dead eyes. Cold smile.
"My father," Damien says. "Marcus Ashford. The man who created the Ghost and then turned the Ghost into himself. The man who murdered my mother when she tried to leave."
"Why are you showing me this?"
"Because you're about to do exactly what she did. You're about to run."
"I'm not—"
"Yes, you are." Damien's voice is absolute. "Victor sent you that message knowing exactly how you'd react. Knowing that love for your father would override everything else. Knowing that you'd eventually choose family over me."
"I wouldn't—"
"You would." He steps closer. "And I wouldn't stop you. Because I've spent six years obsessing over a woman who has a fundamental flaw: she loves her family more than she loves power. More than she loves me."
Tears burn my eyes. "Damien—"
"So here's what's going to happen." He takes my face in his hands. "You're going to go to the police. You're going to tell them everything. And you're going to watch me burn."
"What? No. No, I won't—"
"You will. Because if you don't, your father dies. And then you'll spend the rest of your life knowing you could have saved him but chose a monster instead."
"I choose you," I whisper. "I choose you."
"No, you don't." His thumbs brush away my tears. "You choose your father. You always will. That's why I love you and why I'm going to let you go."
"You're letting me—"
The door opens. Maggie stands there with a gun.
"Grandmother—" Damien starts.
"Be quiet." She looks at me. "Your father's antidote is in this building. I have it. I can save him."
Hope surges through me. "Yes. Yes, please—"
"But the price is high." She steps forward. "You have to kill Damien."
Everything stops.
"I'm sorry?" I whisper.
"You heard me." Maggie's expression is calm. "Kill him. Put a bullet in his brain. And your father lives. The Constantine problem is solved because Damien becomes a liability to his own empire. The family survives. You survive."
"I'm not going to—"
"You will." Maggie extends the gun. "Because you love your father more than you love him. And deep down, you always knew this would end one way."
I look at Damien. He's watching me with an expression that breaks my heart.
"Do it, Seraphina," he says softly.
"I can't."
"You can. And you will. Because I made you into exactly what Maggie said you'd become—not a queen, but a weapon. And like all weapons, you're only useful if you're willing to kill."
Maggie moves the gun closer. "Twelve hours now. You have twelve hours before the poison kills your father. Twelve hours to decide if you're a victim or a villain."
I look at the gun. Then at Damien. Then back at the gun.
And I understand: This was the plan all along. Not to save my father. To destroy me by making me choose.
Maggie isn't offering me an antidote.
She's offering me damnation.
"I won't do it," I say.
Damien's smile is sad. "Then Victor wins. And your father dies knowing his daughter chose a monster over him."
My hands reach for the gun.