Chapter 2 - The Command of the Volkov
The world slowed to a violent, suffocating stillness.
Luz’s head rolled back against Camila’s shoulder, her small frame going entirely limp. Her breath came in shallow, wheezing gasps that rattled through her chest like dry leaves. Camila’s heart slammed against her ribs with such force it choked off her air.
"Luz!" Camila cried out, her voice breaking on the freezing wind. "Luz, baby, look at Mommy. Open your eyes!"
She didn't care about the black Rolls-Royce idling forty feet away. She didn't care about the dark-suited men fanning out across the snow-covered pavement of Madison Avenue, forming an impenetrable wall between her and the gawkings of the Manhattan crowd. All that mattered was the scorching heat radiating from her daughter’s forehead.
Before she could adjust her grip, a broad shadow fell over her.
Damon didn't ask. He didn't negotiate. In one fluid, terrifyingly decisive movement, he dropped to one knee in the dirty snow, unbuttoned his heavy cashmere overcoat, and reached out.
"Don't touch her!" Camila hissed, backing up on the cardboard, her hands clutching both children close. Mateo let out a fierce, small growl, holding his one-eyed rabbit like a shield in front of his mother.
"She’s burning up, Camila," Damon said. His voice was low, gravelly, vibrating with a desperate, suppressed fury that she remembered all too well. "She’s in septic shock or pneumonia. Look at her."
"I can take her to the clinic—"
"The clinic downtown closed two hours ago, and you have four dollars in a paper cup," Damon cut her off, his dark eyes locking onto hers with a lethal, immovable intensity. "You can hate me until your heart stops. You can shoot me when this night is over. But if you don't let me put her in a warm car right now, your daughter is going to die on this sidewalk."
The truth hit Camila like a physical blow. Her shoulder trembled under Luz’s limp weight. She looked from Damon’s icy, unyielding face down to her daughter’s blue-tinged lips. The pride she had worn like armor for five excruciating years shattered into dust.
"If you hurt them..." she choked out.
"They are my blood," Damon growled.
He didn't wait for another word. He scooped Luz effortlessly into his arms, wrapping her entirely inside his coat, sheltering her small body against his chest. With his other arm, he grabbed the back of Camila’s frayed jacket and pulled her up from the pavement.
"Mateo," Camila gasped, reaching down.
Damon’s chief of security, a towering man named Lev whose face bore a jagged scar from a knife fight ten years ago, knelt instantly. "Young man," Lev said, his voice surprisingly gentle despite his terrifying frame. "May I carry your rabbit?"
Mateo looked at his mother, eyes wide with terror, then at the mammoth of a man offering his massive hand. He squeezed his rabbit tight and shook his head no, but allowed Lev to lift him off the cold stone as if he weighed nothing at all.
"Clear the street," Damon barked over his shoulder to his convoy commander. "Get Dr. Ellison to the penthouse. Tell him if he isn't there in ten minutes, I'll tear his license to shreds."
"Yes, Boss!"
The street scene was chaos—horns blaring, sirens wailing in the distance—but around Damon Volkov, a path cleared instantly. He swept Camila and the children into the back of the heated Rolls-Royce. The heavy armored door slammed shut with a solid, airtight thud, sealing out the frozen city.
The heat inside the cabin was instant and overwhelming. The scent of leather, expensive cedarwood cologne, and refined power filled Camila’s nose, pulling her back five years into a life she had tried so desperately to forget.
Damon sat across from her, Luz cradled in his lap. He had pulled off his leather gloves, and his long, scarred fingers were resting against the small girl's jawline, feeling her rapid, weak pulse. His jaw muscles clenched so tight a pale ridge showed along his throat.
Mateo was pressed against Camila’s ribs, staring at Damon with wide, suspicious eyes.
Damon slowly turned his gaze from the little girl to the boy sitting opposite him. For the first time, he truly looked at his son. Mateo had Damon’s straight dark hair, his high cheekbones, and the distinct, fiery amber ring around his irises.
Damon’s breath hit a snag in his chest. A muscle in his throat worked as he swallowed down a wave of raw emotion that nearly brought him to his knees.
"He has my eyes," Damon whispered, his voice dangerously thin.
"He has my temper," Camila retorted, her body stiff as a board, her teeth chattering as the thaw hit her numb limbs. "Don't look at them like that, Damon. You don't get to look at them like they belong to you."
Damon’s eyes snapped to Camila’s face. In the soft ambient lighting of the car, he saw the deep shadows beneath her cheekbones, the faint scar near her collarbone, and the raw, cracked skin of her hands.
"Five years, Camila," he said, the velvet tone of his voice dropping away to reveal the razor edge beneath. "Five years I thought you were dead. Five years I believed my children died in a ditch somewhere because you took off in the middle of the night without a word."
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"I left to keep them breathing!" Camila spat, her tears finally overflowing, scorching her ice-bitten cheeks. "If I had stayed, they wouldn't be sitting here right now! You would have turned them into what you are—or worse!"
Before Damon could answer, the car surged forward, tearing through red lights with sirens clearing their path, heading toward the private, heavily fortified domain of the Volkov empire.
