Chapter 6 - The Betrayal Within"You knew," I whispered, my voice trembling as I stared at the medical file lying on the desk between us. "You knew I wasn't just running from the syndicate... you knew someone was trying to poison me."
Damian didn't flinch. He didn't rush forward to comfort me or offer an excuse. He took a slow, deliberate sip of his scotch, his eyes never leaving mine.
"I found out two days before the yacht exploded," Damian said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "Dr. Marcus Vance was siphoning rare neurotoxins into your daily prenatal vitamins. He thought I wouldn't notice because my attention was divided across our expanding territories."
"And what did you do?" I demanded, anger surging through my veins, pushing away the terror. "You let him walk free? You let him almost kill me?"
"I didn't let him do anything," Damian replied, stepping into the office and closing the door behind him. "Vance disappeared the night before the explosion. I hunted him down across three continents. His body is currently resting at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, right where he thought you were."
I stared at him, stunned. "Then why... why didn't you bring me back immediately? Why let me suffer on the run for a year, thinking I was completely alone?"
Damian crossed the room, stopping just inches from me. The sheer presence of him—towering, intense, and radiating raw power—made the air feel heavy. He reached out, his warm fingers gently brushing a stray lock of hair away from my cheek. I flinched, but he didn't pull back.
"Because the poison wasn't the only threat, Bella," Damian said softly, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper. "The person who ordered Vance to kill you wasn't a rival syndicate. It was someone inside my own family. Someone sitting at my own dining table."
My breath caught in my throat. "Who?"
"If I told you then, you would have tried to fight them," Damian said, his jaw tightening. "And you were already weak from the poison. You wouldn't have survived. The only way to keep you and our child safe was to let everyone—including the traitor in my house—believe you were dead. I planted the false yacht explosion myself to buy you time to heal, and to give me time to draw the traitor out into the open."
The room spun. All my anger, all my resentment, all the months of agonizing loneliness crashed down around me like a shattered mirror.
"You... you staged the explosion?" I stammered, tears finally spilling over my lashes. "You knew I was alive, and you left me out there in the cold, terrified, hiding in cheap motels, while you played a chess game with my life?"
"It was the only way to save you," Damian said fiercely, his hands gripping my waist, pulling me gently against his chest despite my feeble attempts to push him away. "I had men watching your every move twenty-four hours a day. You were never truly in danger, Bella. Not while I breathed."
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"That doesn't give you the right!" I sobbed, finally letting the wall crack, hitting his solid chest with my fists. "You terrified me! You made me mourn my own life!"
"I know," Damian murmured, burying his face in my hair, inhaling deeply as if my scent was the only thing keeping him anchored to reality. "And you have every right to hate me for it. But the game is almost over, Bella. The traitor is about to make their final move. And tonight... we end it."
