Chapter 6
The deafening crash of the linen trolley echoed into a suffocating, heavy silence. The bright, cinematic lighting cast no shadows, illuminating every brutal detail of Victor’s broken, bleeding form tangled within the pastel baby blankets. Daniel Carter stood over the wreckage, a monument of lethal, unyielding authority.
"Victor!" Evelyn screamed, her aristocratic composure finally shattering.
The sixty-four-year-old matriarch stared in pure horror at her nephew bleeding on the floor. Her fair, rosy face flushed with a toxic mixture of shock and desperate, unfiltered rage. She looked from Victor’s unconscious body to the cold, emotionless face of her son. The realization that Daniel was not playing a political game, but operating on pure, protective instinct, broke her grip on reality.
"You animal!" Evelyn shrieked, her American accent cracking violently. "You struck your own blood over a filthy, weak woman!"
"He raised a hand to me," Daniel stated calmly, his dark eyes devoid of any familial warmth. "In our world, mother, that is a death sentence. He is lucky I am holding my son."
Evelyn’s eyes darted frantically around the room. She realized her enforcer was incapacitated, and Marissa was slowly edging along the wall toward Clara’s unconscious body, intent on rendering aid. Evelyn’s profound narcissism could not handle the total loss of control in a house she believed she ruled.
"This is all her fault!" Evelyn yelled, pointing a trembling, pearl-adorned finger at Clara’s torn, filthy clothes. "She brought this violence into our family! I will not allow that child to be raised by a peasant!"
In a blind, irrational surge of madness, Evelyn rushed forward. She completely bypassed Daniel, her expensive heels clicking aggressively against the hardwood borders of the carpet. She lunged directly toward the empty bassinet, then abruptly shifted her trajectory, reaching her manicured hands aggressively toward the bundle securely held in Daniel’s left arm. She intended to physically rip newborn Noah from his father’s grasp.
"Give me my grandson!" Evelyn demanded, her face contorted with ugly, desperate malice. "He belongs to the Carter bloodline, not to her!"
Daniel’s reaction was terrifyingly instantaneous.
The moment Evelyn’s hand breached his personal space, reaching for the soft blanket wrapping his son, Daniel’s free right hand shot out like a striking viper. He clamped his powerful fingers around Evelyn’s wrist, his grip like a steel vice. He tore her hand away from Noah with such vicious force that the heavy pearl bracelets on her wrist snapped, scattering tiny white beads across the brightly lit floor.
"Do not ever," Daniel whispered, his voice vibrating with apocalyptic fury, "reach for my son."
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Evelyn gasped, pain shooting up her arm, but her arrogance pushed her to defy him one last time. "You wouldn't dare touch me, Daniel. I am your mother!"
She had wildly miscalculated the boundaries of his mercy.
