Chapter 5 BLOOD AND BONDAGE

BLOOD AND BONDAGE

Emilia's POV

The needle pierced my skin at midnight.

No warning. No soft words. Just pain.

It wasn't the sharp, clean sting of a vaccination or the dull pressure of an IV. This was violation-cold, deliberate, calculated. The kind of pain that didn't ask permission. It took.

I woke gasping, my body arching off the bed as the cold burn of metal dragged blood from my veins. My scream barely left my throat before a hand clamped down on my mouth, silencing me. The taste of leather gloves and salt-sweat skin flooded my tongue. Another hand gripped my arm, fingers digging into flesh like meat on a butcher's table, pressing down hard enough to leave bruises.

"Stay still," someone hissed. Not Viktor. Someone else. Rough, impatient. The doctor.

I kicked wildly, half-blind with panic. My wrists were strapped to the bedframe with velvet restraints, soft but unyielding. Even my ankles had been bound, the silk-lined cuffs chafing against bare skin. I was trussed up like a patient in some back-alley asylum, the kind where screams went unanswered and records were burned at dawn.

"Three more vials," Viktor's voice floated from the shadows. Calm. Controlled. "And I want marrow. From the hip."

The words slithered into my ears, slow and venomous.

The doctor hesitated. "She'll need anesthesia."

"Do it awake."

The words landed like a verdict. A death sentence. A punch to the gut.

I thrashed harder, my muscles burning with the effort. The doctor cursed, bracing himself over me as he prepared the long, cruel-looking marrow needle. I saw it glint in the low light-a slender, predatory thing, polished steel catching the dim glow of the bedside lamp. My breath came in ragged bursts, my pulse hammering so violently I could feel it in my teeth.

The pain was not pain. It was obliteration.

When the needle drove into the bone of my pelvis, I screamed. A raw, animal sound that tore from my throat until it cracked. My hands tore against the restraints, the velvet biting into my skin. My legs kicked uselessly, heels slamming against the mattress. I think I bit the doctor. Or maybe he hit me. I don't know. Time collapsed into the agony, folding in on itself until there was nothing but white-hot fire radiating from my hip, searing through nerve endings, muscle, marrow.

I didn't black out.

Viktor made sure of that.

He stepped closer only after the final vial was filled with the thick, yellow marrow, his shoes clicking against the hardwood like a judge's gavel.

I was drenched in sweat. Shaking. My lips were bleeding from where I'd bitten them.

He knelt beside me and cupped my chin, tilting my face up until our eyes met. His thumb smudged my blood across my bottom lip, a grotesque parody of a lover's caress.

"You were supposed to be hers," he murmured. "Anya's little girl. The one Gregory stole. I wanted to believe that."

I stared at him, unable to speak, trembling with pain and something worse-dread.

He leaned in, his voice barely a whisper.

"Because if you were my niece, I couldn't touch you the way I wanted to."

----

Three days passed.

I existed in a haze of medication, pain, and blurred time. Nurses came and went-Bratva enforcers dressed in hospital whites, pretending to care. They took blood. Checked vitals. Injected more sedatives when I stirred too much. Their hands were efficient, impersonal, their faces carefully blank.

The room smelled of antiseptic and vodka, the sharp tang of alcohol clinging to the air like a ghost. The sheets were crisp, starched, too white against my bruised skin.

When I woke fully, it was night.

A lamp burned low in the corner, casting long shadows across the walls. The faint hum of the estate's heating system whispered through the vents, a monotonous drone beneath the silence.

Viktor sat by the window, a cigarette burning low between his fingers. He didn't look at me right away. His profile was sharp in the dim light, all angles and shadows, his jaw set like stone.

On the table beside him was a folder. Thick. Sealed.

I knew what it was.

My throat was raw, but I forced out the words. "You got the results."

He didn't move. Didn't answer.

I struggled to sit up. My body screamed in protest. Bruises bloomed across my arms and thighs, mottled purples and blues staining my skin. My hip felt like it had been crushed by a truck, the ache deep, bone-deep, relentless.

"Viktor," I said, louder this time. "What did they say?"

He stood. Picked up the folder. Crossed the room in silence and dropped it on my lap.

The paper was cold against my fingers.

I opened it.

DNA RELATIONSHIP ANALYSIS: SUBJECTS - VIKTOR SOKOLOV / FEMALE X

POTENTIAL RELATIONSHIP: PATERNAL UNCLE / NIECE

RESULT: 0% PROBABILITY OF BIOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIP

Below it was another page.

PATERNAL COMPARISON: GREGORY HART / FEMALE X

RELATIONSHIP: FATHER / DAUGHTER

RESULT: 99.998% MATCH

I stared at the numbers until they blurred.

Viktor's voice came like a death sentence:

"You're not Anya's daughter. You're his. Gregory's."

My breath hitched. I felt it then-not surprise. Not confusion. Just a deep, raw ache, spreading through my chest like poison.

He stepped closer, towering above me.

"You carry his blood," he said, disgust thick in his voice. "I thought you were a stolen child. A victim. But no." He leaned down, eyes gleaming. "You are exactly what he made you. A Hart. His legacy."

I tried to speak. He didn't let me.

"Do you know what your father did to my sister?" he asked, voice tight with rage. "He promised to save her. And when the baby came early, he let her die on a cold operating table while he ran."

He turned away, pacing now. A man trying to rein in an inferno.

"I searched for you," he said. "For her. The daughter he stole. For years. I buried Anya with empty arms and a broken soul, and I hunted the bastard who did it."

He stopped and looked at me.

"And then you showed up. With her eyes. Her laugh. Her fire."

He came close, kneeling again, but there was no softness in him now.

"I let myself believe you were hers. That maybe this story could end without more blood."

He stood. Slowly. Coldly.

"But you're Gregory Hart's daughter."

He walked to the fireplace and poured himself a drink.

"So here's what happens now." He downed the glass in one swallow and set it down with a clink.

"You live. Not because I forgive you. Not because I believe you're innocent. You live because I want you to regret every breath you inherited from him."

He turned, his eyes dark.

"I will ruin you," he said. "Break you. Strip every illusion of who you thought you were. Until you beg me to kill you."

My hands trembled.

"And when your father comes to save you-and he will, because men like Gregory can never let go of their possessions-I will kill him."

His voice dropped to a whisper.

"Slowly. Piece by piece. Until he watches his soul bleed out on my floor."

Tears slipped down my cheeks. Not from fear. Not yet. But from something deeper.

Grief. Betrayal. The collapse of a world I had believed in.

He leaned down one last time.

"You wanted truth," he murmured. "Here it is. You were never mine. But now you are. Completely."

III. The Silence

He didn't lock me up again. That was the cruelty of it.

I was free to roam the estate. To walk the gardens. To sit in the library with books I couldn't read because the words blurred behind my tears.

The guards watched me like I was made of glass-a bomb waiting to detonate.

Aleksei brought me tea once. He didn't speak. Just set it down and left.

The quiet was worse than the screaming.

At night, I lay awake listening to the house breathe around me.

Sometimes I heard Viktor pacing.

Once, I heard him cry.

Not loud. Not broken. Just one sound. A single, cracked exhale behind a closed door.

I curled into myself and pretended I didn't hear it.

Because I didn't know which hurt more:

Knowing I was Gregory's daughter.

Or knowing Viktor hated me for it.

And still couldn't stay away.

ent.