Damian’s eyes burned with a dark, mocking intensity as he took a slow step toward his father, completely unfazed by the fading sting of the slap on his cheek. The mention of Jannah’s mother, Frost, and the twisted legacy of the Enigma bloodline hadn’t intimidated him; it had only laid bare the bleeding core of his father’s past failures.

"Look at you," Damian said, his voice dropping into a low, cutting register that vibrated with absolute contempt. "You stand here boasting about your ruthless methods, father. But tell me, what has your pathetic use of force ever truly given you in this life? It has ever only made you lose. It made you lose my mother, it made you lose the only woman you ever actually coveted, and it has left you rotting in this mansion with nothing but hired bodies to fill your bed. If you continue using those exact same primitive means with Jannah, I will also lose her just like you lost her mother. No woman from that bloodline—no woman with a soul—would ever fall for a cold-blooded killer."

Bellero’s face darkened, a terrifying pressure exploding from his frame as he gripped the lapels of his silk robe. He stepped directly into Damian’s face, his chest heaving with fury. "Do not lecture me on loss, you arrogant boy!" the old Mafia boss snarled, his voice a gravelly roar. "You talk about fairness and romance as if you have all the time in the world. For four long years, you have been staying down in the dirt of those slums, running your pathetic charity clinics, and supposedly observing Jannah Nenth from afar. Tell me, in all those hundreds of days, how much actual progress have you made with your ’sweet words’ and ’fair pursuit’?"

Bellero let out a loud, mocking scoff, leaning in until his sharp features completely blocked Damian’s view of the corridor. "Have you even held her hand once, Damian? Have you even spoken to her about your true intentions, or have you simply hidden behind your stethoscope like a coward? Instead of taking what belongs to you, all you have done is waste more precious time, playing the saintly neighborhood doctor until she was actively ripped from your territory. Now she is sitting inside Guron Grefo’s estate, locked under his roof. The exact moment that S-tier bastard realizes just how incredibly special her biological frequency is—the moment he discovers she has the genetic coding to produce an Enigma heir—he won’t be letting her go ever. He will chain her to his bed permanently. That is exactly why the only best way to deal with this problem was to eliminate Dorrent Grefo completely before he finds that out!"

"And you thought a couple of low-level marksmen from the Knockout Gang could handle an S-tier mogul on an open road?" Damian fired back, his knuckles whitening as he held his ground against his father’s suffocating aura. "You almost killed the singular prize you’ve been hunting for decades!"

"A structural mistake that will be corrected!" Bellero shouted, waving his hand dismissively. "But the strategy remains absolute. I will not sit back and watch a Grefo take the legacy that should have been mine. If the bullet didn’t work, I will find other avenues of pressure. I will continue pressuring her old, senile grandfather Duro until he completely breaks under my weight. I will threaten his remaining fragments of sanity, and I will make his life such a living hell that he will have no choice but to obey me. He will beg me to let Jannah get married to you just to secure their survival."

Damian let out a sharp, bitter laugh, shaking his head in sheer disbelief at his father’s blindness. "You are completely unhinged, old man. Let’s look at the logistics of your brilliant plan. What exactly do you think Jannah will do if she ever hears that the father of the person pursuing her—the father of the man pretending to be her savior—was the exact person who orchestrated the hit that got her shot in the ribs today? If she discovers the Boren syndicate put that bullet in her body, she will never accept me, no matter what I do. She will hate my name until her very last breath."

Bellero’s golden eyes completely swamped with a cold, unfeeling emptiness—the look of a criminal dictator who had long since abandoned the concept of human consent. He adjusted his robe, a dark, cynical smirk curling his lips as he looked down at his son’s moral outrage.

"Then she won’t have a choice in the matter," Bellero said softly, his voice dropping into a flat, terrifyingly calm register that carried the chill of a gravesite. "I think I have been more than merciful enough with both of you over the past year. I have let you play your little games in the gutter. But my patience has reached its absolute limit. If things become too difficult, if her stubborn pride continues to resist your pursuit, I will simply have to deploy my tactical units to abduct Jannah Nenth directly from the hospital or the Grefo estate. I will lock her in the deepest bunker of this compound, and I will personally force you to drag yourself into that room and rape her, Damian. I do not care about her trust, I do not care about her happiness, and I do not care about her consent. As long as she gets pregnant with your seed, we win."

The absolute horror of his father’s words echoed through the silent corridor, but Damian didn’t flinch. Instead, a chilling, superior smile slowly broke across the young doctor’s handsome features. He looked at the old Mafia boss with a deep, professional pity, knowing the one ancient, biological secret that his father’s brute force could never conquer.

Damian leaned forward, his eyes locking onto his father’s with an unyielding, razor-sharp certainty as he delivered the ultimate psychological blow.

"You really don’t understand their bloodline at all, do you, Father?" Damian whispered, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that vibrated with absolute dominance. "Let me remind you of the biological reality of the Nenth lineage before you waste your credits on a kidnapping. No matter how many times I forcefully sleep with her, no matter how many hundreds of times I pin her down and drive myself inside her body against her will, she can never, ever get pregnant with my child unless she has willingly given her entire heart to me. You can use all the criminal violence in the world, Bellero, but Jannah’s specific lineage only bears children for the men they have genuinely given their hearts to, no matter how aggressively a man treats them, and no matter how much raw sex they are forced to take."