From Prison To Dominance!

Chapter 7

Anna’s spine cracked again, and this time her whole body arched off the seat.

Rhys moved before anyone could stop him.

He shoved past Luther, dropped to one knee beside the car, and clamped both hands against her convulsing chest.

The black smoke surged instantly, thicker now, angrier, wrapping around his wrists like a tornado.

“What are you doing?! Get off her!” Luther lunged, but one of the guards caught his arm.

Luther shot the guard a glare.

“How dare you? Unhand me!”

“She’s seizing, sir, maybe we can just—“

“Maybe nothing! He’s fucking killing her!”

Luther dragged his arm off the hand.

Sera pressed both hands over her mouth, sobbing into her palms, watching her daughter’s body twist and buck.

Dr. Whitfield had gone very still.

His earlier arrogance had drained clean out of his face.

He’d seen exhaustion. He’d seen shock, seizures, cardiac events. He had never seen a man’s palm glow black.

“That’s not normal. That’s not… medicine,” Whitfield mumbled to himself. Legs frozen in place.

Anna’s back arched one final time. A strained cry escaped her lips, then, all at once, she went still.

Like something had switched off.

“Anna?”

Sera’s voice broke into a shriek. “Anna! ANNA!”

“No no no!” Luther shoved forward, and this time nobody held him back.

He grabbed the gun from his own bodyguard’s holster in one motion, and leveled it at Rhys’s skull.

“You killed her.” His voice cracked, wild-eyed, finger trembling against the trigger.

“You killed her, you son of a bitch, I’ll blow your fucking brains out right here!”

Rhys said nothing. He didn’t move. Didn’t even look at the barrel pressed an inch from his temple.

His eyes were on Anna.

He just watched. And waited, counting the seconds with his fingers.

And then, he whispered. “…Ten.”

Anna’s chest rose!

“Luther, wait!” Sera cried out.

A gasp tore out of Anna, like she’d been dragged up from somewhere very deep and cold.

Her eyes flew open. Color flooded back into her lips, her cheeks, in the space of one impossible second, from grey to living pink.

“Anna!” Sera nearly collapsed beside her.

Luther’s gun arm dropped, his mouth open wide.

Whitfield crouched instantly. He was checking her pulse, her pupils, her breath. He worked in silence for a long moment while the entire alley held still around him.

Finally, he straightened himself slowly.

“There are no abnormalities. she’s… perfectly healthy.” Whitfield said.

“Oh my baby girl,” sera sobbed into Anna’s shoulders. She couldn’t believe her daughter was healed. For months, her beautiful daughter had looked like a shadow of herself. And now, watching her glow, she was fine.

Rhys stood, dusting off his knees, and looked at the doctor.

“I believe you owe me something.”

Whitfield’s jaw tightened. He glanced at Sera, at the guards, at the gun still loose in Luther’s hand, searching for any exit that didn’t end where this was clearly going.

“Now hold on,” he said. “This proves nothing. Spontaneous recovery happens all the time!”

“Do it.” Sera’s voice came out low and cold.

“Kneel. And call him what you promised.”

“Mrs. Longwater, surely we don’t need…”

“My daughter was dying while you called it exhaustion.” Sera rose to her full height, and for the first time in the alley, she looked every inch a Longwater.

“You stood there with your Geneva degree and your forty years and you told me to send away the only person who could actually save her. Get on your fucking knees!”

Luther cleared his throat. “Mrs Longwater, I really think we should look at this more carefully.”

“And you.” She rounded on him so fast he flinched.

“Eleven calls, Luther. Eleven. And you came back with a fraud and a gun, and you pointed that gun at the man who just saved her life. If Anna had died in the time it took you to get here, it would have been your foolishness that killed her. Say another damn word and see what happens.”

Luther’s mouth snapped shut.

Sera turned to her guards, voice flat as a blade.

“Put this quack on his knees.”

The guards didn’t hesitate this time. Two of them seized Whitfield by the shoulders and forced him down onto the filthy alley concrete, his fine coat dragging in a puddle of something brown and wet.

“This is outrageous,” he hissed. “I have a reputation!”

“You have a former reputation. Right now, you’re a useless doctor who almost let a child die on principle. And I’ll see to it that you lose your license.”

“Now, do it!”

Whitfield’s eyes crawled up to Rhys, burning with a hatred that had nowhere left to go.

“…Master,” he said the word like it was glass in his throat. His head bowed low before Rhys who just watched with amusement in his eyes.

“Now, slap yourself three times.” Sera commanded.

The doctor gritted his teeth and raised his own hand and struck himself across the face.

Once.

“Louder!” Sera yelled, arms crossed, watching without a trace of mercy.

The second slap cracked across the alley. The third came harder, driven by pure humiliated rage, snapping his head sideways hard enough to draw blood at the corner of his mouth.

“Get him out of my sight.” Sera said finally.

The guards hauled the doctor up by the collar and dragged him out of the alley without a word.

Sera exhaled, long and shaking, and turned back to Rhys.

“I don’t know who you are, or what you just did back there. But you saved my daughter’s life, and I don’t forget that.”

She studied him for a moment: the worn clothes, the intake bag still under his arm, the calm that hadn’t cracked once through any of it.

“Come stay at the estate tonight. You’ll be properly fed, properly housed. It’s the very least the Longwaters owe you.”

“I don’t think this is wise. You can’t just invite a stranger from an alley into the estate.” Luther objected.

“If I want your opinion, I’ll ask!” Sera yelled at him.

Luther shut his mouth.

Rhys allowed himself the smallest smirk.

“I’d love that, ma’am. After you,” he said.

Rhys turned toward the car, and found Anna already watching him.

She was sitting up now, hair a mess of red waves, cheeks flushed with returning life, her eyes fixed on him with something unreadable burning just beneath the surface.

And neither of them looked away first.