Chapter 162: The Last Heir

Damon’s POV

It should have been me.

If that bullet had torn through my shoulder, shattered my bone, and ripped through my chest, I would have taken it without a second thought. I would have welcomed the agony with a grin.

Seeing Micah lying limp and pale, his head falling backward like a broken doll while blood poured through his sweater, tore something raw and violent straight out of my chest.

I hated it. I hated this helpless, suffocating despair with every fiber of my being.

Noah burst through the ruined warehouse exit into the freezing night, sprinting down the gravel path with Micah clutched securely against his body armor. I stayed glued to his heels, my gun lowered, my lungs burning as we reached the perimeter.

SCREEECH.

The black tactical medical van slid to an aggressive halt beside the tree line. The rear double doors flew open, revealing an emergency stretcher, oxygen tanks, and trauma monitors.

Noah lunged inside, falling onto the bench, his bloody arms refusing to let Micah go for even a single second. Noah pulled Micah tighter against his chest, panting heavily, his cold eyes wide with a manic terror I had never seen in him before.

“Start the IV!” Noah roared at the combat medic inside. “Get this vehicle moving to the hospital right now!”

The medic reached forward, but David stepped into the doorway of the van, blocking the latch.

David didn’t look at the medic. His sharp, weathered eyes fixed directly on Noah.

“Master,” David said, his aristocratic voice cutting through the panic with terrifying calm. “You cannot ride in this vehicle. We have an immediate objective that requires your presence.”

Noah froze.

He slowly turned his head, glaring at his butler over his shoulder. The look in Noah’s eyes was so savage, so utterly homicidal, that even David took an involuntary half-step backward.

“Is there something on this earth,” Noah hissed, every single syllable vibrating with pure, murderous venom, “more important than my brother’s life, David?!”

David lowered his head in a respectful, solemn bow, but his voice did not waver.

“Master, Bernard Miller is dead,” David stated firmly. “The underground bunker has fallen, and the student hostages are currently being transferred to public hospitals. But the syndicate’s high council has panicked. The municipal coordinators and Bernard’s financial backers are raiding their central vault at this very moment, loading their server records and Plan Mayor documents into armored trucks to flee the city.”

David looked straight into Noah’s bloodshot eyes.

“We did not launch this war merely to rescue Sir Micah,” David reminded him, his tone turning razor-sharp. “We launched it to avenge the Whitfield family and wipe this syndicate off the face of the earth. If we do not breach their administrative compound within the next twenty minutes, they will burn the archives, liquidate their accounts, and vanish into international territory. This is the only chance we will ever have to finish them.”

Silence slammed over the interior of the van.

Noah’s jaw worked silently, his teeth grinding together so violently that I could hear the enamel click. His gloved hands tightened around Micah’s small, limp body, trembling with an agony that seemed to tear his soul in half.

He had to choose between staying beside the boy he loved or finishing the blood feud that had defined the last twenty years of his life.

Noah slowly turned his head toward me.

The murderous glare was gone, replaced by a raw, hollow desperation.

Without a word, Noah stood up from the bench. He leaned forward and placed Micah into my waiting arms.

The moment Micah’s weight settled against my chest, a cold shudder ran through me. Micah was light, his head slumping helplessly against my neck, his skin freezing cold to the touch.

Noah leaned in close to my face, his fingers digging into my tactical vest with terrifying, bone-crushing force.

“If his heart stops beating, Silver,” Noah whispered, his voice deathly low and shaking with pure promise, “I will find you, and I will rip your throat out with my bare hands.”

I held Micah tighter against my chest, meeting Noah’s terrifying gaze without flinching.

“He’s not going to die,” I said, my voice rock-solid. “Go finish those bastards. I’ve got him.”

Noah stared at me for half a second, gave a single sharp nod, and backed out of the van.

“Drive!” David barked, slamming the heavy rear doors shut from the outside.

The engine roared, and the van peeled out onto the asphalt, throwing me back against the padded seat.

.

.

Inside the enclosed space, the air smelled heavily of iron and iodine. The field medic immediately went to work, ripping open Micah’s blood-soaked cream sweater with trauma shears.

My fingers reached out, trembling slightly as they trailed across Micah’s cold, quiet face.

His lips were cracked and pale, his dark eyelashes resting still against his sunken cheeks. The medic had wrapped a tight pressure tourniquet high around his shoulder, but thick, dark blood was still seeping steadily through the white gauze, dripping down his arm onto my pants.

Micah’s breathing was terrifyingly shallow. Every tiny inhale sounded like a ragged, broken gasp.

A wave of suffocating panic clawed at my throat.

“He’s losing too much blood!” I yelled, slamming my heavy combat boot violently against the driver’s steel partition.

BANG! BANG!

“Step on the fucking gas!” I screamed at the driver. “Faster!”

“We’re doing ninety on the bypass, sir!” the driver shouted back through the grate. “ETA four minutes!”

Those four minutes felt like forty years.

I didn’t take him to the public university clinic where Bernard’s corrupt administrators lurked. We pulled hard into the ambulance bay of St. Jude Private Hospital—the premier private surgical facility in the northern district.

My father owned the hospital. Mr. Silver wasn’t a surgeon or a physician, but his investment trust held seventy percent of the private hospital’s shares.

The van doors flew open, and I didn’t wait for the paramedics.

I scooped Micah up into my arms, kicking the glass emergency entrance doors wide open with my boot.

The bright white lights of the trauma lobby blinded me for a second, but I didn’t slow down.

“Trauma team! Get the surgical unit out here right now!” I roared at the top of my lungs.