The air in the hallway turned freezing as Kai dragged me toward the back of the manor. He didn't take me to the bedroom. He didn't take me to the garden. He led me to a heavy steel door hidden behind a velvet curtain in his study.
"You want to know what Marcus was whispering about?" Kai growled, his grip on my arm never wavering. "You want to know why you're worth three hundred million dollars to a man who already has everything?"
He pressed his thumb against a biometric scanner. Chirp. The heavy door hissed open, revealing a staircase that descended into a sterile, white-lit basement. It smelled like bleach and old paper.
"Kai, stop! You're hurting me!" I cried, trying to plant my feet, but he was a force of nature.
He pulled me into the center of the room. It was a private laboratory. On the walls were digital screens displaying complex DNA sequences, and in the center of the room sat a single, vintage glass crib—the kind used in hospitals forty years ago.
Above the crib was a plaque: SUBJECT SIX.
"Look at it," Kai commanded, spinning me around to face the screens. "You think you were born in a hospital in the city? You think your mother was just a girl who fell in love with a bankrupt businessman?"
I stared at the data. My blood type. My rare genetic markers. Everything was there, mapped out like a blueprint.
"Your mother was the lead scientist for the Fox Estate," Kai whispered, stepping up behind me. He wrapped his arms around my waist, his chin resting on my shoulder as he forced me to look at my own history. "She stole the most valuable asset the Fox family ever created. She stole you."
My breath hitched. "I... I'm an experiment?"
"You are the perfection of a bloodline, Amara. A genetic masterpiece designed to lead this empire," Kai's voice was dark, filled with a twisted kind of awe. "But she ran. she tried to hide you in a normal life, with a weak man like your father and a loser like Marcus."
He turned me in his arms, his eyes burning with a fire that wasn't just lust—it was a terrifying, holy obsession.
"Marcus found out. He didn't just sell you to pay a debt. He sold the information to my rivals first. I had to outbid the entire underworld to get you back where you belong."
I looked at the silver silk of my dress, the chains clinking against my skin. "So this is all I am to you? A lab result? A trophy to complete your collection?"
Kai's hand slid up to my throat, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw with a sudden, unexpected softness.
"At first, yes," he murmured, his face dipping toward mine. "But then I tasted you. Then I felt the way you fought me. And I realized... Subject Six isn't just an asset. She's a queen who needs to be tamed."
He leaned in, his lips brushing mine, tasting like the whiskey he'd had at lunch and the danger that followed him everywhere.
"Now you know the truth, Amara. There is no escaping me. Not because of the contract. Not because of the money. But because you are a Fox by blood, and I am a Fox by conquest. Together..."
He nipped at my bottom lip, drawing a small gasp from me.
"Together, we are the only two people on this earth who can sit on that throne. But first, I have to make sure you never think about running again."
He suddenly lifted me, sitting me on the edge of a cold, metal lab table. The contrast between the freezing metal and his boiling body heat made my skin scream.
"Marcus told you a secret," Kai hissed, unbuckling his belt. "Now, I'm going to make you forget he ever existed. I'm going to replace every thought of 'Project Six' with the feeling of me inside you."