That night, Sienna curled up on Harris's couch. She refused to sleep in the bedroom — she felt safer near the exit. The Holland household was dead to her. She'd sooner die than go back just to be dragged to an altar or into another old man's bed.
Her mother? Sienna exhaled painfully. Her mother was a good woman, but far too weak under Holland's thumb. And then there was Aluna, her stepsister, who was probably laughing herself sick right now knowing Sienna had vanished.
"Sleep, Si. You're safe here. I'm not letting Holland through that door," Harris said from the bedroom doorway, his voice steady and sincere.
Sienna managed a small nod, though her mind kept spinning, assembling the insane plan she'd blurted out in the car.
The next morning, the sun had barely cleared the horizon when Harris woke up. He planned to make breakfast and have a serious talk — an attempt to convince Sienna that "getting pregnant immediately" was weapons-grade crazy.
But the living room was empty. The blanket was folded neatly, and his sister was gone. Harris rushed to check his wallet on the kitchen table. Cleaned out. All that remained was a scrap of paper covered in Sienna's hasty handwriting:
"Harris, I'm sorry. I borrowed your money and your passport. I have to get far away before they find me. I'm not stealing from you" I'm borrowing. Once the baby's born and I have a new life, I'll pay back every cent.
"Don't look for me. I need this freedom."
Sienna.
Harris raked his fingers through his hair in frustration, but a second later he sank back down and let out a long breath.
"Crazy kid... but at least she still thinks of me as her brother if she's willing to borrow my money."
The atmosphere inside the Elson mansion was suffocating. Condolence wreaths blanketed the grounds, but the master of the house, Kalendra Elson, stood like a statue carved from ice. His wife was gone — cancer had taken her.
Kalendra stood on the balcony, staring at nothing. The hope of producing an heir through the IVF procedure they'd spent months planning was now buried alongside his wife's coffin.
"Marco," Kalendra called without turning to face his personal aide. His voice was winter itself.
"Yes, sir?"
"Go to the hospital sperm bank. Order them to destroy my sample immediately. My wife is gone, so there's no reason for my seed to be planted in any other woman's body. I don't want an heir if it's not from her."
"But sir, that's the last sample—"
"Just do it!" Kalendra's low snarl shook the room.
Marco bowed deeply and left at once. Kalendra wanted every last trace of hope erased so he could devote himself fully to becoming an even more ruthless monster at the helm of Black Lotus.
But downstairs, an old man with a lion-headed cane had heard every word. Elson Senior — Kalendra's father — carved deep lines into his brow.
"Has he lost his mind? He wants to end the Elson bloodline over one woman?" the patriarch fumed.
He immediately signaled to a trusted man hidden behind a pillar. "Follow Marco. Stop the destruction. Tell the hospital to move Kalendra's sample to a secret container — or give it to whoever walks in needing an IVF procedure today, I don't care. Just make sure that sample survives, in whatever womb it ends up. I want a grandchild, not a void."
Fate began to deal its hand. On one side, a desperate young woman was heading toward a clinic with borrowed money. On the other, a mafia patriarch was fighting to save his bloodline by any means necessary.
The International Hope Fertility Clinic near the Mexican border was no place for the law-abiding. Here, money bought everything — from fake IDs to no-questions-asked IVF procedures.
In one of the clinic's cold, sterile corridors, Marco walked with a tense expression, carrying Kalendra's official destruction order. He didn't know that Elson Senior's men shadowed his every step.
"Here's the patient file under Kalendra Elson." Marco handed the documents to a shifty-eyed lab technician. "Mr. Elson wants this sample destroyed immediately. In front of me."
The technician nodded, but before his hand could reach the destruct button on the nitrogen storage unit, his phone buzzed.
A text message: Ten times your salary if you swap the tube now. Let Marco see an empty tube get destroyed.
The technician swallowed hard. He glanced toward the lab door, where a man dressed entirely in black — Elson Senior's operative — gave a subtle nod.
Meanwhile, in the dim waiting room, Sienna sat in an agony of nerves. She'd registered under a fake name, face hidden behind a surgical mask. Her hands trembled around the bag of cash she'd "borrowed" from Harris.
"Patient number 404, please come in," a nurse called.
Sienna stood. This was it. The first step toward her freedom. She didn't care who the donor was — she assumed anyone donating sperm at an illegal clinic like this was just someone who needed money. All she wanted was a child so Holland could never sell her again.
Back in the laboratory, a carefully orchestrated chaos was unfolding.
The technician, hands shaking, retrieved the silver tube marked ELSON-VEO-99 — Kalendra Elson's sample. Following the secret instructions from Kalendra's father, he had to pull it from the destruction queue immediately.
"Sorry — the machine's acting up a little," the technician told Marco, buying time.
In one swift motion, he swapped Kalendra's tube with a pre-staged empty one. The empty tube went into the destroyer. CRUNCH. It shattered to pieces in front of Marco's eyes.
"Done. Mr. Elson's sample has been destroyed," the technician announced. Marco nodded, satisfied, and left immediately to report mission accomplished to the boss.
But the moment Marco disappeared from sight, the technician broke into a cold sweat. Elson Senior's operative stepped into the lab.
"Where's the real tube?" the man asked flatly.
"H-here. But where do I put it? If it stays in the system, Mr. Kalendra could get suspicious eventually."
"Insert it into the first illegal patient's procedure today. Whoever she is. Elson Senior wants this sample to take root — he doesn't care whose womb it's in. We'll monitor from a distance."
The technician scanned the queue. His eyes landed on number 404. "There's a young woman. Just went into the procedure room."
"Do it now. And make sure every medical record is wiped after the procedure's complete."
In the quiet procedure room, Sienna lay on the table. She had no idea that in a matter of minutes, the sample entering her body wouldn't be from some broke anonymous donor.
It would be the heir-seed of the most feared crime syndicate in the world — Black Lotus.
"Take a deep breath, miss. We're beginning the procedure," the doctor said.
Sienna squeezed her eyes shut. She pictured Holland's face. Mahesa's. Her grandmother's.
"Starting today, I belong to none of you. I am the mother of my own child."
She didn't realize she'd just walked into a lion's den far more dangerous than the one she'd escaped. Kalendra Elson's sample — the grieving, allegedly impotent widower — had just found a new home.
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