Chapter 422

Evelyn rose from her seat and moved toward him with deliberate steps. "Will you tell me about them?"

"Ah!" Rosalind collapsed onto the blood-smeared floor, her body trembling from the brutal lashes. Deep, jagged wounds split her skin, each one throbbing with agony. With cracked lips, she lifted her head to glare at the man lounging in the chair, exhaling a slow stream of smoke.

"Mr. Kent—I swear, I didn’t know how Evelyn was connected to Metropolis!"

Dominic took another drag, his gaze sharp as a blade. "I spent months luring Nathan into my trap. I was this close to having him."

Rosalind's teeth chattered uncontrollably.

Dominic uncrossed his legs and stood, his tall frame looming over her battered form. He stared down, his voice dripping with disdain. "And then you ruined everything. Because you couldn’t even verify that woman’s identity?"

She reached out, fingers clutching at his pant leg. "Mr. Kent, please—give me another chance! I can fix this. I’ll do anything."

A dark chuckle escaped him. He crouched, gripping her hair and yanking her head back until her scalp burned. She bit back a whimper as he forced her to meet his cold eyes. "Anything?"

Dominic turned to the man holding the whip. "Bring it out."

The man nodded and disappeared through the door.

It? Rosalind’s stomach twisted with dread.

Dominic smirked at the terror in her eyes. "Relax. It’s not for you. You’re not worthy of something this precious."

The man returned, carrying a sleek silver box with a fingerprint lock. Dominic pressed his thumb against the scanner. The lid slid open, revealing a slender glass tube filled with an eerie blue liquid.

It shimmered—beautiful, delicate, deadly.

Dominic lifted it, watching the way the light danced through the substance. "Do you know what this is?"

She shook her head, her breath shallow.

"This," he murmured, "is perfection and poison in one. If it spills onto skin, the infection begins. No cure. No mercy."

Rosalind paled. She’d heard whispers of this—rumors from Stoslo’s dark past. But she never imagined the epidemic decades ago hadn’t been natural. It had been engineered.

Dominic’s grin widened at her horror. "Don’t worry. This is the last of its kind. And once it’s used, there’s no stopping it. Hospitals won’t even detect it. Just a slow, quiet death."

"Mr. Kent," she rasped, "what do you want me to do with it?"

He pulled out a syringe, gloved his hands, and carefully drew a small amount of the blue liquid. Then he sealed the tube and crouched before her again, holding the needle inches from her face.

"Make sure Nathan gets infected. Fail me, and I’ll carve off your head and toss it into the Zena River."

At the hospital...

After Edmund finished recounting the past, Evelyn sat frozen. Even the epidemic that had ravaged Stoslo after the princess’s downfall—it had all been orchestrated. A calculated move to turn the people against her, to strip her of her birthright.