Chapter 6 Curse's End

# Chapter 6: Curse's End

The medical suite transformed into an emergency delivery room. Machines beeped urgently as my contractions intensified, too early, too dangerous. Through waves of pain, I watched the bizarre tableau around me—Victor and his newly discovered son standing guard at the door, Seraphina preparing surgical equipment, the Cardinal muttering prayers in Latin.

"The girl is breech," Seraphina announced after an ultrasound. "We need to perform a C-section immediately."

Victor's face hardened. "No surgery. Not after what you did to your last patient."

"She'll die without intervention," Seraphina insisted. "Both babies will."

I grabbed Victor's hand, forcing him to look at me. "Let her do it."

His eyes—those ice-blue eyes that had once terrified me—now showed naked fear. "Antonia—"

"I trust you to watch her," I whispered, another contraction stealing my breath. "Don't let them take our children."

Something shifted in his expression at the word "our." He nodded once, then turned to Michael. "Guard the door. No one enters or leaves."

As Seraphina administered the anesthetic, the room began to blur around me. The last thing I saw before darkness claimed me was Victor's rose tattoo, still weeping crimson droplets down his chest.

---

I drifted through fragmented memories: Jamie's thin face smiling up from his hospital bed; my mother, a shadow I couldn't quite recall; Dario at the conference, his wine glass catching the light; Victor's hands gentle in my hair despite everything.

A sharp pain cut through the haze, anchoring me back to reality. I was still on the operating table, but something was wrong. Voices argued around me.

"The boy's heartbeat is dropping!" Seraphina's voice, clinical despite her panic.

"Save him!" Victor's command, brooking no argument.

"I can't save both," she replied coldly. "The curse is manifesting. Choose, Victor—your daughter or your son."

Through half-lidded eyes, I saw Victor's face, torn with an agony I'd never witnessed before. The mighty Cosimo heir, reduced to a desperate father.

"Save them both," he ordered.

"Impossible. The Cosimo heart defect—"

"Take mine." His voice was steady, resolved. "My heart for theirs."

The Cardinal stepped forward. "The prophecy foretold this. The father's sacrifice."

"No," I whispered, fighting through the anesthesia fog. "Victor, don't."

He looked down at me, a sad smile touching his lips. "Always fighting me, Antonia. Even now."

With practiced movements, he removed his shirt, revealing not just the bleeding tattoo but the full extent of the knife wound I'd given him—deeper than I'd realized, partially healed but still angry and red against his skin.

"Do it," he told Seraphina, who stood frozen with a scalpel. "My heart has the strongest Cosimo genetic material. Use it to stabilize the boy."

"It will kill you," she whispered.

"I'm already dying." He touched the wound over his heart. "Her blade was tipped with slow-acting poison. Dario's specialty, I believe."

Horror washed through me. The tissue I'd kept with his blood—Dario must have found it, used it somehow.

"No," I struggled to sit up. "Take my heart instead. My genetics can counteract the defect."

Victor's hand pressed me gently back down. "Always the doctor, trying to save everyone." His fingers brushed my cheek. "But not this time."

I caught his wrist. "I can't let you do this."

"You can't stop me." He leaned down, his lips brushing mine in our first real kiss—not manipulation, not strategy, just goodbye. "I've lived centuries through my bloodline. Let me do this one good thing."

Michael stepped forward suddenly. "There's another way." He pulled up his sleeve, revealing a forearm marked with the same rose tattoo. "My blood carries both Cosimo strength and Church modifications. Use mine."

The Cardinal lunged forward. "Absolutely not! Your blood is sacred!"

Michael's sword flashed, the tip pressing against the Cardinal's throat. "My blood is mine to give."

While they argued, I felt something change inside me—a sudden, tearing sensation followed by unbearable pressure.

"The girl is crowning naturally," Seraphina announced, surprised. "Despite the breech position—impossible—"

Victor moved to the foot of the table, watching in wonder as our daughter fought her way into the world. When her cry pierced the air—strong, defiant—his face transformed with a joy I'd never imagined him capable of.

Seraphina placed the bloody, squirming infant on my chest. Through tears, I saw she had my dark hair but Victor's startling blue eyes.

"She's perfect," I whispered.

Victor's bloodstained fingers gently touched her cheek. "Like her mother."

But the moment of peace shattered as alarms blared from the fetal monitor.

"The boy's heart is failing," Seraphina announced grimly. "We're losing him."

Victor didn't hesitate. He grabbed a surgical blade from the tray. "Take what you need from me. Now."

Michael moved faster, slicing his own palm and pressing it to my exposed womb. "Blood of the father, strength of the Church."

The Cardinal screamed in outrage, lunging toward us—only to be intercepted by Dario, who had remained silent in the shadows until now.

"Let them be," Dario growled, restraining the older man.

Monitors beeped frantically as Seraphina worked to deliver my son. Victor stood rigid beside me, his bleeding tattoo now a crimson waterfall down his chest.

"Stay with me," I begged him, clutching his hand. "Please."

"I never intended to leave," he whispered, though his face had grown alarmingly pale.

With a final push, my son entered the world—smaller than his sister, with a shock of golden hair like Dario's. For one terrible moment, he made no sound.

Then, a powerful wail filled the room.

"Both alive," Seraphina confirmed, her voice betraying her shock. "It's impossible. The curse—"

"Is broken," Michael finished, looking at his bleeding palm in wonder.

Victor swayed on his feet, then collapsed beside my table. I screamed his name as Seraphina rushed to him, cutting away his shirt to reveal the full extent of his wound—the poisoned knife cut now a black, spreading web across his chest.

"The curse demands payment," the Cardinal intoned. "If not the children, then the father."

"No," I struggled to sit up despite the surgical wound. "There must be something—"

A plan formed in my mind, desperate and dangerous. "My blood. The genetic anomaly that made you choose me—use it now."

Seraphina hesitated. "A direct transfusion could kill you both."

"Do it," I commanded.

As Seraphina prepared the transfusion equipment, I turned to Victor, whose breathing had grown shallow.

"Why?" he whispered, his fingers weakly gripping mine. "After everything I've done?"

I thought of all the answers I could give—about my children needing their father, about the lesser evil, about redemption. But the truth was simpler and more complicated.

"Because I choose to," I said, echoing his own words from what felt like a lifetime ago.

As my blood flowed into Victor's veins, I felt a strange connection forming between us—more intimate than anything physical, as if our very essences were mingling. His eyes never left mine, and in them I saw not the cold, calculating captor, but a man stripped bare of pretense.

"Antonia," he whispered, my name a prayer on his lips.

The room began to darken around the edges as my blood pressure dropped. The last thing I saw before consciousness fled was Victor's wound—the black veins receding, the skin knitting together as my genetic gift did its work.

And the rose tattoo, no longer weeping blood.

---

I awoke to sunlight streaming through unfamiliar windows and the soft cooing of an infant. My body felt hollow, weak, but alive. Turning my head, I found Victor in a chair beside my bed, our daughter cradled against his chest, his expression one of wonder as he traced her tiny features.

"She has your stubbornness," he said without looking up. "Refused her bottle until you woke."

"Where's—"

"Your son is fine. Sleeping in the next room with your aunt watching over him." Victor's eyes met mine. "They're both perfect, Antonia. Perfect miracles."

I studied his face—still handsome, still severe, but changed somehow. The coldness had thawed, replaced by something I couldn't quite name.

"The Cardinal?"

"Gone. Along with his nuns." A grim smile touched Victor's lips. "Michael was quite persuasive about the Church's need to reconsider its position."

"And Dario?"

Victor's expression darkened. "He triggered an EMP pulse before disappearing. All the genetic data—gone."

I closed my eyes, processing everything. "Jamie?"

"Receiving proper treatment now. Elena knew where the real medications were hidden." He hesitated. "Antonia, about everything that happened—"

"Don't," I interrupted. "Not yet."

He nodded, respecting my boundary for perhaps the first time. We sat in surprisingly comfortable silence, watching our daughter sleep.

"She needs a name," I finally said.

"So does her brother."

The word hung between us—brother. Our son, yet not biologically Victor's. I waited for jealousy, possession, some sign of the controlling man who had brought me here.

Instead, Victor carefully transferred our daughter to my arms and said, "Family is more than blood. Something I'm only beginning to understand."

As I held my daughter, feeling her tiny heartbeat against mine, I realized the curse truly was broken—not just the Cosimo genetic defect, but the curse of isolation Victor had lived under for so long.

"What happens now?" I asked quietly.

Victor's eyes—those ice-blue eyes that had once terrified me—held mine steadily. "That depends entirely on you, Antonia."

He reached out slowly, giving me time to pull away, and brushed a strand of hair from my face. His touch no longer felt like a claim, but a question.

A question I wasn't ready to answer—but for the first time, I could imagine a day when I might be.