Femme Fatale: The King’s Deadly Temptress - Chapter 640: Bad Day for Science (2)

Damien was nervous. Chairman Young was old, and he might not survive this. Katherine had already been so stressed about what she discovered from Deborah, and now she might lose the only family she got apart from Damien.

“What is it?” William asked when he noticed that his cousin was looking pale.

Damien told him about Chairman Young. Since Frederick sat between them, he heard it as well. His uncle showed a look of surprise, but he didn’t say anything. It was William who replied.

“What do we do?”

Checking the time on his watch, Damien narrowed his eyes. It had been more than two hours since the supposed meet-up, and yet there were no signs of Deborah. “Call the number,” he said.

William grabbed the phone from the center compartment and dialed the number that Deborah used to text Frederick. “Can’t be reached.”

“You have any idea where she might be?” Damien turned to his uncle.

Frederick appeared exhausted from not having a proper sleep. He was out of shape and getting older with bags under his eyes and dry skin. “For the last time, I don’t know. That’s the point of hiding… To not be found. It had been a long time since she gave me that number, and it’s the first time she had used it. It’s untraceable.”

The older man seemed to be telling the truth. At least that part about Deborah’s number being untraceable was. Damien had Styles look into it, and he was inclined to believe that Deborah might be using a military-grade encrypted device. She must have spent a fortune to get that phone.

They were sitting ducks at the moment. Damien needed to get to Katherine and be there for her. This situation grated on his nerves. He called Felix to come back so they could leave.

A moment later, Felix returned to the car, shaking his head. “Nothing. Where do you want to go?”

Damien was in a dilemma. He couldn’t leave Frederick unsupervised because he didn’t trust that his uncle wouldn’t contact Deborah and help her get out of Harbor or wherever she wanted to go. The only reason he left his uncle alone back when he learned the truth about Katherine’s identity was because they needed to find out several facts first and then carefully map out their plans. Now, the lines were forcibly drawn, and the plans would need to be realized sooner than they intended.

They were supposed to dethrone his uncle in a few weeks. He didn’t know if they were ready. But they had no choice. They must hasten their process or lose their chance, and Frederick might come out of this unscathed. That was one thing they couldn’t allow to happen. Frederick must be stripped off of his power, or he might strike Damien and everyone he cared about.

“Take us to the safe house,” Damien instructed Felix.

The safe house where they kept Christopher back then was currently empty. It would be perfect to house Frederick there at the moment—away from the city where none of his boys would find him.

Damien gave William a subtle nod.

“Sorry, Dad,” William muttered as he pressed a cloth on Frederick’s nose and mouth.

“What—” Frederick wrestled for a few seconds before he slowly lost strength, his body went limp, and then he fell unconscious.

William sighed. “Not really sorry.”

“You might be enjoying this too much.” Damien gave his cousin a side-eyed glance, finding a mixture of mirth and hatred dancing in William’s eyes as he shrugged and began to tie his father’s wrists behind his back.

“This is nothing compared to what he did to me,” said William. He didn’t have any compassion towards his father.

Damien knew that William was abused when he was a child, but it wasn’t only the physical kind. Frederick was careful not to show any signs in the form of bruises or wounds on his body. They were a very sociable family, and people would notice it. That didn’t stop Frederick from inflicting harm towards William.

Damien didn’t know all of the ways as William never talked about it. However, there was one time when they were younger than ten years old, Damien saw William climbing down from the attic, looking pale and soulless with dirty nails.

He’d ask him what was wrong, but William didn’t speak and ignored him for a few days after that. Curious, Damien checked out the attic and found an old solid wood cabinet that was not more than four feet high with scratch marks at the back of the cabinet door as if someone tried to claw their way out while it was locked from the outside.

That freaked him out. He wasn’t sure what happened, and William wouldn’t talk about it. He thought William didn’t go into the attic again. Damien only realized what happened several years later. He didn’t know when the abuse stopped, but the last time he saw Frederick hurting William was before Damien left the mansion to be on his own. He passed by the study just in time when Frederick slapped William hard across the face that he stumbled down, and his lip bled.

Damien and William were already estranged then after that whole Lexi thing. So they had stopped talking. But for all the years they had been close and had lived together, he knew for certain that William’s devil-may-care attitude was just a facade.

***

As soon as Damien had made sure that Frederick was looked after at the safe house, he headed to the hospital. His uncle was still unconscious when they arrived, and they laid him on the bed. Damien was sure Frederick would be more than pissed once he gained consciousness and discovered that his own son and nephew put him on house arrest.

He didn’t plan to harm his uncle—just subdue him for the time being while they pushed forward to take him out of the board in Park Group and take over the other family business.

Damien still had to decide what to do with that side of the matter. He had no plans in taking over the clandestine business. He honestly didn’t need more money than what he already had from the empire he built with his own blood, sweat, and tears. Perhaps William might want it. He had to ask him when he got the chance.

The smell of antiseptic hit Damien’s nostrils as soon as he stepped foot in the hospital. He took long and fast strides towards the Coronary Care Unit where Chairman Young stayed. He found Katherine and Amelia in the waiting room, both looking worried. His mother had an arm around Katherine’s back, comforting her as they quietly sat.

“I’ll go get us some coffee.” Amelia got up, briefly touching his arm as she walked past him.

“Hey…” Damien sat next to Katherine, who looked dazed like she just realized that he was there. Her eyes were red as she had been crying, though she wasn’t crying now. Katherine appeared drained and pale, a bandage still covering the side of her head. “Come here.” He wrapped his arms around her, careful not to press on her wound. “Everything’s going to be alright.”

“I can’t lose him too, Damien…” She clutched onto his shirt and buried her face against his neck. “He’s the only parent I have left.”

“You’re not going to lose him.” He kissed her forehead. “I’ll have the best doctors to take care of him.”

Somehow, even though Damien said that so she wouldn’t lose hope, he couldn’t stop the fear that scratched in his chest. Because this time, he was not confident. He couldn’t guarantee that her grandfather would make it—even if Damien spent all of his money.