Chapter 8 - The Shadowed Courtyard
The rain began to fall in heavy, relentless sheets around two o'clock in the morning, washing the blood from the courtyard cobblestones outside.
Grace had spent the last two hours completely re-dressing Liam’s wounds, administering a fresh round of localized antibiotics, and securing his leg fixator with clean medical straps. Liam had finally succumbed to physical exhaustion, falling into a deep, fitful sleep under the influence of the pain medication he had finally allowed Grace to inject into his IV port.
Dr. Shaw had cleared the room to rest in the study, and Leo was downstairs coordinating the perimeter repairs with the surviving security detail.
Grace stood alone beside the bed, holding a clean damp towel. She gently wiped the dried sweat from Liam’s forehead, observing the sharp, rugged lines of his face in the soft golden light of the bedside lamp. Without the ruthless, dominating glare in his icy blue eyes, he looked almost human—vulnerable, battered, and carrying a terrifyingly heavy weight upon his shoulders.
Grace set the towel down and turned her head toward the window.
The heavy velvet drapes hung motionless. The small spiderweb crack on the upper corner of the glass reflected the amber lamp light like a silver cobweb.
Driven by an irresistible pull she could no longer suppress, Grace walked slowly toward the window. She stepped around the small pool of dried bourbon from the broken glass earlier that afternoon, her sneakers silent against the rug.
She reached out and pulled back the edge of the thick velvet curtain by two inches.
She pressed her face close to the cold, reinforced glass, looking down into the dark courtyard below.
Floodlights mounted on the estate walls illuminated the rain-slicked stone floor of the courtyard. But as Grace looked closer, her breath caught in her throat.
The center of the courtyard wasn't made of stone.
It was a massive, forty-foot octagonal pane of thick, reinforced structural glass built directly into the ground—a glass ceiling disguised as a courtyard floor. Through the rain-streaked glass, lit by faint blue halogen lamps from below, lay a vast, subterranean medical research laboratory hidden beneath the mansion.
Inside the underground vault, rows of sterile glass incubators held dozens of complex biopharmaceutical synthesis units.
And sitting on a stainless-steel tray in the center of the subterranean lab was a large, cryo-sealed vault container labeled in bold, luminous lettering: PROJECT HYDRA - LEUKEMIA ENZYME STABILIZER - BATCH 09.
Grace’s eyes widened in absolute shock. The drug inside that vault wasn't a mob weapon or illegal contraband. It was the experimental stabilizing enzyme her brother needed to survive his transplant.
"It's the only supply in North America," a deep, gravelly voice whispered from behind her.
May you like
Grace spun around.
Liam was awake, sitting upright in his bed, watching her through the dark shadows.
