Chapter 7

The next morning, Kendrick kissed Cora's forehead, grabbed his briefcase, and walked out the door. He announced he was flying to Europe for a three-day merger negotiation.

The moment the motorcade cleared the front gates, Cora sprang into action. She found the butler in the kitchen.

"I'm doing yoga in the master bedroom," she said coldly. "Do not disturb me under any circumstances."

Without waiting for a reply, she turned and walked upstairs. She kicked off her shoes and walked silently barefoot down the hall, slipping into Kendrick's private study.

The room was suffocating. Dark mahogany furniture and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves made the space feel like a tomb.

Cora needed her passport and her ID. If she was going to run, she needed her documents.

She tore through the drawers of his massive desk. Nothing. Just corporate contracts and financial reports.

She turned around and spotted it. Hidden behind a row of leather-bound books was a flush-mounted German high-frequency electronic safe.

Cora knelt in front of it. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She punched in Kendrick's birthday.

BEEP. ERROR.

She bit her lip and typed in their wedding anniversary. The red light flashed again.

BEEP. ERROR. ONE ATTEMPT REMAINING. SYSTEM LOCKDOWN IMMINENT.

Cora wiped the cold sweat from her forehead. If the alarm triggered, the guards would be in the room in seconds.

She closed her eyes in despair. Then, she remembered the black business card Cayden had slipped into her dress.

She pulled it out of her pocket. She flipped it over. In the top right corner, barely visible under the light, was a six-digit number written in UV ink.

With trembling fingers, she punched the numbers into the keypad.

CLICK.

The heavy steel door popped open.

Cora let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. She reached inside. There were no passports. There was only a thick manila envelope stamped with the logo of a top-tier private hospital in Palo Alto.

She ripped the seal open and pulled out a stack of medical documents.

There was no patient name on the file. But at the top of the page was the exact same hematology research code she had seen on the needle wrapper.

Cora's eyes scanned the dense medical jargon. Her gaze slammed into a bolded sentence at the bottom of the page:

EXTENSIVE BONE MARROW AND RARE ANTIBODY EXTRACTION FEASIBILITY: EXTREMELY HIGH. TOTAL HEMATOPOIETIC STEM CELL DEPLETION PROTOCOL APPROVED.

A bucket of ice water poured over her head. Her legs gave out, and she collapsed onto the hard wood floor.

She kept reading. It detailed the surgical extraction plan and the post-operative immunosuppressant schedule.

Her mind scrambled to make sense of it. Kendrick was sick. Kendrick had some kind of catastrophic blood disease. That's why he was drawing her blood. That's why he was so obsessed with her health. He was going to drain her bone marrow and strip her of her stem cells to save his own life, a procedure so invasive it would leave her permanently crippled, if not dead.

A wave of profound grief and absolute terror hit her all at once. She slapped both hands over her mouth to muffle the sob tearing up her throat.

Heavy footsteps thudded in the hallway. The security captain was doing his rounds.

Cora snapped out of her shock. She frantically shoved the papers back into the envelope, threw it into the safe, and slammed the heavy metal door shut. It locked with a loud click.

She dove behind the thick velvet curtains covering the floor-to-ceiling windows just as the brass doorknob turned.

The security captain stepped into the study. His sharp eyes scanned the empty room.

Cora stood pressed against the glass, her hands clamped over her nose and mouth. She didn't dare breathe. Her heart was beating so violently she was sure he could hear it.

The captain tapped his earpiece. "Study is clear," he muttered. He stepped back out and locked the door behind him.

Cora slid down the wall, her back soaked in cold sweat. She stared at the locked safe. She had the proof, but she needed to know for sure. She had to get to that hospital.