Chapter 4

The empty glass vial slipped from Aron's fingers and shattered on the marble floor.

Less than ten seconds passed.

Suddenly, Aron's chest heaved. He sucked in a violent, ragged breath.

The life-support monitors behind him erupted. The steady green lines spiked into jagged red peaks. A high-pitched, continuous alarm pierced the room.

Morgan ripped his gun from his holster and aimed it dead at Ayla's chest. "What did you do to him?!" he roared, his finger tightening on the trigger.

Ayla didn't even blink. She didn't look at the gun.

"Put it away," she said, her voice dangerously calm.

Aron let out a guttural groan. The veins in his neck bulged against his skin.

He gripped the armrests of the wheelchair so hard the leather groaned and his knuckles turned stark white. A sheen of cold sweat broke out across his forehead.

"His heart rate is at one-eighty! He's going into cardiac arrest! Get the crash cart!" the chief physician screamed, lunging toward the bed.

"Back off!"

The command tore from Aron's throat. It was raw, filled with agony, but it carried the absolute authority of a king.

The doctors froze in their tracks.

Aron was panting, his chest rising and falling rapidly. He slowly lowered his chin, his dark eyes staring down at his own legs.

Tears of pure, unadulterated shock welled in his eyes.

He looked up at Ayla. His voice shook. "I feel... pain."

For six months, his lower half had been a dead, numb weight. Pain meant the nerves were screaming. Pain meant they were alive.

Morgan stared at Aron's legs. The gun slipped from his grip, clattering onto the floor. Morgan's knees buckled, and he dropped to the ground beside the wheelchair, his hands hovering over his boss's knees, afraid to touch them.

The private doctors stared in horrified silence, their medical degrees suddenly feeling like worthless pieces of paper.

Ayla turned back to her case. She pulled out a set of specialized micro-current neural stimulation patches.

"Put him on the bed," Ayla ordered Morgan.

Morgan scrambled to his feet. He gently lifted Aron's massive frame and laid him flat on the pristine white sheets.

Ayla walked over. She rolled up the legs of Aron's trousers, exposing his pale, heavily muscled calves. She peeled the backing off the patches and pressed them precisely onto the deadened nerve clusters along his spine and legs.

She leaned over him to adjust the dial on the main machine.

A few strands of her dark hair slipped from her bun, brushing lightly against Aron's bare knee.

Aron looked down. She was so close he could see the faint pulse beating in her neck. A crisp, clean scent of mint and cold rain drifted up from her skin, cutting through the sterile smell of the hospital room.

Ayla flipped the switch.

A low hum filled the air. Instantly, the muscles in Aron's legs began to twitch and spasm uncontrollably.

For thirty agonizing minutes, Ayla didn't move. She adjusted the frequencies, her eyes locked on his muscle responses. A thin layer of sweat formed on her forehead.

Finally, she clicked the machine off.

She let out a long, slow breath.

Aron lay perfectly still. He focused all his willpower on his right foot.

Slowly, agonizingly, his big toe twitched. It moved a fraction of an inch.

Morgan let out a choked sob. The doctors gasped.

Ayla began pulling the patches off his skin, her movements efficient. "The toxin is neutralized. The nerve pathways are open. I'll have you walking in two months."

Aron stared at her. The gratitude in his eyes was rapidly shifting into something darker, heavier. It was a look of intense possession.

"Name your price," Aron said, his voice dropping an octave. "Money. Property. Lives. Whatever you want, the Lawrence Group will give it to you."

Ayla zipped her leather case shut. She looked up, meeting his burning gaze.

"I don't want your money," Ayla said.