Two years after a sniper’s bullet left me unable to walk, everyone who worked inside my mansion had learned the same rule: stay out of my way.

By nine in the morning, the master suite had been cleared. Vance had administered a stabilized, medical-grade IV drip to bring Emma’s heart rate down, and she had finally fallen into a deep, genuine sleep in the guest wing under the watch of two of my most trusted guards.

I sat in my study, the heavy mahogany doors locked from the inside.

Luke stood near the window, watching the rain beat against the glass. "If Vane is running human trials on a nerve-regeneration peptide," Luke said quietly, "that means he’s close. That means the technology exists, Danny."

I stared down at my hands. They were strong, unblemished, and entirely capable of snapping a man’s neck. But below my waist, there was nothing but a cold, hollow silence that had defined my existence for seven hundred and thirty days.

"He’s using street clinics to test the lethal toxicity levels," I said, my voice dripping with venom. "He uses desperate people like Emma as lab rats. If they die of cardiac arrest from the rebound effect, nobody investigates. They’re poor, they’re sick, and they signed non-disclosure agreements in back alleys."

"And if the drug works?" Luke asked, turning around. "If it actually repairs damaged nerve pathways?"

I didn't answer him right away.

The thought hung in the air like a ghost. For two years, every specialist from Johns Hopkins to Mayo Clinic had told me the same thing: The severance of the T-12 vertebrae is absolute, Mr. Mercer. The nerve tissue is dead. You will never stand again.

And yet, a twenty-six-year-old maid with a dead-end disease was currently walking around my house because of a vial of pale amber liquid developed in Victor Vane’s secret labs.

"It’s not a cure, Luke," I said coldly. "You saw her. She was convulsing on my bed. The drug forces the nerves to fire by overloading them with synthetic electrical impulses. It’s like putting nitro into an engine that’s missing oil. Eventually, the engine explodes."

"She’s been taking it for eight months," Luke noted. "She’s still alive."

"Barely," I countered. "Did you see her wrists? Did you see her hands? Her body is consuming itself to pay for those twelve hours of movement."

The intercom on my desk buzzed.

I pressed the button. "Speak."

"Boss," the voice of Thomas, my chief security officer, came through the speaker. "We’ve got a problem at the main gate. A private medical transport van just pulled up. Two guys in dark suits claiming to be from the Vane Institute. They say one of their trial patients missed a mandatory blood-draw appointment this morning and her GPS tracker flagged her at this address."

My hand tightened around the brass edge of the intercom console.

"They put a GPS tracker on her?" I asked.

"They claim it's built into her medical alert bracelet," Thomas replied. "They're demanding to speak with her. They say she’s in breach of a clinical contract and they have the legal right to take her into custody for medical evaluation."

Luke pulled his Glock from his holster, checking the chamber with a smooth, practiced click. "Want me to handle them?"

"No," I said, my voice deathly calm. "Bring them to the courtyard. Let them see who owns this house."

Five minutes later, I rolled my wheelchair out onto the covered stone terrace overlooking the grand driveway.

The rain was falling in heavy, gray sheets. Two men in crisp charcoal suits and black raincoats stood near the fountain, flanked by four of my armed security guards. The lead man was thin, with slicked-back gray hair, gold-rimmed glasses, and the arrogant, posture of a corporate lawyer who believed paper contracts were stronger than steel.

"Mr. Mercer," the gray-haired man said, squinting through the rain as I approached the edge of the terrace. "I am Dr. Marcus Thorne, Chief Medical Officer for Vanguard Bio-Tech. We seem to have a minor administrative misunderstanding. One of our trial participants, an Emma Carter, is currently on your property."

"She’s my employee," I said, my voice carrying clearly over the sound of the rain.

Thorne smiled—a cold, professional expression that didn't reach his eyes. "Be that as it may, Miss Carter is bound by a legally binding clinical trial agreement with Vanguard. She has failed to report for her scheduled biological monitoring, and her physiological indicators suggest she is in critical danger of rebound toxicity. For her own safety, we must take her back to our facility."

"She’s sleeping," I replied flatly. "And she’s not going anywhere with you."

Thorne’s smile faltered slightly. "Mr. Mercer, with all due respect to your... unique reputation in this city, this is a medical matter governed by federal trial regulations. If you withhold a patient who is actively suffering from an experimental reaction, you are committing a felony."

I leaned forward in my chair, resting my hands on the wheels.

"Let me tell you what I see, Dr. Thorne," I said, my voice dropping an octave into a dangerous, rhythmic bass. "I see two men standing on my driveway, representing a company owned by Victor Vane. I see a company that feeds unregistered neuro-peptides to poor women who can't afford real healthcare, using them as disposable test tubes to see how much toxicity a human spine can take before the heart stops."

Thorne’s eyes narrowed behind his gold-rimmed glasses. "You don't understand the science, Mr. Mercer."

"I understand Victor Vane," I spat back. "Tell Victor that if he wants Emma Carter back, he can come to this gate himself. And tell him to bring his corporate lawyers, his private security, and whatever sniper he hired two years ago to shoot me in the back."

Thorne opened his mouth to speak, but Luke took a step forward on the terrace, pulling back his coat to reveal the shoulder holster beneath. The four security guards around the fountain simultaneously moved their hands toward their belts.

Thorne took a slow step back toward his transport van.

"This isn't over, Mercer," Thorne said, his voice dropping the professional veneer. "Miss Carter won't survive forty-eight hours without our stabilization protocol. You think you're protecting her? You're killing her."

"Get off my land," I said.

The black transport van backed down the driveway, its tires spraying wet gravel against the manicured hedges as the iron gates swung shut behind them.

I sat on the terrace for a long time, watching the rain fall into the fountain.

I could feel the faint, phantom burning in my legs—that cruel, lying sensation that told my brain my feet were on fire even though I couldn't move a toe.

"Danny," Luke said softly from behind me. "He wasn't lying about the stabilization protocol. Vance said her blood chemistry is completely dependent on those injections now. If she stops cold turkey, her nervous system will collapse."

"I know," I said, staring at the closed iron gates.

"So what are we going to do?"