Chapter 3 - The Shadow Protocol
The boardroom doors slammed shut behind me as Harlan’s personal security detail formed a human shield, cutting off the gasps and frantic murmurs of the stunned executives. Every step down the executive corridor sent a white-hot spike of agony searing through my pelvis. I leaned heavily against Harlan, my knuckles white as I dug into his tailored sleeve, my other hand clamped protectively over the heavy, hard swell of my eight-month belly.
"Stay with me, Eleanor," Harlan murmured, his voice trembling despite his decades of composure. "The freight elevator is clear. Liam is already two minutes out."
"The tea..." I wheezed, tasting copper on the back of my tongue. "Every morning... for three weeks. Caleb gave it to me with a kiss on my forehead. He smiled... God, Harlan, he smiled every time he handed me that porcelain cup."
"Do not think about that monster right now," Harlan ordered sternly as the private freight elevator chimed. The steel doors slid open, revealing four towering men clad in unmarked tactical black, carbines slung across their chests.
The man in the center stepped forward. Liam. My father’s most ruthless shadow, the man Marcus Vance had plucked from military intelligence twenty years ago to handle the threats that money alone couldn't silence. Liam’s eyes were cold slate, his jaw etched from granite, but when his gaze landed on my pale, sweating face, a rare flicker of raw pain broke through.
"Little Miss Vance," Liam said softly, immediately slipping an arm beneath my knees and lifting me into his arms before my trembling legs gave out entirely. "Your father gave me one standing order before he drew his last breath: burn the world to ash if anyone laid a finger on you."
"Liam... the baby," I gasped into his shoulder, another violent cramp seizing my lower abdomen, making my vision swim with dark spots. "He poisoned me. Caleb... he's been poisoning us."
"We know. We tapped his burner phone twenty minutes ago," Liam replied, stepping briskly into the elevator. The doors shut, plunging us into a rapid descent down to the private subterranean levels beneath the Vance Tower. "He didn't use street drugs. He used a custom peptide compound engineered to simulate sudden placental abruption. If you had gone to St. Jude’s—the hospital his family sits on the board of—their chief obstetrician had orders to perform an emergency caesarean, declare the child stillborn, and let you bleed out on the operating table from 'unforeseen surgical complications.'"
A cold horror washed over me, far colder than the sweat drenching my hair. Caleb hadn't just wanted the money. He wanted the eradication of Marcus Vance’s bloodline. He wanted an empty nursery and a fresh grave so he and Victoria could parade through my father’s halls untouched.
"Over my dead body," I snarled through the blinding pain, my fingernails piercing Liam’s tactical vest. "You hear me, Liam? Over my dead body."
"That won't be necessary," Liam said as the elevator doors parted into the damp chill of the underground transit tunnel.
Waiting for us was not a standard ambulance with flashing sirens, but an armored military mobile surgical unit, its matte-black exterior blending seamlessly into the shadows. Two doctors in sterilized scrubs jumped from the rear doors, deploying a mechanized gurney.
"Marcus Vance prepared for every war, Eleanor," Liam whispered as he laid me down gently onto the mattress. "Even the one he wouldn't live to fight. Welcome to Operation Aegis."
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As the heavy hydraulic doors sealed shut with a pressurized hiss, cutting off the city above, the heart monitor beside me began to beep erratically, screaming of impending disaster.
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