Chapter 22
Harrison
Icould see her through the small, barred window before I stepped in, waiting with all the composure of a woman who hadn’t been dragged out of her world and into mine.
This cell of hers wasn’t just a gilded cage—it was the prize at the bottom of my greedy quest. Her wide eyes made contact with mine as soon as the door closed behind me.
A thrill ran down my spine as I returned the gaze, a lizard and a lion momentarily facing off.
Her face was blank as a slate, one she expected me to fill in with my explanations. I gave her a slow, cat-that-ate-the-canary smile as I broke the silence. “Hello, Renda. It’s lovely to see you again.”
The silence took over for a moment. I let it.
“How interesting that I’d finally be invited to a business meeting,” she said, her voice as soft as it was cutting. “However, I’d expect to be seated in a boardroom. Not to awaken in a trussed-up prison cell.”
She wanted her poised demeanor to piss me off, but I saw the nervous way her mouth shook. I held on to my smile, not willing to show the satisfaction beneath it. I needed this to work. It had been a hard-won gamble, but now I was here to collect the winnings.
“You know it wasn’t really abduction, Renda.” I said. “It’s more like…a long-term business trip. It needed to be top secret to ensure a competitive edge. Big Pharma. Everyone wants to steal everyone else’s formulas.”
I took in the details as I talked. No trace of dust anywhere.
The elegant lines of the furniture—straight from some fancy showroom in Uptown New York.
The shelves, the table, all in perfect order.
She had kept everything neat in the two days since we’d dragged her here.
Of course she had. Nothing less would be acceptable to a woman like her.
The controlled, crisp details stood in stark contrast to the single iron door that let me in and out of the room.
The plain slip dress she wore wasn’t fancy, but it was Chanel.
And her room, while it was a cell, I’d made it quite homey.
I had also supplied her with cosmetics and salon-quality hair care supplies.
But I wouldn’t give her everything. She stood in slippers instead of leather pumps.
I decided to crack her composure further. “You’ll be an essential part of creating a groundbreaking product, Renda. It will ensure you and Jules will be secure for the rest of your lives. It will also ensure you’ll live far longer to enjoy that fortune than you may have expected.”
Her eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch, but that was the only crack I saw.
Her cool voice washed over me. “How interesting. It might have been nice for you to have asked for my permission to participate before you yanked me out of my car in the middle of the afternoon and hauled me to God knows where. I’m assuming this is why you would settle for my chubby little daughter.
And I’m also assuming that since you couldn’t even hold on to that pathetic excuse for a fiancé, you resorted to felony. ”
“Well, I had to get Jules to sign off on it, of course. I’m sure he had a very difficult time not telling you in the weeks leading up to completing the plan.” This was, of course a fucking lie. I just wanted to see the look on her face when she thought her own husband had been playing her.
Oh, the satisfaction of seeing that bitch’s face fall. It was a look best described as devastation for her to think her husband of almost 30 years had sold her out. I wanted to laugh in her face, which was so plump with fillers it was hard for her to frown. But frown she did.
She lifted her eyes to mine. “Yes, I imagine it was quite difficult for him.”
I gave her a measured look, schooling my face to hide the delight.
“No hard feelings, I hope. You know I’d never do you any harm, being a partner of Jules and all.
It’s a precarious time right now. Everyone wants a piece of the new formula.
We couldn’t take any chances. Powerful families have to watch out for one another.
They always get involved in these matters. ”
The arched brow again, this time more pronounced. “Indeed, they do.”
I pressed on. “We needed you in a secure location until everything was in place. Once the new formula has been perfected, you’ll be back in your loving husband’s arms.”
She was quick in her reply. “Do you know that many women don’t like to be treated like a possession?”
I almost lost it again, her turning my own obsession against me in such a cool, cruel way. But I played my part and kept my grip.
“The transformative nature of our new drug is worth a brief time away from home, I assure you. No lasting damage.” I paused for emphasis, pacing my words and my steps to give me time to steady myself.
To enjoy the scene despite her controlled performance.
“I’ll have my assistant collect another sample. ”
“Then you’ll be free to gloat somewhere else?” she asked. Her expression stayed as chilly as her voice, but I could see the muscles of her face clench as I made my way to the door.
“If it’s any consolation,” I said as I pulled the door open, “you won’t be locked up much longer.
Think of this as your spa day. Before you know it, you’ll have the benefits of your very own miracle serum.
And more life to enjoy it than you ever dreamed possible.
” I sounded like a crazy cult leader. I sounded convincing enough to be one.
Room D-4. Make sure everything is pristine. Samples are the most important we’ve gotten yet.
A text popped back before I could put the phone away. No problem. We’ll make sure they are 100% clean.
I did a mental check of the remaining variables, clicking them off one by one. Renda, secure. Sample, imminent. Juliet likely steps away from being in my grasp.
We were set and ready to go. The observation room was a place that demanded composure.
The bare surfaces of it. The sterile silence of it.
But composure wasn’t what I felt when Dane mentioned Juliet.
When the absence of her became its own presence.
I wanted to slam my fist through one of the glass panels.
I wanted to throw Dane’s taunt back in his face.
Instead, I stood next to him in front of the glass, looking into the lab room as Chen readied everything.
“If Juliet comes to you,” Dane said, not moving his eyes from the glass, “is she going to be a problem?” Nodding toward the doctor.
Dr. Lila Chen wasn’t only the lead doctor on this project.
She was also my distraction. The cunt I’d used to get my dick wet in those moments when I needed relief.
Hell, Dane joined us on more than one occasion.
His voice was casual, like he had any fucking idea of my obsession with Juliet Bettencourt. I stared at him as if he were the subject on the table, watching for the flicker of a muscle as I tried to read the full intention behind his question. Juliet was mine. Mine to fuck. To punish. To claim.
I took a deep breath. The glass seemed to close in around me, my own reflection crowding me on every surface. I let it out as laughter, low and menacing.
“If she knows what’s good for her, she’ll pretend she’s never seen my dick.”
“Alright, Dr. Chen,” I said, more than a suggestion. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Through the glass, I watched Chen position the needle at the IV line in the volunteer’s arm.
I watched Subject 23-B, Andrew Olson relax himself in the chair.
The back of it was reclined. He was leaning back like a man who had no reason to fear his own transformation.
The dark stubble on his chin was as rough as his posture was calm.
I could almost believe he knew what he was in for.
“This is the one,” I said. “The right formula. The right subject.” I turned off the mic. “This better fucking work.”
My voice was colder than the surface of the glass.
Colder than the pale linoleum beneath my restless feet.
I shouldn’t have felt that sort of rage.
Restless, the need to move, the need to touch.
I shouldn’t have felt the pressure building where my jeans tightened.
That was a problem. And I wasn’t about to let a problem impede my plans, not this close to the finish line.
Dr. Chen met my eye through the panel, gave a stiff nod, then pushed the plunger down.
I watched the plunger empty its charge and send the compound through the needle into the line.
I watched Olson tense as his pulse rate climbed and his temperature spiked.
This was the closest we had come, the final round after more failures than any man would know what to do with.
But I was not any man. Chen exited the room. We’d learned our lesson last time.
The monitors blared their steady rhythms as I stared through the observation glass, knuckles whitening around my clipboard.
My breath fogged the reinforced pane when I leaned closer—mesmerized.
Subject #23-B’s veins pulsed cobalt beneath his skin as if lit from within by bioluminescent ink.
His restraints creaked when he arched off the medical table, tendons snapping taut like bridge cables.
“Heart rate 180 BPM,” I muttered into my headset recorder, though my thoughts raced faster. Renda’s serum is catalyzing structural mutations in real time. The air tasted metallic with ozone and adrenaline—his or mine, I couldn’t tell.
A guttural snarl tore from #23-B’s throat as his biceps rippled, fabric shredding beneath sudden knots of muscle. Bone cracked like popcorn kernels—his fingers elongated into obsidian claws that left gashes in steel cuffs when he flexed them free.
“Phase two.” My voice trembled as I punched codes into the intercom. “Inflict test laceration.”
The robotic arm descended behind the glass, blade glinting cold under surgical lights. A shallow cut bloomed across #23-B’s forearm… then vanished as we watched—skin weaving itself whole in under three seconds.
Accelerated regeneration confirmed. I scribbled frantically despite my shaking hand until the clipboard cracked under grip strength I didn’t know I had.
He moved next—a blur of reconstructed sinew and feral grace.
He was still a human male. But better. I could tell by the look on his face it was panic and not rage that contorted his features.
He still reached up and smashed CCTV cameras before I registered him leaving frame. Static fizzed across half my screens.
“Son of a—”
The emergency exit alarm whooped as dented metal groaned overhead. I barely yanked my head back before five black claws punched through the observation glass like rifle rounds—stopped inches from my face by its armored polymer core.
Through spider-webbed cracks, #23-B’s eyes locked onto mine: feral gold eclipsing human irises entirely now… but no fur erupted beneath his torn scrubs. No full shift triggered by rage or agony. Only vestigial weapons ripped from halfway down evolution’s road.
“Partial manifestation matches Bettencourt gene markers,” I whispered into my recorder even as primal fear iced my spine—even as part of me wanted to applaud.
His new teeth gleamed like bone shards when he grinned at me through blood-flecked lips…
and for one fractured second before sedation gas hissed into his lungs they retracted…
I saw him. After he passed out and was carried to his cell, I knew we’d done it. I also knew that in a matter of weeks, when Juliet came to me, oh and she sure as fuck would come to me, she would have more than a man holding her. She only thought I was a monster before.