Unwanted Blood (Harper) novel Chapter 78

Chapter 78

I studied him for two seconds. Then I pushed the pen across the table and pulled a blank notepad from the drawer.

He sat down-carefully, his injured arm still stiff-and started drawing.

Firstly was the main entrance-double doors, glass panels, security camera above. A side door on the east wall, unmarked, used by staff. A rear staircase near the kitchen that went up to the second floor and down to the basement. A corridor on the ground floor that ended in a heavy door- metal, locked, no handle on the outside.

He paused at the door. His pen hovered over the paper.

“I’ve never been through that door,” He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the drawing, “But once-once I saw my father come out of it. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows.”

He stopped. His pen tapped once against the paper. “He had needle marks on his arms.”

He looked up at me then. His expression was flat and clinical. “That basement, it probably used to be a medical area. Or something like it.”

I took the notepad from him. Folded it twice, and slid it into my pocket.

“Thank you,” I said.

Then I walked into the kitchen. Ryder followed me.

He waited until we were through the door, out of Adrian’s line of sight, and then he spoke. His

voice was low.

“Do you actually trust him?” He nodded toward the living room.

Through the doorway, I could see Adrian sitting in the corner chair, a glass of water in his good hand, his face turned toward the window. He looked calm.

“His father threw him out,” Ryder said. “He’s lost everything-position, money, whatever protection that name gave him. Right now, you’re the only person he has. In that kind of situation, anyone would tell you whatever you want to hear.”

I leaned back against the kitchen counter. Crossed my arms. “What are you worried about?”

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Ryder’s jaw tightened. “I’m worried he’s playing a longer game. That he let you pull him out so he could earn your trust. That the floor plan is a gift-a way to make himself indispensable. And when the time comes, he walks right back to Dylan with everything he’s learned about us.”

I was quiet for a moment. The hum of the refrigerator filled the space between us

“Did you see him in that room?” I said. My voice was even. “Did you see what his father did to him?” Ryder didn’t answer.

“A man who wants to go back to his father doesn’t help his enemies find the father’s hideout.” I pushed off the counter and looked Ryder in the eye. “And at least so far, he hasn’t done a single thing to hurt me.”

Something guilty flickered in Ryder’s expression. He turned away without replying and went back to the living room.

Two days passed.

Adrian’s recovery was faster than any of us expected. The wound on his arm was closing cleanly -the swelling down, the redness fading. By day three he was walking without support, moving through the house with the kind of casual ease.

Under Ryder and Colton’s insistence, his phone had been confiscated. No calls. No messages. No way to contact the outside world.

And yet he seemed completely at ease.

That was what bothered them most. A man cut off from his life, stripped of his tools, trapped in a safehouse with his brother’s business rivals-and he sat on the sofa, read a book Lily lent him, drank his tea, and looked like he belonged there.

Ryder and Colton exchanged glances across the table every time he did it. They didn’t like it.

At dinner, Adrian set his fork down and looked around the table-at Ryder, at Colton, at me, at Lily-and smiled.

“I never thought,” he said, “that I’d sit down to a peaceful meal with my business rivals.

The temperature at the table dropped.

Ryder’s expression went cold. Colton’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth. The silence that followed was thick, heavy, the kind that makes food taste like nothing.

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Ryder set his knife down. His voice was measured. Sharp. “Peaceful is a stretch You’re cating under our roof because your father had you drugged and left in a hospital bed. Don’t romanticise

it.”

Adrian met his gaze. His smile didn’t falter.

“I’m not romanticising anything. I’m saying it’s interesting.” He tilted his head slightly “Two days ago, your people had guns pointed at my father in a hospital room. Today, we’re sharing a table. That’s a shift. I’m allowed to notice it.”

Ryder opened his mouth. Closed it. Nothing he said would win that exchange without escalating it into something worse.

Adrian picked up his fork and went back to his dinner.

I couldn’t help but laughed.

Ryder shot me a look. Colton shook his head. Adrian didn’t look up, but the corner of his mouth twitched.

Forty-eight hours after we’d sent them out, the scouts came back.

Colton debriefed us in the living room. He spread the photos on the coffee table-grainy, telephoto shots taken from a ridge half a kilometre from the facility.

“Main building has activity,” he said. “Lights on the second floor. Curtains drawn, but you can

see movement. At least three people, maybe four. One vehicle in the annex garage-dark SUV, no plates visible.”

He slid one photo to the front of the stack.

It was the best of the lot. Taken at dusk, through the gap between two annex buildings. The second-floor window of the main building was partially visible. And in it-just for a fraction of a second, caught in the frame before the shutter closed-a figure.

The footage was blurry and taken from an awkward angle, but the figure in the wheelchair was unmistakable.

Someone in a wheelchair, moving past the window.

I stared at the photo. “I want to go myself,” I said.

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Ryder’s head snapped up. “No.”

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