Chapter 12 - The Blood Legacy
I broke every speed limit between downtown Chicago and the western suburbs, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. When I pulled into the driveway, the front door was standing wide open.
"Grace!" I roared, throwing my car into park and sprinting through the threshold.
The house was dead silent. The living room was overturned—books pulled from shelves, the sofa cushions slashed. I rushed down the hallway into the master bedroom, pulling the weapon I had legally registered after the hospital incident.
In the center of the nursery, Grace was sitting on the hardwood floor, clutching the two girls against her chest. She was unharmed, but her face was completely drained of color. Noah was asleep in his crib, his tiny chest rising and falling steadily under the monitoring blanket.
"Ryan," Grace whispered, her voice barely audible. "He took it."
"He took what?" I asked, dropping to my knees beside her and pulling all three of them into my arms.
"Your father," she choked out. "He came in with two men. He didn't hurt us... he didn't even look at Maya or Lily. He walked straight to the nursery vault where we kept Noah's post-surgery blood samples and cord cell archives from the hospital. He typed in the master code—the code only your family knows—and took every single vial."
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I looked over at the small cryogenic storage unit mounted in the closet wall. The door had been cleanly unlocked. No forced entry. No cracked hinges.
On the nursery changing table sat William's heavy wooden cane. I walked over, grabbed the silver handle, and twisted it counterclockwise. The top unscrewed with a metallic click, revealing a hollow chamber inside. Tucked within was a small micro-drive stamped with a black emblem: a snake wrapped around a helix—the logo of Aegis Protocol.
