NATHAN CROSS STRIKE BACK..

Chapter 4

“He is a monster,” she said. Her voice was shaking now. 

“I have three weeks of evidence that he is a monster and you are not listening to a single word. Grandfather what is happening to you? Why will you not hear me?”

“Because you are not saying anything worth hearing,” he said simply. 

“You are a young woman who is scared and so you are inventing reasons to say no. I am not going to keep having this conversation. The decision is final, and I expect you to come to full reality, and understand none of this excuses will work.”

At that moment Vivienne couldn't say anything, and she knew why her grandfather wants to ship her out.

She understood it perfectly and that was the worst part.

Her medical condition was called **Extreme Cold Condition.** 

Her body generated almost no natural heat. Her core temperature ran dangerously low regardless of the weather outside. She needed medication every single day just to maintain a temperature that would not shut her organs down. She wore layers in summer. She could not stay in air conditioned rooms for long. Cold weather was genuinely dangerous for her.

The specialists had been very clear.

With medication and management she could live a reasonable life. But the medication was a ceiling, not a cure. Over time her body would stop responding to it. The condition would win eventually.

Without a real solution she would not live to forty. The more pessimistic specialists said thirty five.

The only actual cure not management, not medication, but a real biological cure  was someone with the opposite condition. A **Thermal Body.** 

A person whose body generated extraordinary natural heat. The two conditions together would balance each other completely. Her cold, their heat the body found equilibrium and healed itself.

The Sterling family had been searching quietly for over twenty years.

They had found nobody.

Marcus Hale did not have a Thermal Body. He was not a cure. He was not even close to a cure.

But he was one of the wealthiest men alive and his resources could fund the kind of dedicated specialized research that might eventually — years from now, maybe decades find someone with a Thermal Body.

That was the logic.

Her life, her body, her future in exchange for access to money that might extend that future.

"My grandfather is trading me for research funding," she thought. "And he has convinced himself it is for my benefit."

“Father he kills people, if you can just listen to me Open heart and understand my position”  she said one more time.

“You are cooking up stories,” her grandfather said. 

“The decision is final.”

“No, I don't agree” she said.

She ended the call.

At that moment she sat in the parked car and shook.

Then she opened the wine she had in front of her and drank most of it and eventually started driving because sitting still with that much fury inside her was not something she could do.

She drove fast, and her head was fully thoughts, she never liked that womanizer, that monster.

The road outside the Westside industrial district was empty and empty and she drove faster than she should have.

And then her headlights caught something on the road ahead.

A figure.

A man on the road. Moving — barely. Staggering forward in a straight line with his head down and his whole body working just to stay upright. Torn clothes. Dark hair. Moving like a person running on the very last of everything they had.

Immediately Vivienne hit the brakes hard.

The Porsche shrieked and shuddered and stopped.

The man's legs gave out, he went down and lay still on the road.

Vivienne's heart slammed into her ribs.

“Oh my goodness, i  just hit someone.”

At that moment she threw her door open and ran to the front of the car.

He was not under the car. Not near the bumper. She had stopped in time. She had not hit him.

He had simply — fallen.

She ran to him and crouched down quickly.

“Hey.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “Hey. Can you hear me?”

She turned him carefully onto his back.

She checked him over quickly  looking for injuries, cuts, blood, anything obvious.

His face had faint marks on it. Old marks. The kind that looked like they had been much worse recently and were now fading fast. Almost healed. She checked his arms  nothing serious. She opened what was left of his torn shirt to check his chest and ribs.

Immediately she stopped, she forgot what she was checking for.

Because the man in front of her — in torn dirty clothes, collapsed on the road in the middle of the night — was remarkable looking. A strong chest. Real muscle. The kind of body that came from years of work, not performance. And below his collarbone, slightly left of center, a scar with a shape to it. An unusual shape. Almost like a pattern that meant something.

The scar was warm, she touched it without thinking and pulled her hand back immediately.

She looked at his face, Strong jaw. Dark hair. Good features. Even in this condition , exhausted, barely conscious   he was the kind of face that would stop anyone.

“He is very handsome,” she thought.

She checked the road. Empty in both directions. No cars. No people. No witnesses. Nothing but street lights and quiet.

She looked back at him.

He was not injured. Not in any serious way she could see. The marks on his face were fading. Whatever had happened to him — and something had clearly happened his body was already past the worst of it.

He was just completely, totally, utterly exhausted, Like he had used everything he had to get this far and had nothing left.

She thought about taking him to the hospital. That had been her first instinct.

But then she stopped.

She sat back on her heels and looked at him and thought about her grandfather's voice.

“The decision is final. You cannot escape it. Accept your reality.”

She thought about Marcus Hale.

She thought about her condition. About the medication. About thirty five years old being the optimistic estimate. About twenty years of the family searching for a Thermal Body and finding nothing.

She thought about what came next.

Friday. The board meeting. The formal agreement. And then eventually inevitably — Marcus Hale.

Her grandfather had made one thing very clear over the years. Marcus Hale had specifically requested that his future wife be untouched. It was a condition of the arrangement. Non negotiable. It was part of why the family had been so careful with her for so long. So protective. So controlled.

If she was not untouched when she came to him —He would not want her.

The arrangement would fall apart.

She would be free, the thought arrived in her mind quietly and then grew very loud very fast.

“If I am not what he requires, he cannot have me, he will have no other choice then to hate me.”