Chapter 4 - SHATTERED ICE
Grace was losing her grip on consciousness. The contractions were coming in rapid, punishing waves, tearing through her core every two minutes. She had managed to strip off her frozen tights and wedge herself into a small cave of cardboard boxes, wrapping her bare legs in dry packing paper. The pain of childbirth was excruciating, but the cold was a silent, lethal anesthetic, numbing her extremities so severely she couldn't feel her toes or fingers anymore.
She was fading. The blue emergency lights seemed to be dimming. She whispered a broken lullaby to the twins, apologizing over and over again.
Outside, the roar of a combustion engine shattered the warehouse’s silence. Julian had hot-wired the forklift. He slammed it into drive, the heavy tires squealing as he lined the twin steel prongs up with the reinforced freezer door.
He didn't hesitate. He jammed the pedal to the floor.
The forklift surged forward. The heavy steel prongs rammed into the center of the freezer door with an explosive, deafening crash. Metal shrieked, buckling under the immense pressure, but the door held. Julian reversed, the gears grinding violently, and slammed the accelerator down again.
CRASH!
The hinges groaned, bolts snapping off and ricocheting like bullets across the concrete floor.
Inside, the horrific noise pulled Grace from the brink of oblivion. She forced her eyes open just as a third, earth-shattering impact hit the door. The locking mechanism shattered. The heavy steel door was violently blown inward, screeching off its hinges and crashing to the frosted floor in a cloud of blinding white vapor.
Warm warehouse air rushed into the freezing chamber, creating a thick, swirling fog. Through the mist, a tall, dark silhouette appeared.
Julian leaped from the forklift, coughing through the freezing vapor, his eyes desperately scanning the massive room. "Grace!"
"Here," she tried to scream, but it came out as a pathetic, rattling wheeze.
Julian heard the scrape of cardboard. He sprinted toward the back corner, sliding on the slick ice. When he reached her, his heart nearly stopped. She was blue—literally blue. Her lips, her fingers, the skin of her face. She was curled in a nest of frozen cardboard, shivering so violently her teeth were cracking, and blood was pooling beneath her.
Julian dropped to his knees, immediately stripping off his thick wool overcoat and wrapping it around her shaking shoulders. He pulled her against his chest, trying to transfer his own body heat to her freezing frame.
"I've got you," Julian said, his voice trembling as he brushed the frozen hair from her face. "Grace, look at me. I've got you. You're going to be okay."
Her glazed eyes locked onto his. She recognized him, a ghost from the life before Derek’s madness. "Julian?" she gasped, her body seizing with another agonizing contraction. She screamed, her nails digging into his expensive suit jacket. "The babies! They're coming! Right now!"
Julian’s eyes widened in sheer panic. He looked toward the shattered door. The warehouse was empty. The ambulance he had dialed on speakerphone during his frantic drive was still ten minutes away.
He looked down at the woman freezing to death in his arms, her body already in the final stages of labor. There was no time to move her. If he tried to carry her out now, the shock of the temperature change combined with the birth could kill all three of them.
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Julian Vance, a man who negotiated billion-dollar mergers without breaking a sweat, took a ragged breath, stripped off his suit jacket, and rolled up his sleeves.
"Alright, Grace," Julian said, his voice dropping into a calm, authoritative cadence he used in boardrooms, designed to project absolute control. "I am not going to let you die. And I am not going to let Derek Bennett take these children from you. Push."
