“Nothing,” he said. “Keep going. You were talking about the compound in the petals.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You understand what a compound is?”
“I read,” he said simply, lowering his gaze to his book.
Grace stared at him for three seconds, then returned to her notebook.
She was beginning to understand that there was far more to this man than a dusty uniform and quiet evenings.
Then trouble came.
One morning, men in expensive cars drove into the village and announced with polished smiles that a major company had purchased the hills at the edge of the village to build a luxury hotel. Villagers would receive a small payment and would need to leave within sixty days.
Grace felt the air leave her body.
The silver bloom grew on those hills.
Every single plant.
If construction began, it would vanish from the world forever.
For two weeks, Grace prepared. She gathered samples, wrote detailed notes connecting the flower’s properties to medical research, and built a careful, honest case for why the hills were worth infinitely more as a protected medicinal garden than as a hotel site.
Then she formally requested a meeting with the company representatives.
They agreed, half amused. They expected a short conversation.
Grace spoke for forty minutes without stopping.
She presented her samples, her research, her years of observations, and her calculations on what the silver bloom could mean for affordable medicine around the world.
When she finished, the room was silent.
Two representatives exchanged a look. Then they thanked her and said they would take her findings directly to the company owner.
What Grace still did not know was that Desmond had been monitoring the project from the beginning. When his team reported that a young village woman had delivered a forty-minute case for protecting a flower, he said nothing aloud.
He simply nodded.
