Chapter 2 - The Seven-Year Ghost
The silence in my study was absolute, shattered only by the steady rain drumming against the bulletproof windows.
I picked up the document with shaking fingers.
The paper bore the official letterhead of Vanguard Bio-Tech—a private pharmaceutical development firm I had personally acquired six years ago to expand my medical investments.
According to the record, embryonic genetic markers for Jonah and Blythe had been created and cataloged in a lab in Geneva seven years ago.
"Explain this," I commanded, my voice dropping into a deadly register. "My wife and I went through standard IVF eight years ago after trying naturally for three years. Vanguard was just a vendor."
"Vanguard wasn't a vendor, Lawson," Elena said, using my first name for the first time. "They were the architects. Genevieve discovered what they had done to her eggs three weeks before she died."
Prescott stepped closer, his eyes scanning the security monitors mounted on my wall. "Sir, Vanguard’s board is chaired by Dr. Yates’s brother, Arthur Yates."
The room seemed to tilt. Dr. Franklin Yates—the man currently upstairs overseeing my children's hospice care—was the brother of the man who ran the bio-tech firm.
"Genevieve realized that the IVF clinic didn't just help her conceive," Elena continued, stepping closer to my desk. "Arthur Yates used modified synthetic vectors on the embryos. It was an experimental gene-therapy trial funded by an anonymous offshore investor. The modification was designed to grant extreme cellular regeneration, but it had a fatal flaw."
"A delayed autoimmune collapse," I murmured, reading down the second page of the report. "A built-in shelf life."
"Six years," Elena whispered. "The vector breaks down after six years, causing the bone marrow to attack itself. It looks identical to aggressive, un-treatable acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Every standard chemotherapy drug Dr. Yates gives them isn't fighting the disease—it’s accelerating the genetic trigger."
A sickening sensation settled in the pit of my stomach. Every bone marrow biopsy, every blood transfusion, every toxic chemical I had authorized Dr. Yates to pump into my six-year-old children was actively killing them.
"Why would Franklin Yates do this?" I asked, my blood turning to liquid ice.
"Because he isn't trying to cure them," Elena said, her eyes burning with a fierce, desperate clarity. "He’s waiting for them to reach total organ failure. Once they pass, Arthur Yates’s team recovers the marrow samples. The off-switch in their DNA contains the missing sequence for a multi-billion-dollar longevity drug."
"They used my children as live incubators," I whispered.
"And when Genevieve found the trial records in Arthur's private vault," Elena said, her voice cracking, "she tried to pull the children out of the country. She called me the night she stole that necklace. She knew they were going to kill her."
Before I could answer, my internal comms speaker beeped sharply.
Dr. Yates's voice came through the intercom from the third-floor ICU. "Lawson? You need to come upstairs immediately. Jonah's heart rate is spiking. I'm preparing a terminal dose of sedatives to prevent a seizure."
Elena grabbed my forearm. "If he gives Jonah that injection, the trigger locks permanently. He’ll die in twenty minutes."
I looked at Prescott. Prescott didn't ask questions. He reached into his coat, checked the chamber of his Sig Sauer, and flicked off the safety.
"Lock down the estate," I ordered Prescott. "Nobody enters. Nobody leaves. Cut the external lines."
"And Dr. Yates, sir?" Prescott asked.
May you like
I looked at the silver blue stone hanging around Elena's neck—the last thing my wife had touched before she was murdered.
"Tell the guards on the third floor to step aside," I said softly. "I'm going to talk to my children's doctor."
