Chapter 3 - Blood Money
Sitting in Marcus’s climate-controlled office, surrounded by wall-mounted surveillance monitors and encrypted servers, I laid out every detail: Fiona’s warning at the breakfast table, the evasive SUV ride, the windowless brick building near the docks, the scarred face of Richard Vance, and the horrifying conversation I had overheard through the wall vent.
Marcus listened without interrupting, his fingers tapping a slow, rhythmic pattern against the glass top of his desk. When I finished, he didn't offer empty words of comfort. He turned to his terminal and began typing furiously.
"Richard Vance," Marcus mused aloud, bringing up an archived file on his screen. "Declared dead October 14, 2018. Boat explosion off Block Island. The hull was obliterated by a propane leak. No body was ever recovered—only a wallet containing his ID and a piece of his blood-stained jacket washed ashore."
"It was staged," I said, slamming my fist onto the desk. "He’s alive. He’s standing in a dirty warehouse right now drawing my daughter's blood! Marcus, what kind of sick monsters draw blood from a seven-year-old girl?"
"Let's look at the science before we look at the crime," Marcus replied calmly, pulling up a secondary database. "What do you know about your wife’s family medical history, Julian?"
I frowned, forcing my panicking brain to focus. "Not much. Jessi’s father died of a rare genetic disease last year—Systemic Sclerotic Vasculitis. It’s an autoimmune condition that causes organ failure. It destroyed his kidneys and heart over five years."
"Did Richard have it?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "Richard disappeared—supposedly died—before I met Jessi."
Marcus clicked a series of tabs, pulling up sealed medical registry files that only a top-tier intelligence network could access. A set of DNA sequencing charts appeared on the screen.
"Look here," Marcus pointed to a highlighted line of genetic code. "Richard Vance was diagnosed with the exact same rare autoimmune disorder in 2017, one year before his fake death. The mortality rate for that specific strain without a matched donor is one hundred percent within ten years."
The room seemed to spin slightly. The pieces of the puzzle began sliding into place with terrifying precision.
"A matched donor..." I whispered, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. "Fiona."
"Not just any donor," Marcus said, his voice dropping an octave. "Pediatric bone marrow and stem-cell rich blood extracts from a direct genetic descendant offer the highest rate of remission for advanced vasculitis. But because of federal transplant protocols and pediatric ethics laws, no legitimate hospital in the United States would ever authorize drawing high-volume blood or stem-cell tissue from a seven-year-old child to treat an adult relative—especially an uncle who is officially deceased."
"So they built their own illegal clinic," I said, my teeth grinding together. "They faked his death so he could go off the grid, set up an underground lab, and when Fiona got old enough..."
"They started harvesting her," Marcus finished the sentence for me. "They are using your daughter as a black-market medical farm to keep Richard alive."
I stood up, my chair scraping violently against the floorboards. "I'm going back there. I'm taking a team, I'm breaking down that door, and I'm putting Richard in the ground for real this time."
"And what about your wife?" Marcus asked sharply.
I froze.
The question hung in the room like a cloud of poison gas.
"Jessi..." I stammered, my chest aching. "Jessi doesn't know. She can't know. She loves Fiona more than life itself."
"Does she?" Marcus asked brutally. He turned his screen toward me. "Look at the financial logs for the Vance Family Trust, Julian. I just pulled the ledger from your mother-in-law's private accounts. Every month for the last three years, fifty thousand dollars has been transferred from a joint account held by Wendy Vance... and Jessi Delgado."
I stared at the glowing numbers on the screen. The joint account carried my wife’s legal signature.
"No," I said, shaking my head violently. "No. Jessi wouldn't. She wouldn't let them hurt our daughter for money or for her brother. She cried for two days when Fiona got her flu shot last year!"
"People do insane things when family legacy and secret lives are on the line," Marcus said firmly. "If Jessi is co-signing those transfers, she’s either funding Richard's underground lab... or she’s being blackmailed by her own mother. Either way, if you charge into that warehouse right now with guns blazing, you burn your only chance of discovering how far this conspiracy goes."
My phone suddenly vibrated in my jacket pocket.
I pulled it out with trembling fingers. The screen showed an incoming text message from my wife:
Hey honey! How was the flight to Chicago? Hope the landing was smooth. Fiona and Mom are out getting lunch right now. Love you!
I stared at the message, feeling a cold, sickening horror wash over me. She was acting as if it were a completely normal Thursday.
"What do I do?" I asked Marcus, my voice sounding hollow, broken. "How do I walk back into my own home knowing my daughter is being bled in a basement while my mother-in-law smiles in my kitchen?"
Marcus stood up, walked around the desk, and placed a heavy, reassuring hand on my shoulder.
"You play the game, Julian," Marcus said grimly. "You text your wife back. You tell her you landed safely in Chicago. You pretend you're three hundred miles away. And while they think the house is clear, my team will bug every room in your estate, clone Wendy's phone, and trace every drop of blood they took from Fiona today."
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He handed me a small, black lapel pin shaped like a simple corporate logo.
"This has a high-def camera and a directional microphone," Marcus instructed. "Put it on. Go home through the back entrance. Act like a ghost in your own house. Because starting today, Julian... you are at war."
