Chapter 5 - Echoes of the Past
By mid-afternoon, the house was suffocatingly quiet. Blake had retreated to his private quarters in the carriage house across the courtyard, leaving orders that the boys were not to be disturbed until their evening medication.
I took advantage of the lull to slip into the estate’s private library—a vast, wood-paneled cavern filled with centuries of maritime history, corporate ledgers, and family archives. Vincent’s late wife, Julianna Moretti, had been the sole heir to the Vance-Delacroix chemical fortune before her fatal car crash four years ago.
I sat at the terminal behind the carved oak desk, accessing corporate registries and historical public filings through an encrypted VPN.
The pieces began to fall together with terrifying clarity. Julianna Moretti’s estate had not passed directly to Vincent. Under the terms of the Delacroix Family Trust, her thirty-five percent controlling interest in Delacroix Bio-Pharmaceuticals was held in an irrevocable trust for her twin sons, Lucas and Leo. Vincent was the legal guardian, but he had no power to liquidate or transfer the shares.
However, there was an obscure clause—a catastrophic contingency drafted sixty years earlier by Julianna’s grandfather: *In the event that all direct lineal descendants perish before reaching the age of majority without surviving issue, the entire controlling interest of the Delacroix trust shall devolve unconditionally to the primary medical research foundation established under the Delacroix charter.*
I clicked through to the charter of the Delacroix Foundation.
The executive director and permanent trustee, appointed six months after Julianna’s death, was Dr. Harrison Blake.
A controlling interest in a twelve-billion-dollar pharmaceutical empire.
If Lucas and Leo died of an "undiagnosed degenerative disease," Blake wouldn't just inherit a payout; he would gain absolute corporate control over one of the largest drug manufacturers on the eastern seaboard. And Vincent, broken by grief and brain-fogged by the low-dose poisons being piped through his study vents, would never possess the mental acuity to challenge the trust’s execution.
My phone vibrated violently against the desk blotter. It was an encrypted message from Elena Vance.
Attached was a PDF containing a mass-spectrometer readout with an unmistakable scarlet peak at the center of the graph.
*Compound identified,* Elena’s text read. *It’s an experimental synthetic neurotoxin known in academic literature as VX-942. Aerosolized organoselenium compound. It induces progressive autonomic failure, pulmonary micro-edema, and muscle wasting. In low, continuous doses, it looks identical to juvenile ALS or chronic mitochondrial depletion. Claire, whoever is dispensing this is giving those children enough to cause complete respiratory arrest within seventy-two hours. Get them out of there NOW.*
My breath caught in my throat. I stood up so quickly my chair crashed backward against the floorboards.
Seventy-two hours.
Blake wasn't running a long-term extraction anymore. He was wrapping it up. The hiring of a new nanny had threatened his timeline, forcing him to accelerate his schedule.
I rushed toward the library doors, but as I reached for the handle, the brass lock clicked from the outside.
I rattled the heavy wood. Nothing. The solid oak didn't give an inch.
From the other side of the door came the quiet, rhythmic clicking of high-heeled boots against the hardwood floor.
May you like
"Miss Morgan," Dr. Blake’s voice murmured smoothly through the keyhole. "I do admire your diligence. But you really should have stayed in the nursery."
***
