Chapter 4 - The Sycophant's Collapse
I didn't sleep that night. I sat in Raymond's office watching the sun rise over the skyline, my mind spinning into a dark, bottomless abyss.
At seven in the morning, Raymond's assistant knocked on the frosted door. "Mrs. Pendelton... Beatrice Miller is in the lobby. She's begging to see you. Security wanted to throw her out, but she says she has documents you need."
"Send her up," I said immediately.
When Beatrice entered the room, she looked nothing like the polished, sultry mistress who had strutted through my front door two days earlier. Her mascara was smeared down her cheeks, her hair was a tangled mess, and she wore an oversized trench coat that she clutched around herself like armor.
"Claire," she gasped, collapsing onto her knees the moment the door clicked shut. "Please. You have to believe me. I didn't know. I swear to God, I didn't know about Chloe!"
"Get off the floor, Beatrice," I said coldly. "You disgust me."
She scrambled into a chair, shaking violently, pulling a silver laptop and a thick manila folder from her designer tote bag. "Arthur called me last night. He was hysterical. He told me that if the feds come, I have to take the fall for the forged signatures. He told me he has emails showing I managed the offshore bank accounts!"
"Did you?"
"No! He made me log in with his credentials! He said it was for tax optimization, that all major CEOs did it! He gave me the pearl necklace, bought me clothes, promised he was leaving you because you were cold and vindictive. But he's setting me up! He's going to pin forty million dollars of embezzlement on me!"
"Why should I help you?" I asked, staring at her with unblinking eyes. "You held his arm while my daughter lay in a cold drawer at the morgue."
Tears streamed down Beatrice's face. "Because I have his real laptop. The encrypted one he kept in the safe at the Saint Lucia villa. I took it before I left this morning. I know the password."
Raymond stepped forward, gingerly taking the laptop from her hands. "What is on this machine, Ms. Miller?"
"His personal correspondence with Dr. Emil Keller," Beatrice sobbed. "The head of Aethelgard Bio. And... and the medical records."
"What medical records?" I demanded, leaning forward, my heart pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird.
"A month ago, Arthur took Chloe to an unlisted private clinic in Vancouver," Beatrice whispered. "He told you he was taking her to a weekend zoo exhibit, remember? He took blood samples. He had them run through the Swiss laboratory to test her cellular response to their synthetic antibodies."
The air left my lungs in a violent rush. My vision tunneled into blackness for a second before the sheer fury pulled me back.
"He used our daughter as a clinical subject?" My voice was barely a whisper, vibrating with an ancient, primal rage.
"Keller told him the test showed she was hyper-reactive," Beatrice cried. "Keller warned Arthur that her immune system had suffered a severe histamine crash from the trial compound. Keller sent an urgent warning on Arthur's private phone twelve hours before Chloe woke up with that fever. Keller told Arthur that Chloe was at extreme risk of systemic infection and needed immediate hospitalization."
"And what did Arthur do?" Raymond asked, his voice shaking with horror.
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"Arthur deleted the message," Beatrice said, covering her face. "He turned off his phone, boarded the jet to Saint Lucia, and told me that whatever happened over the next three days... we just had to make sure nobody could reach him."
***
