Chapter 3 - WHAT GENEVIEVE KNEW
For several seconds I could not understand the words.
Not emotionally.
Literally.
My brain rejected their arrangement.
“Genevieve died from an aneurysm.”
Dr. Yates looked at the floor.
“That was the official finding.”
“Official?”
I stepped toward him.
Marcus caught my arm before I reached the doctor.
“Lawson.”
I pulled away.
“What killed my wife?”
Yates looked frightened now.
Good.
“She suffered a vascular rupture.”
“That is an aneurysm.”
“Induced by a genetic instability syndrome.”
Mara whispered, “The Mercer file.”
Yates snapped toward her.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“My mother worked for Northstar.”
“Your mother stole confidential research.”
“My mother saved copies because children were being hurt.”
“Children were dying before we treated them.”
“And some died because you treated them.”
Yates’s jaw tightened.
I slammed my palm onto the table.
“Both of you stop.”
Silence.
I pointed at Yates.
“You will explain this from the beginning.”
He looked toward Marcus.
“I should speak to counsel.”
“You can speak to counsel after you tell me why my children are receiving a drug I never authorized.”
“You signed broad experimental consent.”
“For cancer treatment.”
“The twins do have malignant marrow failure.”
“Caused by what?”
He said nothing.
I turned to Marcus.
“Lock down the medical wing. Nobody leaves. Nobody accesses a computer without you watching. Shut off outside network connections.”
Yates stared.
“You cannot interfere with their treatment suddenly.”
“I’m not stopping anything until independent doctors review it.”
“You don’t have time.”
“That’s the first truthful sentence you’ve spoken.”
Marcus left immediately.
Mara remained beside the table.
Yates slowly sat.
“The syndrome was discovered in Genevieve’s family line after your first two miscarriages.”
“By whom?”
“Halcyon.”
“They told us chromosomal abnormalities caused the miscarriages.”
“They told you what Northstar instructed them to tell you.”
I gripped the back of a chair.
“Why?”
“Because Genevieve’s mutation was rare. Extremely rare. Researchers believed correcting it at the embryonic stage could lead to treatments for dozens of inherited disorders.”
“And they experimented on our embryos without permission.”
Yates rubbed both hands across his face.
“There were people at Northstar who believed the opportunity justified the risk.”
“Were you one of them?”
“I joined later.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
He looked at me.
“I believed the technology could save lives.”
Mara laughed bitterly.
“Whenever someone says that, somebody powerless usually pays the bill.”
Yates ignored her.
“Four embryo samples were used to test gene correction methods. Two failed. One produced unstable cell growth. One appeared successful.”
“Appeared?”
“The repaired cells remained healthy for nearly a year.”
The report.
Dated before Jonah and Blythe were born.
I understood.
“That medical report wasn’t about my children.”
“No.”
“It was about cells taken from their embryos.”
“Yes.”
Mara pushed the report toward me.
“The symptoms listed there match Jonah and Blythe now because the same instability is happening inside them.”
Yates’s eyes narrowed.
“How much do you know?”
“Enough.”
“Then you know stopping treatment could kill them.”
“Continuing it could kill them faster.”
I looked between them.
“Someone explain NX-41.”
Mara spoke first.
“It suppresses the abnormal cell line.”
Yates added, “Temporarily.”
“And Protocol C?”
Neither answered.
I felt rage rising again.
“What is Protocol C?”
Yates finally said, “A rescue therapy.”
“Meaning?”
“It forces the unstable marrow population to collapse so transplanted stem cells can repopulate healthy tissue.”
“That sounds like chemotherapy.”
“It is much more aggressive.”
“What are their chances?”
“If completed?”
“Yes.”
Yates hesitated.
“Historically?”
My stomach dropped.
“How many children?”
“Lawson—”
“How many?”
“Eleven.”
“How many survived?”
His silence answered before his mouth did.
“Three.”
Mara shook her head.
“My mother’s records said two.”
“One survived after she left.”
“Where?”
Yates looked at her.
“I don’t know.”
“You expect us to believe that?”
“The program fragmented after Northstar closed.”
I stared at him.
“You put my children into a treatment with less than thirty percent survival.”
“They were dying.”
“You told me they had leukemia.”
“They have leukemia-like malignant proliferation.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It is clinically similar.”
“You lied.”
“Yes.”
The admission almost made the room quieter.
“Why?”
“Because if the truth came out, every institution connected to Northstar would collapse under criminal investigation before we had time to save them.”
“Who ordered you to lie?”
Yates said nothing.
I leaned closer.
“Who?”
He looked toward Genevieve’s letter.
“Your wife discovered the embryo transfers when the twins were four.”
My throat tightened.
“She knew?”
“She found archived correspondence.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“She wanted proof first.”
“That sounds like Genevieve.”
“She contacted Evelyn Quinn.”
Mara’s mother.
“They began reconstructing the original research.”
“And then Genevieve died.”
Yates looked away.
Mara spoke.
“And my mother was killed.”
Yates snapped, “I had nothing to do with either death.”
“Did someone?”
He stood.
“I don’t know.”
I could tell he knew more.
Before I could press him, Marcus returned with his phone in one hand.
“We have a problem.”
“What?”
“Two medical staff attempted to leave.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Hanley and Nurse Baird.”
“Stop them.”
“We did.”
He looked at Yates.
“But someone remotely accessed the twins’ medication server three minutes ago.”
Yates paled.
“What changed?”
Marcus held up the phone.
“An infusion order.”
Yates grabbed the device.
His expression transformed into panic.
“No.”
“What?”
“This dose is wrong.”
My blood went cold.
“How wrong?”
“Six times the prescribed concentration.”
Mara whispered, “Someone knows I’m here.”
Yates ran toward the door.
We followed.
The medical wing was chaos.
A nurse stood beside Jonah’s bed with an IV bag in her hand while a security officer blocked her path.
“What are you doing?” Yates shouted.
She turned.
“The revised infusion.”
“Do not administer that!”
Blythe woke at the noise.
“Daddy?”
I crossed the room and took her hand.
Jonah stirred beside her.
Yates examined the label.
His face turned gray.
“If this had gone in…”
“What?”
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
Marcus took the IV bag.
“Who issued the order?”
The nurse shook her head.
“It came through the system with Dr. Yates’s credentials.”
Everyone looked at him.
“I didn’t order it.”
Marcus said, “Your credentials were used.”
“They were stolen.”
Mara stood in the doorway.
“No.”
We turned.
She was staring at the medication refrigerator.
A small digital lock displayed a green light.
“What?” I asked.
“My mother wrote about this.”
She pointed.
“Northstar didn’t rely only on computer orders. High-risk medications were assigned physical authentication chips.”
Yates went still.
Mara approached the refrigerator.
“If somebody authorized that dose, they needed a chip.”
Marcus checked Yates.
The doctor pulled a keycard from his pocket.
A tiny black square was embedded inside.
“I have mine.”
Mara looked at me.
“Then somebody else has one.”
Marcus began calling security.
The estate went into full lockdown.
Gates sealed.
Vehicles stopped.
Staff assembled.
Every room was searched.
Forty-two minutes later, Marcus returned.
“We found something.”
He led us to the service corridor beneath the east wing.
Inside a housekeeping closet, taped beneath a shelf, was a black authentication chip.
Yates examined the serial number.
His face changed.
“You recognize it?”
“Yes.”
“Whose?”
He looked at me.
“Genevieve’s.”
I stared.
“My wife wasn’t a doctor.”
“No.”
Yates’s voice dropped.
“But during the final months before her death, Northstar gave her research access.”
Mara frowned.
“Why?”
“Because she threatened to expose them.”
I understood.
“They bought her silence.”
“No.”
Yates looked at the chip.
“They tried.”
A security officer entered.
“Mr. Mercer?”
“What?”
“We checked camera footage from this hallway.”
He held out a tablet.
A grainy image showed someone entering the closet at 8:43 that morning.
The person wore medical scrubs and a surgical mask.
But the face was visible for half a second when they turned.
I knew her.
Everyone in my house knew her.
She had been with the twins since their first month of life.
Their nanny.
The woman who had comforted them after Genevieve died.
The woman Jonah called Aunt Celia.
Celia Ward.
Marcus whispered, “She left the estate twenty minutes before the lockdown.”
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
“Hello?”
A woman’s voice.
Calm.
Familiar.
“Lawson.”
“Celia.”
Behind me, Blythe whispered her nanny’s name.
Celia continued.
“You brought Mara Quinn inside.”
“How do you know?”
“You need to stop asking questions.”
“You tried to poison my children.”
“No.”
Her voice broke.
“I just saved them.”
I looked at Yates.
He looked as confused as I felt.
“By ordering six times the dose?”
“That medication was never going into Jonah and Blythe.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The altered order forced Yates to stop today’s infusion.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“Then why run?”
“Because the people who killed Genevieve know Mara reached you.”
Everything inside me froze.
“Who killed my wife?”
Celia was silent.
“Tell me.”
“I can’t over the phone.”
“Then come back.”
“If I return to the estate, I’ll be dead before sunset.”
“Where are you?”
Another pause.
Then she said, “Ask Dr. Yates who financed Northstar.”
I looked at him.
He shook his head violently.
“Don’t.”
That was the moment I knew the answer would be worse than anything I had imagined.
“Who financed it?” I asked.
Celia spoke two words.
“Mercer Holdings.”
May you like
I stopped breathing.
My own company.
