By the time my husband finally came home, our three-year-old daughter had already been buried / Chapter 25 / 121

Chapter 25 - The Broken Mirror

"You cannot go there," Dr. Lin said, blocking the doorway as I pulled on a dark wool trench coat and checked the magazine of the pistol Andrew had handed me before the blast doors closed. "It is a trap, Clara. Jonathan Sterling does not share power, and he does not negotiate. If you walk into that gala, you will be restrained, and both of your children will be locked in subterranean cages for the rest of their unnatural lives."

"What choice do I have?" I spun on her, my eyes blazing with frantic madness. "Look at her! Look at my daughter!"

Chloe was tossing on the cot, whimpering softly in her sleep. A tiny trail of dark blood had begun to trickle from her left nostril.

Dr. Lin's face softened, but she stood her ground. "There is another way. But it requires tearing open a wound that has festered for twenty years."

"What are you talking about?"

"Jonathan Sterling wasn't the only founder of Project Lazarus," Dr. Lin said, stepping toward a hidden floor safe beneath the rug. She entered a combination and pulled out a heavy, leather-bound dossier sealed with black wax. "There was a second director. A man who developed the original enzyme formula before Jonathan tried to have him assassinated."

She handed me the dossier. I broke the wax seal, flipping through the yellowed pages of military clinical records. On the first page was a faded black-and-white photograph of two young officers standing in front of a naval research vessel.

One was my father.

The other was Julian’s father—Thomas Vance.

"The Vance family wasn't working for your father," I whispered, the pieces connecting in my mind like dominoes falling into place. "They were at war with him."

"Thomas Vance was murdered by your father fifteen years ago," Dr. Lin explained. "Victoria took over the family to exact revenge. She forced Andrew to marry you, hoping to find the biological key that Jonathan had hidden in your mother’s lineage. Julian hated Victoria, but he hated your father even more. Julian didn't save Chloe out of the goodness of his heart, Clara. He extracted her to lure Jonathan out of the shadows."

"And Julian failed," I said, remembering the yacht exploding on the monitor.

"Julian anticipated his failure," Dr. Lin replied quietly. She pulled a heavy brass key from around her neck and placed it in my palm. "He left a contingency. Beneath the Old Port customs house, there is a vault containing the raw synthetic enzyme—enough to stabilize Chloe for decades. But the security protocol requires two biometric keys."

"Whose?"

"The blood of a Sterling," Dr. Lin said. "And the blood of a Vance."

I stared at the key, a suffocating silence falling over the room.

"Andrew is dead," I whispered, my voice breaking. "He died in the crypt. I saw him get shot."

A knock sounded at the back alley door.

Three slow raps, followed by two fast ones.

Dr. Lin’s hand instantly flew to the small revolver hidden in her apron pocket. I raised my weapon, stepping in front of Chloe’s bed, my thumb slipping the safety catch off.

The heavy wooden door creaked open slowly. A silhouette stumbled into the dim yellow light of the safehouse, dripping water and blood onto the linoleum floor.

He was clutching his shattered shoulder with a makeshift tourniquet made from an electrical cord. His face was pale, his eyes sunken, his designer clothes torn to shreds.

Andrew Vance collapsed against the doorframe, his knees buckling as he looked up at me through swollen, blackened eyes.