Chapter 10 - The Cellblock Visitor
The visitor’s partition at the North Fraser Pretrial Centre smelled of industrial floor stripper, cold metal, and stale human despair.
I sat with my hands folded over my leather notebook, waiting. When the heavy steel door buzzed open, Julian Vance walked in wearing standard-issue orange, his wrists cuffed to a belly chain.
It had been four months since I looked at his face. The razor-sharp jawline he had maintained with weekly barbershop visits was overgrown with patchy, graying stubble. The arrogance that once dripped from every word he spoke had decayed into something jittery, gaunt, and feral.
He sat down heavily across the scratched acrylic divider, picking up the receiver with trembling fingers. I lifted mine.
"You look well, Elena," he rasped, his voice vibrating with venom. "I see the Blackwell money bought you a whole new wardrobe. Did you bring my son?"
"Eli’s name doesn't belong in your mouth, Julian," I said, my tone as level as a winter lake. "And I didn't come here to trade pleasantries with a felon. Who instructed you to target my father’s original patent archives five years ago?"
Julian sneered, a cracked mockery of the smile he used to give me whenever he closed a venture round. "You think you're so brilliant, don't you? You found the duplicate ledgers. You found Colette’s hidden condo. You threw us both to the wolves. But you still don't get it. I didn't find your father’s research by accident, Elena. I was introduced to you. Every date, every dinner, every promise I made you on that terrace in Kitsilano was scripted."
My blood ran to ice, but I didn't blink. I refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing my hand tremble.
"Scripted by whom?"
"Ask your precious Gordon Blackwell," Julian whispered, leaning so close his hot breath clouded the glass. "Ask him who funded my first fund when I graduated from Wharton. Ask him whose signature is at the bottom of the seed check that founded Apex. I was broke, Elena! Flat broke! And then a man with a gold signet ring sat across from me in a private club in Manhattan and handed me a file with your picture, your thesis, and your father’s unresolved estate."
"You're lying," I whispered, though my mind was racing through a thousand scattered memories—the inexplicable timing of Julian’s proposal, the way he always nudged me to abandon research and handle operations, the sudden wealth that materialized out of nowhere.
"Am I?" Julian laughed, a high, broken sound that caught the guard's attention. "Colette didn't come to steal my money, Elena. Colette was sent to make sure I followed through when I started getting cold feet. When I started seeing Eli look at me with those big, trusting eyes, I wanted out. I wanted to just take our millions and disappear. But they told me if I didn't break you, if I didn't make you sign away every scrap of the compound before Eli turned seven... they’d leave me in a ditch."
Julian pulled his wrists against the belly chain, pointing his shackled finger at me. "The St. Claire Syndicate isn't an investment group. It's a blood feud. And now that you've built the sovereign complex, you've just put the entire target on our son's forehead."
The guard stepped forward, tapping his baton against Julian’s chair. "Time’s up."
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Julian was hauled to his feet. As he was dragged toward the steel door, he turned back, screaming through the mesh: "Run, Elena! Take Eli and run! They're not coming for the money—they're coming for the bloodline!"
***
