Chapter 2 - THE PHANTOM FILE
The heavy mahogany doors of my office remained shut, sealing us off from the armed guards in the hallway, but the silence inside felt suddenly suffocating.
I stared at Elena Ward. Her chest rose and fell in shallow, jagged breaths, the wet fabric of her oversized coat clinging to her thin frame. Outside, the Chicago winter wind battered the bulletproof glass windows of my estate, howling like something starved.
“Repeat that,” I commanded, my voice dropping into the lethal register that usually made grown men tremble. “What did you just say about my children?”
Elena swallowed hard, her red, chapped hands tightening around the frayed strap of a canvas bag she had kept clutched to her side.
“They weren't supposed to be born sick, Mr. Mercer,” she repeated, her voice trembling but clear. “And they certainly weren't supposed to have leukemia.”
I slammed my palm down on the polished wood of my desk. The sharp sound made Prescott Hale, my security chief, instinctively drop his hand closer to his sidearm.
“My children are six years old,” I said, every word dripping with ice. “They have been diagnosed by the leading pediatric oncologists in the country. They have abnormal white blood cell counts, compromised bone marrow, and a failing immune system. Are you telling me that a cabal of doctors from Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, and Chicago Memorial are all incompetent?”
“No,” Elena said softly. “They’re brilliant. But they are looking for a natural disease. They are treating a symptom that was artificially manufactured.”
My chest tightened, a cold knot forming behind my ribs. “Manufactured.”
Elena stepped closer to the edge of my desk, pointing a trembling finger at the medical report she had left beside the silver necklace.
“Look at the dates, Mr. Mercer. Look at the genetic lineage markers highlighted in yellow on page three.”
I grabbed the papers, my eyes scanning the dense text. I was a man who handled multi-million-dollar acquisitions, corporate takeovers, and syndicate logistics. I knew how to read between the lines of a contract. But this was different. This was medical jargon—chromosomal sequences, allele pairings, synthetic DNA markers.
“Explain it,” I ordered. “In plain English.”
“That document is an unredacted copy of the original fertility clinic files from seven years ago,” Elena said, her eyes locked on mine. “The clinic where you and Genevieve went when you struggled to conceive.”
My breath hitched.
The fertility clinic. OmniGen Labs. It was a state-of-the-art facility on the outskirts of Chicago that Genevieve had insisted we use. I had paid them millions in anonymous grants. Two years after our initial consultations, Jonah and Blythe were born.
“OmniGen closed down five years ago,” I muttered. “A sudden bankruptcy. The entire database was supposedly destroyed in a server fire.”
“It wasn't a fire,” Elena said bitterly. “It was a purge. And Genevieve found out about it three weeks before she died.”
Prescott Hale stepped forward, his eyes narrowing as he studied Elena with professional suspicion. “Boss, this is insane. Anyone can print out a fake medical chart and slap an old logo on it. She’s playing an angle. We don’t even know who she is.”
“I know who she is,” I whispered, staring down at the silver necklace resting on my desk—the exact piece of jewelry I had buried with my wife.
I looked back at Elena. “If Genevieve knew the clinic was a fraud, why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t she come to me?”
Elena’s eyes filled with fresh tears, spilling over her lashes.
“Because the people running OmniGen didn't just manufacture fertility treatments, Mr. Mercer. They were running an illegal black-market gene-splicing ring funded by your main corporate competitor, Vance Bio-Tech. And they used your children as their primary testing ground.”
The room seemed to tilt violently.
Vance Bio-Tech. Marcus Vance. My fiercest corporate rival—a man I had been trying to legally destroy for over a decade.
“That’s impossible,” I growled, though my voice lacked its previous absolute conviction. “Vance wouldn't dare touch my family.”
“He didn't just touch them; he engineered them,” Elena whispered. “Your children don't have natural leukemia. Their immune systems were deliberately spliced with a dormant, genetically engineered retrovirus designed to activate on their sixth birthday. The doctors call it cancer because they don't have the decryption keys to read the genetic code. But it’s not cancer, Mr. Mercer. It’s a timer.”
A timer.
Ten days left.
The words Dr. Yates had spoken in the hospital echoed in my mind, transforming from a tragic medical prognosis into a death sentence written by a corporate executioner.
Before I could demand more answers, a shrill, piercing beep echoed through my private office.
It wasn't a phone. It was the internal security console on my desk.
Prescott stepped over to the wall-mounted monitor, tapping the touchscreen. A live camera feed from the front gates flashed onto the screen.
May you like
A sleek, black unmarked van had just stopped outside our twelve-foot iron perimeter wall.
And men in heavy tactical gear were stepping out into the snow.
