Chapter 10 - The Dossier on Table Four
The hum of the visitation booth's intercom seemed to amplify the silence hanging between us.
“Why?” I whispered, my voice cracking against the plastic receiver. “If she wanted revenge for Vanessa, she got it. I’m in a federal penitentiary, my assets are frozen, and my career is destroyed. Why take Noah? He’s my son—even if she’s trying to play games with paternity, I raised him, I held him—”
“You think this is about your indiscretions with a twenty-six-year-old marketing consultant in a Manhattan hotel?” The man let out a short, cold breath that sounded almost like pity. “Julian, vanity is a fatal flaw in men of your profession. You honestly believe the center of the universe revolves around your ego and your bedroom habits.”
He reached inside his immaculate charcoal suit jacket, withdrew a slim, unsealed manila envelope, and slid it across the stainless-steel pass-through tray beneath the Plexiglas partition.
“Open it,” the man instructed quietly.
My hand trembled as I reached out, pulled the envelope through the slot, and tipped it open. A single set of glossy, high-resolution photographs slid out onto the metal shelf, alongside a stapled document bearing the letterhead of a private biomedical research foundation in Geneva.
I glanced down at the top photograph.
It was a microscopic image of cellular tissue, annotated with complex genetic markers and chromosomal sequencing charts. Beneath it was a second photo—a picture of a medical facility nestled in the Swiss Alps, surrounded by dense pine forests and security fences.
“What is this?” I asked, looking up through the glass with a rising sense of dread.
“Four years ago, before you and Claire ever ‘accidentally’ met at that executive retreat in Chicago, Claire’s primary research team at Johns Hopkins published a breakthrough paper on synthetic immune-modulation and genetic correction for congenital cellular degeneration,” the man explained, his eyes never leaving mine. “A multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical conglomerate attempted to acquire her proprietary sequencing data by any means necessary—including corporate espionage, threats, and physical intimidation.”
My mouth went dry. “She... she was hiding?”
“She needed a fortress,” the man continued smoothly. “She needed an identity, a shield, and a legal firewall that could protect her research long enough to complete clinical trials. She needed a man with ambition, corporate connections, and enough blind arrogance to think he was running the show while she quietly integrated her secure data servers into your home network.”
The room began to spin. Every memory of our marriage—every quiet evening, every smile, every weekend spent in our Greenwich home—fractured and rearranged itself into something cold, clinical, and terrifying.
“She didn't marry me for love,” I whispered, the words tasting like ash. “She used me.”
“She married you because your clean corporate profile was the perfect camouflage,” the man corrected calmly. “And when you brought another woman into your private life, you didn't just break a marital vow—you compromised the sterile perimeter she had maintained around her work for five years.”
He tapped his finger twice against the glass partition.
“She didn't run away to hide from you, Julian,” the man said, his voice dropping into a chilling, absolute certainty. “She ran back to the laboratory. And she took the biological template of her research—your son—with her.”
Before I could process the monstrous implications of his words, the man stood up from his chair, buttoned his suit jacket, and placed his receiver back on the cradle.
“Wait!” I shouted, pressing my face against the glass. “Who are you? Who do you work for?”
The man paused at the door of the visitation booth, turned his head slightly, and gave me a thin, chilling smile.
May you like
“I’m the man Claire hired to make sure you never find the lab,” he said softly.
He pulled the door open, stepped out into the hallway, and vanished down the corridor before the heavy iron latch could even swing shut.
