Chapter 3

"What are you doing here?"

Julian Vance stood at the doorway. He didn't come inside.

He spoke to me across the threshold, looking at me as if he were a manager reviewing accounts with a temporary janitor.

The sedative hadn't completely worn off. I leaned against the headboard, my head feeling like it was submerged in water. My mouth was dry, and my limbs felt numb.

"Julian, your mother is sending me to a sanitarium."

"I know."

"You know?"

"Dr. Miller showed me the preliminary diagnosis. Mom called me too." He looked down at his phone, his thumb scrolling across the screen. "She said you were shouting into thin air last night about clearing the field. You really do need some rest."

"This is a setup by your mother and Dr. Miller. The diagnosis is fake—"

"Look," he said without looking up, "there you go again. Always thinking everyone is out to harm you. That’s exactly what the doctor meant by paranoid—"

"Julian."

He finally looked up. Not at me, but at the wall clock above the door.

"You have five minutes. I have a meeting after this."

"I want to ask you one thing. My father’s car accident—"

"It was an accident. That was the police conclusion."

"Your mother was negotiating a patent acquisition with my father at the time. My father refused. The very next day, his car flipped on the highway."

"A coincidence."

"And your mother acquired the exclusive license to that patent seven days after he died. Another coincidence?"

He flipped his phone face down on his hand.

"What are you trying to say, Elena?"

"I want to go into the underground vault. My father's original research documents are locked inside. If those documents prove the patent belongs to my father—"

"The vault is none of your concern."

"None of my concern? That's my father’s legacy—"

"Your father is dead. The law decides who owns the property, not you."

His phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID and answered it.

"Yeah. Send me the Q3 financial reports... Yes, before 3 PM today..."

He walked out of the room as he spoke, pausing briefly at the door.

"Cooperate with the treatment. Just rest up at the sanitarium."

He didn't even hang up before disappearing down the hallway.

I could hear his voice fading into the distance.

"...Right, the maintenance contract for the encryption system needs to be renewed this year..."

The encryption system.

The core technology running the entire financial trading platform of Vance Enterprises.

My father wrote it.

Julian used my father’s technology to build his multi-billion-dollar empire, and then dismissed my father’s daughter in under five minutes.

The door was left slightly ajar. From the hallway, the voices of two other people drifted in.

Victoria and Marcus.

They were standing at the corner of the corridor. They probably thought I couldn't hear them through the heavy door.

But sedatives make you quiet, and quiet people have exceptional hearing.

"Marcus, is everything set up at Greenwood Sanitarium?"

"Director Hayes confirmed it. Private room, no visitors allowed. The staff are all our people."

"How long after the transfer can we file the insurance claim?"

"Standard procedure requires six months after diagnosis. But Director Hayes mentioned... if an unexpected incident occurs during her stay, like sudden cardiac arrest, the insurance company will process it as accidental death. The payout triples."

A heavy silence fell for two seconds.

"An unexpected incident," Victoria repeated slowly.

"Director Hayes has experience with this. He's handled two similar cases before. The families were highly satisfied. The death certificates stated an adverse drug reaction, and the coroner—"

"Enough. I don't need to hear the details."

Victoria’s voice turned sweet and gentle again.

"Her father’s life insurance policy is worth fifty million. With the triple accidental death payout, that's one hundred and fifty million. Plus the two patent licenses registered under her name..."

"Mrs. Vance, what about her dowry?"

"The most valuable part of her dowry is the thirty-four percent share in her father’s tech company. If she is no longer with us, the shares automatically transfer to her spouse—to Julian."

"The timeline?"

"The transfer is at eleven tonight. Give it two weeks... then let Director Hayes handle the rest."

Their footsteps faded away.

The faint scent of lavender hand cream lingered in the air for a long time.

I sat on the bed, my fingers tightly gripping the bedsheets.

The drug was wearing off. Sensation was returning to my fingertips.

Two weeks.

She had given me exactly two weeks to live.

The number on my heart-rate tracker read a steady 72.

But that wasn't my real heart rate.

I had spent three years learning one thing—how to control my heart rate. Every pulse captured by the tracker was modulated by a microchip embedded beneath my skin.

The chip was designed by my father. The backdoor to the entire communication system—he had kept it secret before he died.

The signal was already on its way.

But I didn't know if they had received it yet.

Richard Cole's voice floated up from downstairs. He was on the phone.

"Yes, the trust modification documents are ready. Once she is committed and diagnosed, we will proceed with the conservator's signature... What? No, her signature isn't required. A legally incapacitated individual's rights are fully managed by the conservator."

A pause.

"Don't worry. I’ve run this process plenty of times."