Chapter 4 - The Research and the Threat
The kitchen seemed to shrink around us. The roasted garlic smell suddenly felt suffocating.
“Disappears?” I repeated, the word tasting like iron on my tongue. “Eliam, what kind of sick joke are you playing? What are you and Marcus mixed up in?”
Eliam turned around, locked the kitchen door, and walked back to the island. He pulled a heavy, encrypted flash drive from his pocket and tossed it onto the wooden counter between us.
“It’s no joke,” he said grimly. “Eight months ago, a brilliant cellular biologist named Dr. Clara Vance—no relation to our company name, just a coincidence—came to Marcus and me with a breakthrough treatment for neurodegenerative cellular decay. It’s essentially a regenerative peptide that reverses early-stage Alzheimer’s damage.”
I stared at him, bewildered. “That’s... that’s incredible. Why would anyone want to make that disappear?”
“Because,” Eliam said bitterly, “pharmaceutical giants spend tens of billions of dollars treating chronic cognitive decline over decades with expensive, palliative drugs. A permanent, single-course cure destroys their entire recurring-revenue business model overnight. Big Pharma doesn't want cures, Maya. They want lifetime customers.”
He gripped the edge of the counter, his knuckles turning white.
“Three weeks ago, Dr. Clara Vance’s primary lab in Boston was broken into. Her physical hard drives were stolen, and her lead assistant was hospitalized in a ‘botched robbery.’ That’s when Marcus and I realized we were dealing with professional corporate espionage. If we filed public patents in our own names, or registered our LLC through standard residential paperwork, they would have targeted our home. They would have targeted you.”
The room spun slightly.
All the anger, the betrayal, and the suspicion suddenly collided with a chilling, paralyzing wave of fear.
“You lied to me... to protect me?” I whispered.
“Every single day I pretended to go to my old job, every time I sat in that office building with Marcus reviewing security protocols and patent encryption, I was terrified that someone would figure out where I lived,” Eliam said, his voice breaking as a tear finally spilled over his eyelashes. “I kept you in the dark because I couldn't bear the thought of putting a target on your back.”
I looked at my husband. The man I had accused of having an affair, of losing his job, of abandoning our marriage—was actually fighting a silent war against corporate predators to protect a medical breakthrough that could save millions of lives.
And my brother Marcus was standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the trenches with him.
“Why didn't you just tell me, Eliam?” I asked softly, my voice trembling as I reached across the counter and placed my hand over his shaking fingers. “I’m your wife. I’m an actuary. I understand risk. We could have faced it together.”
“Because I was coward enough to think keeping secrets was safer than sharing the danger,” he admitted, turning his hand over and gripping mine tightly.
Just then, my phone on the console table buzzed violently.
It wasn't a standard text notification. It was an emergency broadcast alert combined with an unknown incoming call from an unlisted number.
I picked it up. My hand shook as I pressed accept and put it to my ear.
“Hello?”
A heavy, distorted voice spoke through the speaker, devoid of any human warmth, sounding like it was processed through a digital modulator.
“Mr. and Mrs. Hayes. Enjoy your garlic dinner. It would be a shame if your lovely home on Maple Street experienced an accidental gas leak tonight. Tell Marcus Vance to hand over the encryption keys to Vance Ventures by midnight, or the next research leak won't be digital. It will be personal.”
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Click.
The line went dead.
