Chapter 2 - SEVEN MINUTES OF DARKNESS
Emergency lights turned the hospital corridor blood-red.
Vivienne heard shoes pounding outside.
A security guard shouted.
Something metallic crashed against the wall.
Evelyn moved instantly.
She did not freeze like the mother Vivienne remembered from childhood.
She pulled a compact device from her handbag and pressed it.
A reinforced plate slid across the hospital room door.
Vivienne stared.
"Who are you?"
Evelyn didn't answer.
She moved to the window.
"Stay in bed."
"That's becoming a very unpopular instruction."
Evelyn almost smiled.
Almost.
Then a phone buzzed.
She checked it.
"Power failure isn't hospital-wide."
"What does that mean?"
"This floor only."
Vivienne's skin prickled.
"Adrian?"
"He doesn't have that reach from police custody."
"Sloane?"
"Definitely not."
"Then who?"
"That's what worries me."
Seven minutes later, power returned.
The hospital administrator called it a systems malfunction.
Evelyn called it a test.
Someone had wanted to know how quickly her security team responded.
Someone knew Vivienne was alive.
By sunrise, the story had broken across every major news network.
BILLIONAIRE MEDICAL HEIRESS HOSPITALIZED.
HUSBAND DETAINED.
FAMILY POISONING ALLEGED.
Then came the photograph.
Adrian being led from the Hartwell estate in handcuffs.
His hair disheveled.
Bloodless face.
Expensive shirt wrinkled.
He somehow still looked sympathetic.
By eight that morning, his publicist had released a statement.
Vivienne read it twice.
Then a third time.
Adrian claimed he had discovered Vivienne unconscious after a severe allergic reaction.
He claimed he tried to save her.
He denied removing her medication.
He denied poisoning her.
And he suggested Sloane had suffered a "mental and emotional break" after years of resentment toward her sister.
Vivienne lowered the phone.
"He's sacrificing her."
Evelyn stood by the window.
"Naturally."
A knock sounded.
Elias Grant entered.
Tall.
Fifty-four.
Gray at the temples.
Perfect navy suit.
He looked exactly as he always had.
Which suddenly made Vivienne suspicious.
She watched him closely.
"Did you try to override the financial freeze?"
Elias stopped.
"No."
"Who did?"
"I don't know."
"You knew the system existed."
"I knew the first two levels existed."
Vivienne's eyes narrowed.
"The third?"
"No."
Evelyn looked at him.
"Charles never told you?"
Elias shook his head.
"He said the third protocol was family only."
Vivienne absorbed that.
"Why is my father's authorization appearing?"
"I've spent three hours trying to answer that."
Elias opened a folder.
"What I've discovered is worse."
He placed several documents before her.
Vivienne read the first page.
An emergency board resolution.
The second.
A voting authorization.
The third.
A medical competency petition.
All prepared before the poisoning.
"Dates," Vivienne whispered.
Elias nodded.
"Adrian's attorneys drafted these six weeks ago."
"So my allergic reaction wasn't desperation."
"No."
"It was scheduled."
"Yes."
Vivienne's hands went cold.
Six weeks.
He had been planning her death before she even discovered the affair.
Elias turned another page.
"There's more."
There was always more.
Adrian's succession petition depended upon a marriage clause granting him temporary voting authority if Vivienne died or became permanently incapacitated.
"That isn't in my trust."
"No."
Vivienne looked up.
"Then what is it?"
"A duplicate."
"Forged?"
"Extremely well."
"Who filed it?"
"Someone inside Hartwell Medical's legal department."
Vivienne leaned back.
The conspiracy widened.
Adrian wasn't just a cheating husband with a greedy mistress.
Someone inside her father's company had helped him prepare a corporate takeover around her death.
"What does the real trust say?"
Elias hesitated.
Vivienne saw it.
"What?"
"We don't have the complete original."
"Excuse me?"
"When Charles died, his private trust vault was transferred."
"Transferred where?"
"No one knows."
Vivienne looked at Evelyn.
Her mother had gone pale.
"You know."
Evelyn turned away.
"Mom."
Evelyn closed her eyes.
"Your father was afraid."
"Of Adrian?"
"Adrian wasn't even important then."
"Then who?"
Evelyn turned back.
"Someone inside Hartwell Medical."
Vivienne waited.
"Your father discovered that company money was being diverted into an off-book research program."
"What program?"
Evelyn's voice lowered.
"Project Meridian."
The name meant nothing to Vivienne.
Yet something about the way Elias reacted told her it should.
He stared at Evelyn.
"You told me Meridian was destroyed."
"I thought it was."
Vivienne looked between them.
"What was Project Meridian?"
Neither answered.
Vivienne's patience snapped.
"My husband fed me peanuts last night."
Her voice shook.
"My sister helped him."
"My dead mother came back."
"My dead father's credentials tried to move eighteen million dollars."
"So someone in this room is going to start telling me the truth."
Evelyn slowly sat.
"Meridian began as a spinal regeneration project."
Vivienne stopped breathing.
Not from allergy this time.
From recognition.
"My spinal injury."
Evelyn nodded.
Vivienne stared at her.
"You're telling me Hartwell Medical was secretly researching spinal regeneration before my accident?"
"Yes."
"How long before?"
"Almost eleven years."
Vivienne's voice became very quiet.
"Why was I never told?"
Evelyn's eyes filled with something worse than guilt.
Fear.
"Because five years ago, when your car went over that embankment..."
She swallowed.
"...you were on your way to meet the doctor who ran Meridian."
May you like
Vivienne stared at her.
And somewhere deep inside her memory, a locked door began to open.
