Chapter 14 - THE PRISON CONFESSION
Before our flight to Zurich, Detective Grant arranged a mandatory deposition inside the maximum-security wing at the state penitentiary.
Daniel sat across from us behind a thick partition of reinforced glass.
He looked older, his hair completely silver, his orange jumpsuit loose around his hollow chest.
When he saw Lily sitting beside me, a faint, pathetic smile touched his lips.
“Lilybug...” Daniel murmured into the telephone receiver.
Lily did not pick up her phone.
She leaned toward the glass, pointing directly at the blue folder I laid flat against the metal counter.
I picked up the receiver.
“Look at page forty-four, Daniel,” I said flatly.
Daniel glanced at the document pressed against the glass.
When his eyes landed on the code name PROJECT MIRROR and the photograph of Maya, his smile shattered instantly.
He scrambled backward in his chair, dropping his receiver onto the shelf.
“Pick up the phone, Daniel,” Grant ordered from behind us.
With shaking hands, Daniel lifted the receiver back to his ear.
“Who gave you that?” Daniel stammered, sweat breaking out across his forehead.
“Your father left a secondary vault in Zurich,” I told him.
“We know about the compound.”
“We know about the prenatal injections.”
“And we know Maya is alive.”
Daniel squeezed his eyes shut, letting out a raspy, shuddering breath.
“My father built the protocol, Emily,” Daniel confessed in a broken whisper.
“Apex offered him thirty million dollars to prove the cellular decay could be controlled.”
“When you became pregnant with twins, he realized it was the perfect biological match—one subject with the antidote, one subject as the control.”
“You knew?” Lily spoke into the secondary microphone, her voice cold as iron.
“You knew I was dying because you withheld the antidote?”
“I tried to save you, Lily!” Daniel wept, pressing his hands against the glass.
“I took those doses from the hospital to keep Maya alive in Zurich!”
“Vance threatened to expose my father’s notes if I didn't supply the Swiss facility!”
“You chose which daughter deserved to breathe,” I said, every word dropping like a stone.
“You turned our family into a slaughterhouse.”
“Where is Julian Vance right now, Daniel?” Grant demanded.
Daniel looked at Lily through his tears.
“He’s at the estate in St. Moritz,” Daniel whispered.
“He’s preparing to shut down the clinic before the federal warrants clear.”
“Shut it down?” I asked, my heart stopping.
“What does shutting it down mean, Daniel?!”
May you like
Daniel looked away, unable to meet my eyes.
“It means he stops the infusions.”
