Chapter 4 - The Ghost of Lake Geneva
The room dropped into an absolute, suffocating void where only the crackle of the burning pine logs remained.
The veins in my forearms tightened like steel cables as the foundation of my entire past began to fracture before my eyes.
“Who was the poisoner, Clara?” I demanded, each word hitting the air like a hammer striking an anvil.
“Give me a name, and I will have their skin stripped from their bones before the sun crests the mountains.”
Clara picked up the silver cassette tape, sliding it into the portable player on the table and pressing the play button.
The speaker crackled with static, followed by the soft, weeping voice of my late wife, Vivienne, recorded three weeks before her funeral.
”Roman, my beloved protector… if you are listening to this tape, it means I could not fight the weakness in my chest any longer,” Vivienne’s voice echoed through the firelit room.
”Do not blame your guards, do not blame your soldiers; the viper is sleeping inside our medical wing.”
”Julian Sterling’s family did not lose their pharmaceutical wealth in Europe; they are the governing shadow board of the Moreau Syndicate.”
”Julian has been administering digitalis into my daily vitamin infusions to ensure I never uncover the trust fraud.”
”And now, I fear he has begun testing the synthetic marrow suppressants on our precious babies.”
”Find my sister Clara in the high mountains of Valais… she carries our blood, she carries the antidote, and she will save our children.”
The tape clicked off, leaving behind a silence so deafening it sounded like the roar of a jet engine.
My vision flashed red with a blinding, homicidal fury that threatened to shatter every ounce of human restraint left in my body.
Julian Sterling.
The man who had stood beside me as my best man at our wedding.
The physician who had delivered Caleb and Maya into this world with his own hands.
The counselor who had wept with me over Vivienne’s coffin while holding my children in his arms.
He had not been trying to cure my twins’ terminal marrow failure over the past six months; he had been manufacturing it.
He was deliberately suffocating their white blood cells with experimental synthetic compounds to wipe out the last legitimate heirs to the Moreau-Sterling billions.
I stood up slowly, the air around me radiating the terrifying, lethal chill of an underworld god preparing for war.
“Matteo,” I spoke into my encrypted collar communicator, my voice devoid of all human mercy.
“Place Dr. Julian Sterling under total, silent surveillance in the surgical suite.”
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“Do not allow him to touch a single vial of medication, and prepare the subterranean holding cells.”
“Tonight, the doctor is going to learn how it feels to have his blood drained in the dark.”
