Chapter 4 - The Phantom Empire
With Julian and Nora dragged away in police custody, the fall of his empire was swift and brutal.
By the next afternoon, Vance Medical Technologies’ stock had halted trading. The board of directors held an emergency meeting and voted unanimously to remove Julian from all corporate titles, install me as the Chief Executive Officer, and rename the firm back to its original title: Thorne Medical Research Institute.
However, winning the corporate war was only half the battle.
Julian’s dirty legacy ran deeper than anyone had realized. Sitting in my father’s old corner office—which Julian had redecorated in ugly, ostentatious gold and leather—I looked through the classified files that Marcus and our forensic accountants had managed to decrypt from Julian’s private drive.
"Iris," Marcus said, laying out three real estate deeds on my desk. "We found where the rest of the missing money went."
"Where?" I asked, looking up from my father's old journal.
"It wasn't just Nora," Marcus said gravely. "Julian was paying off a shadow syndicate known as Vanguard Capital—a group of corrupt medical regulators and black-market pharmaceutical brokers based in South America. They were preparing to launch an illegal, untested version of your Aegis protocol on the black market."
"They were going to use human subjects without trial approvals," I whispered, the horror sinking in. "They were going to turn my father's life work into a weapon for rich men seeking black-market longevity treatments."
"And the lead investor in Vanguard Capital," Marcus added, "is Julian’s father, Richard Vance."
I froze.
Richard Vance. The quiet, powerful patriarch who had stayed in the background throughout my entire marriage. The man who had arranged my marriage to Julian ten years ago under the guise of uniting two noble medical families.
"Richard Vance was the one who funded the Zurich facility," I realized, the pieces of the puzzle suddenly locking into place. "Julian wasn't the mastermind. He was just his father's blunt instrument."
At that exact moment, my desk phone rang.
I pressed the speaker button. "Dr. Thorne."
"Iris, my dear," a raspy, ice-cold voice answered through the speaker. It was Richard Vance. "You played a very impressive game in court yesterday. I must admit, I underestimated Arthur Thorne’s daughter."
"Your son is in a federal holding cell, Richard," I said, my voice steady and unyielding. "And his bail was set at fifty million dollars. You can't buy him out of this."
Richard chuckled—a low, sinister sound that chilled the room.
"I don't care about Julian," Richard said plainly. "He was weak. He allowed his foolish emotions and his cheap mistress to destroy a decade of planning. But you, Iris... you have the master synthesis code for the Aegis protocol locked in your brain."
"And you will never touch it," I replied.
"We shall see," Richard murmured. "I hold the original deeds to your father’s estate in Geneva—the house where your late mother's personal archives and unpublished journals are kept. If you want those records returned to you unburned, you will meet me at the private airstrip outside the city at midnight. Alone."
The line went dead.
Marcus grabbed my arm. "Iris, no! It’s a trap. Richard Vance has private security teams that operate completely outside the law. You can't go there!"
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I looked down at the scars on my wrist. I touched the smooth, pale skin.
"For ten years, Marcus, I let men like Richard and Julian dictate where I walked, how I thought, and when I bled," I said softly, looking up into Marcus's eyes with an iron glare. "I am not running anymore. Call the SWAT tactical unit. We are ending this tonight."
