Chapter 15: The Connection
486 words
"Corporate homicide?" The words tasted like ash in Sarah's mouth. The flickering fluorescent light of the office buzzed, sounding like a fly trapped in her ear.
Marcus flipped the dusty binder open to a page marked with aggressive red ink. He tapped a grainy photo of a lab rat's heart. It looked mangled. Twisted.
"The drug was codenamed Apex-7," Marcus said, his voice stripped of its earlier sarcasm. "It was supposed to be the ultimate metabolic booster. Burn fat, build muscle, zero effort. Blackwood stock would have tripled."
He pushed the binder toward her. "But in the Phase 2 trials, sixty percent of the subjects carrying offspring resulted in defects. Specifically, Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome."
Sarah's hands trembled as she touched the page. The room felt suddenly freezing.
"Three years ago," she whispered, her throat tight. "Julian brought home these... supplements. He said I looked tired. He said they were a proprietary blend of vitamins from the lab, just for family."
Marcus froze. He looked at her, his dark eyes narrowing into slits. "Did he watch you take them?"
"Every morning," Sarah said, a wave of nausea rolling over her. "He would set one by my coffee cup. He wouldn't leave for work until he saw me swallow it. He called it 'investing in our future.'"
Marcus let out a low, bitter curse and ran a hand through his messy hair. "He wasn't investing, Sarah. He was testing. You were a Phase 3 trial of one."
The realization hit her harder than the eviction notice. Harder than the divorce papers. Julian hadn't just accidentally hurt her; he had used her body as a petri dish. And when the experiment failed—when their son paid the price for his ambition—he hadn't grieved.
He had initiated a cleanup protocol.
"He knew," Sarah choked out, tears finally spilling over, hot and angry. "When I told him about the diagnosis... he didn't look surprised. He looked annoyed. Like he'd found a dent in his car."
"Liability management," Marcus growled, pacing the small room like a caged tiger. "If that baby is born and the defect is traced back to Apex-7, the FDA shuts him down. He goes to prison. The company tanks."
He stopped in front of her, planting his hands on the desk. The shark-like grin was gone, replaced by a grim intensity.
"He didn't divorce you because he fell out of love, Sarah. And he didn't cut you off because he's cheap."
Sarah stood up. Her legs were shaky, but her spine instantly straightened. The sadness inside her calcified into something hard and sharp. A weapon.
"He cut me off to starve us out," she finished for him. She looked at the photo of the damaged heart again, then raised her eyes to Marcus.
"He didn't leave me because I was broken," she said, her voice dropping to a terrifying whisper. "He left me because I'm the evidence."
End of Chapter 15
