Chapter 4 - The Ghost of St. Jude
The revelation chilled the warm air of the hallway.
“Vance Bio-Assets,” I repeated, my voice tight. “Arthur Vance didn't just steal my genetic material, Marcus. He’s been running an illegal genetic program for a decade.”
“It’s worse than that, Nathan,” Marcus said, scrolling through court dockets and sealed property deeds. “I ran a cross-reference on the security code from Dr. Thorne’s letter—8841-Alpha-Carter. It’s not just a password for a file server. It’s a physical vault address.”
“Where?”
“Underneath the abandoned St. Jude facility in Upper Manhattan,” Marcus answered. “The property is slated for demolition in forty-eight hours under an emergency city clearance order signed by—you guessed it—Deputy Director Julian Vance.”
The strategy was brutally obvious.
Arthur Vance had created Leo using my preserved sample, likely to establish a fraudulent biological heir who could claim a massive share of the Carter Logistics Trust—a thirty-billion-dollar fund that specifies bloodline inheritance in its charter. But when Dr. Thorne smuggled the baby out and gave him to a local contact (who was likely intercepted or forced to dump the child near my estate), the Vance brothers realized the entire conspiracy was about to unravel.
Now, they were rushing to demolish the facility, incinerate the physical records, and erase every trace of their black-market fertility network.
“We need those files before the demolition crew arrives, Marcus,” I said, stepping toward the stairs. “If we don't have the original lab logs, Julian Vance will use his government position to claim Leo is an unidentified orphan and tie us up in federal custody battles for years.”
“Nathan, you can’t go to Upper Manhattan yourself,” Marcus warned. “Those men who showed up tonight were armed mercenaries. If you step onto that property, they won't hesitate to frame you for trespassing or worse.”
“I’m not going alone,” I said.
I walked down to the security command center in the basement.
Ronin Vance was standing before a bank of high-definition monitors showing live thermal feeds of our perimeter. He looked up as I entered.
“Boss,” Ronin said in his sharp British accent. “Perimeter is secure. No movement within two miles of the gates.”
“Ronin,” I said, looking at the tactical map of Manhattan glowing on the central screen. “Pack the gear. We’re taking the helicopter to the Manhattan helipad in thirty minutes.”
“Where are we dropping, sir?”
“The basement of St. Jude Hospital,” I said. “We’re going to dig up a ghost.”
Before we left, I went back up to the third floor nursery.
Mrs. Harris was sitting by the fire, knitting a small woolen hat. Lily was fast asleep in her plush chair, her breathing deep and peaceful, one small hand resting over the edge of the chair, touching the frame of Leo’s crib.
In the crib, Leo opened his eyes as I approached. He didn't cry. He just stared up at me with those piercing gray-blue eyes—the same eyes I had looked at in the mirror every morning of my life.
I reached into my pocket, pulling out a small silver signet ring that my father had given me when I graduated from college. I laid it gently beside the baby’s pillow.
“I’m going to clean this mess up, Leo,” I whispered to my son. “When I come back, no one in this world will ever be able to threaten you again.”
I turned to Mrs. Harris. “If anyone comes to those gates without my personal voice authorization code, Ronin’s team has orders to use full defensive force.”
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“Go, Nathan,” Mrs. Harris said, looking at me with fierce, maternal pride. “We’ll keep the children safe. Bring back the truth.”
Five minutes later, the twin turbines of my Sikorsky S-76 helicopter roared to life on the estate’s rear pad, cutting through the heavy storm clouds as we lifted off into the dark sky over Connecticut.
