Chapter 4 - Echoes of the Past
With the board meeting secured and the takeover of Aegis Biotech initiated, the real work began. I spent the next forty-eight hours locked in my office at Apex, working alongside federal investigators. The depth of Evelyn’s depravity was staggering.
We discovered that seven years ago, Evelyn had taken out a massive, multi-million-dollar key-person insurance policy on my life. Had I died in that crash, she would have received a payout large enough to fund Aegis Biotech’s illegal trials for a decade. When I survived—paralyzed but alive—she shifted to Plan B: humiliate me, throw me out, declare me mentally unfit due to trauma, and seize control of my existing medical patents.
I was interrupted by a knock on my office door. It was Noah, my fourteen-year-old son. He carried a tray with a cup of tea.
"You need to rest, Mom," Noah said gently, setting the tea on my desk. "You've been awake for two days."
I looked at him, my heart swelling with emotion. "I'm fine, Noah. I'm just... making sure they can never hurt us again."
Noah sat in the chair opposite me. "We were never hurt, Mom. Not really. Even when we lived in that tiny apartment, and you were crying in the bathroom because your legs hurt so bad... we had you. You taught us how to fight. But now that we've won... do you think we can finally just be a family again?"
His words pierced through the armor of anger I had worn for seven years. I had been so consumed by revenge, so driven by the need to destroy those who had discarded us, that I had almost forgotten what we were fighting for.
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"Yes, my love," I said, reaching across the desk to squeeze his hand. "We are almost done. Just one more debt to collect, and then we are going home."
At that moment, my assistant buzzed through. "Dr. Sterling, we have a problem. Evelyn Vance has posted bail. And she has vanished."
