Chapter 3 - Beneath the Sterling House
The figure shoved a cart into the corridor.
Files exploded across the floor.
Kai moved after him.
Jennie grabbed Kai’s sleeve.
“No.”
He looked at her.
“He wants you to chase him.”
The figure disappeared through the rear door.
Three seconds later, a sharp hiss filled the archive room.
Edward looked up.
“Fire suppression.”
White vapor poured from ceiling vents.
“Out,” Kai ordered.
The archive system used an inert-gas suppression system designed to protect documents without water.
Jennie knew enough about confined-space systems to understand the danger.
The oxygen level could drop fast.
They ran into the corridor.
One guard dragged his injured partner with them.
The steel door began closing automatically.
Edward reached it first and forced his shoulder against the edge.
Kai pushed Jennie through.
The door slammed shut behind them.
The corridor alarm screamed.
Jennie bent forward, coughing.
Kai steadied her.
“I’m fine.”
“You are pale.”
“I was pale before dinner.”
“This is not funny.”
“I was not joking.”
Edward checked the injured guard.
“He needs a hospital.”
Jennie knelt beside him.
The man was conscious but bleeding from a cut above his eyebrow.
She checked his pupils and pulse.
“No loss of consciousness?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Nausea?”
“No.”
“Neck pain?”
“No.”
“Good.”
She looked at Edward.
“He still needs imaging if symptoms change.”
The guard glanced at Kai.
“I saw the intruder’s face.”
Everyone went still.
“Who?” Kai asked.
The guard swallowed.
“I don’t know his name.”
“Describe him.”
“Older.”
“Gray hair.”
“Scar by the left ear.”
Jennie’s stomach dropped.
Samuel Voss.
The dead man.
Kai looked toward the sealed archive room.
“Where does that rear exit lead?”
Edward’s face tightened.
“Service tunnel.”
“To where?”
“The old carriage house.”
Kai called security upstairs.
No one answered.
He tried again.
Static.
Edward checked his own phone.
“No signal.”
Jennie looked down the corridor.
“Why would someone trigger the suppression system after escaping?”
“To destroy us without fire,” Kai said.
“Or to keep us from seeing what else was in the room.”
The emergency ventilation engaged.
A green light appeared above the steel door.
Edward checked the oxygen monitor.
“Safe in two minutes.”
Kai looked at Jennie.
“You are not going back in.”
She ignored him.
Two minutes later, she walked in beside him.
The vapor had cleared.
The papers remained scattered.
The scorched fragment was still in Kai’s hand.
Jennie returned to the shelf where it had been found.
Something bothered her.
The fragment had been pushed under the shelving, not dropped in plain sight.
Her father had driven trucks for a living.
He had also fixed everything in their house himself.
He believed no hiding place was useful unless it looked accidental.
Jennie ran her fingers beneath the bottom shelf.
Metal touched her glove.
A magnet.
She pulled.
A small key came free.
A blue plastic tag hung from it.
Number 418.
Kai stared.
“What is that?”
“I don’t know.”
Edward leaned closer.
“It looks like a station locker key.”
Jennie turned the tag over.
Someone had scratched two letters into the back.
R.H.
Rosie Hart.
Her mother.
Jennie’s throat closed.
“My father left this for her.”
Kai looked toward the ruined folder.
“Then he expected something to happen to him.”
Jennie slipped the key into her pocket.
A new sound came from the security terminal.
The power had returned.
Edward walked to the monitor.
“What now?” Kai asked.
Edward opened the restored camera feed.
His face became blank.
The archive camera showed the room ten minutes earlier.
Samuel Voss entered alone.
He opened Thomas Hart’s box.
He poured liquid over the documents.
Then someone else entered behind him.
A woman in a silver silk gown.
Jennie stopped breathing.
Helena Sterling stood on the screen.
Kai’s mother handed the dead man a lighter.
Kai watched the security footage three times.
On the fourth viewing, he turned the screen off.
No one spoke.
Jennie had expected anger from him.
She had expected denial.
She had expected him to smash the monitor or order every gate sealed.
Instead, Kai became frighteningly calm.
“Where is my mother?”
Edward checked the house-tracking system.
“Her phone is still in the east sitting room.”
“Her phone is not my mother.”
Edward called upstairs security.
A guard answered this time.
Helena Sterling was gone.
Her driver had taken her through the north gate nine minutes earlier.
The log listed the destination as her Chicago residence.
Kai looked at the scorched paper.
Jennie could see the calculation happening behind his eyes.
His mother had not simply known about the hidden files.
She had actively tried to destroy evidence relating to his fertility and Jennie’s father.
“Kai.”
He did not answer.
“Kai, look at me.”
He did.
“If you chase her tonight while you are angry, she will prepare a story before you arrive.”
“I am not angry.”
“That is worse.”
His mouth tightened.
Edward stepped between them verbally before the silence could sharpen.
“I can freeze the household access logs and copy the footage offsite.”
“Do it,” Kai said.
“And do not tell Graham.”
Jennie looked at him.
“You think Graham is involved.”
“I think anyone who has touched my medical files is involved until proven otherwise.”
“That includes Edward.”
Edward’s face flickered.
Kai looked at him.
Jennie did not apologize.
Edward had found her brooch.
Edward had traced her.
Edward had helped arrange the marriage.
And Edward had known her father worked for Sterling before she did.
“You are right,” Edward said quietly.
Kai raised an eyebrow.
Edward continued.
“You should suspect me too.”
Jennie studied him.
“Did you know my father?”
Edward looked toward Kai.
That was answer enough.
Jennie felt anger rise.
“Stop looking at him before you answer me.”
Edward exhaled.
“Yes.”
The word landed harder than the footage of Helena.
“How?”
“He delivered secure materials for Sterling Biomedical Logistics.”
“You knew him personally?”
“Yes.”
“How personally?”
Edward’s eyes lowered.
“He saved my life.”
Jennie stared.
Kai looked surprised too.
Edward walked to the end of the archive room and picked up an overturned chair.
His hands were steady until he set it upright.
Then Jennie saw a slight tremor.
“Seventeen years ago, I was twenty-three and stupid,” Edward said.
“I had just started working for Sterling security.”
“I was assigned to ride with a medical shipment from Wisconsin to Chicago.”
“We hit black ice outside Rockford.”
“The van rolled.”
“The driver was trapped.”
“I was trapped.”
“Your father was in the truck behind us.”
“He stopped before emergency crews arrived.”
“He pulled me through a broken side window.”
Jennie pictured her father’s hands.
Large hands.
Grease always trapped near the nails no matter how hard he scrubbed.
Hands that had taught her how to change a tire and hold a fishing line.
“Why did you never tell me?”
“Because Thomas asked me never to contact his family.”
“Why?”
Edward looked at the empty folder.
“Because by then he was already afraid of Sterling.”
Jennie felt sick again, but this time pregnancy had nothing to do with it.
“What did he know?”
“I do not know everything.”
“That is not good enough.”
“I know.”
“Then start with what you do know.”
Edward sat.
Kai remained standing.
For once, the powerful man at the center of the family looked like the least informed person in the room.
“Thomas began noticing irregular shipments,” Edward said.
“Medical materials moved under executive authorization but never appeared in receiving records.”
“What materials?” Kai asked.
“Hormones.”
“Blood samples.”
“Diagnostic kits.”
“Occasionally frozen reproductive specimens.”
Jennie’s pulse jumped.
“Kai’s?”
“I never saw names.”
“Thomas did.”
Edward looked at Jennie.
“At least once.”
“What happened?”
“He asked me whether an executive medical file could be altered without leaving a trace.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him nothing in a secure system disappears completely.”
“And four years later he died.”
Edward did not correct her.
Kai’s voice was quiet.
“Why was he fired?”
“He opened a sealed transport case without authorization.”
“What was inside?”
Edward’s eyes moved to Kai.
“Your laboratory samples.”
Silence swallowed the room.
Kai looked at him.
“My samples were being transported?”
“Yes.”
“To where?”
“A private fertility clinic in Indiana.”
“I never went to Indiana.”
“I know.”
Jennie’s skin prickled.
“Who authorized the shipment?”
Edward answered with one word.
“Helena.”
Kai turned away.
Jennie watched his shoulders become rigid.
For all his control, this wound had reached somewhere deep.
His mother had raised him after his father died.
She had defended the infertility diagnosis publicly when tabloids speculated about the Sterling succession.
She had arranged specialists.
She had sat beside him during consultations.
And now her name was on a shipment of his reproductive samples to a clinic he had never visited.
Jennie spoke gently.
“Why would she do that?”
Kai’s answer was flat.
“We are going to ask her.”
The drive into Chicago took forty minutes.
Kai insisted Jennie remain at the estate.
Jennie ignored him and got into the SUV before he could finish the order.
Edward sat in front.
Two security vehicles followed.
Helena’s Gold Coast residence occupied three floors overlooking Lake Michigan.
The doorman went pale when Kai entered after three in the morning.
“Mrs. Sterling is not receiving guests.”
“I am not a guest.”
The private elevator opened with Kai’s biometric code.
Helena was waiting in the drawing room.
She had changed out of the silver gown.
She wore a white robe and held a cup of tea as though she had expected them.
Her calm infuriated Jennie more than guilt would have.
Kai placed the scorched paper on the coffee table.
Helena did not look at it.
“You should not have brought her.”
Jennie answered before Kai could.
“I am standing right here.”
Helena sipped her tea.
“That has always been the problem.”
Kai’s eyes hardened.
“Did you burn Thomas Hart’s records tonight?”
Helena looked at her son.
“Yes.”
Jennie had expected denial.
The confession stunned her.
Kai’s expression barely changed.
“Why?”
“To protect you.”
“From what?”
“From a dead man’s obsession.”
Jennie stepped forward.
“My father was not obsessed.”
Helena looked at her.
“Your father was a thief.”
Jennie’s hands curled.
“He stole confidential medical materials.”
“He was fired for it.”
“He later attempted to extort this family.”
“That is a lie.”
Helena’s eyes were ice.
“You know very little about your father’s final years.”
Jennie felt the statement find its target.
Four years ago, Thomas had become secretive.
He took late calls outside.
He drove routes he never described.
He told Jennie not to open certain mail.
She had blamed debt and shame.
Now she wondered what else he had been carrying.
Kai pointed to the paper.
May you like
“Explain the reproductive suppression protocol.”
The person who had ordered Kai's suppression was not a doctor hiding in a clinic, but someone seated inside his own family.
