Chapter 6 - The Blue Saints
“Blue saints.”
Beatrice’s cane struck the floor once.
It was a tiny sound.
Rosie flinched.
Jennie saw it.
“You know what she means.”
Beatrice looked at Rosie.
“No.”
“You reacted.”
“To a sick woman shouting nonsense.”
“Then why are you here at nine in the morning after hiding in Illinois for months?”
Beatrice’s gaze returned to Jennie.
“You think pregnancy made you important.”
“No.”
“I think it made you scared.”
Beatrice’s smile disappeared.
The security team arrived.
To Jennie’s surprise, the facility director came with them.
He looked terrified.
“Mrs. Sterling, is there a problem?”
Jennie pointed at Beatrice.
“I want her removed from my mother’s floor.”
The director hesitated.
Beatrice looked at him.
“You heard her.”
He blinked.
Beatrice turned away.
At the elevator, she paused.
“Jennie.”
Jennie did not answer.
“If you find what Thomas hid, do not assume the person standing beside you wants the truth to survive.”
The elevator doors closed.
Jennie’s pulse pounded.
The warning was designed to poison trust.
It worked anyway.
Twenty minutes later, Kai arrived.
Jennie had not called him.
Edward had.
Kai entered Rosie’s room with two private guards outside.
His first question was not about Beatrice.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Your mother?”
“Terrified, but physically fine.”
Kai looked at Rosie asleep in the chair.
Then at Jennie.
“Why was my grandmother here?”
“She offered to move my mother to Vermont.”
His expression hardened.
“In exchange for?”
“Peace.”
“What does that mean?”
“She did not say.”
Jennie held up the key.
“My mother remembered something.”
“Blue saints.”
Kai frowned.
“She said my father kept a red book with the blue saints.”
Edward entered behind him.
“Blue Saints could be a place.”
Jennie looked at him.
“My father was not religious.”
“He drove medical routes.”
Edward searched his tablet.
“Sterling Biomedical used a storage depot near Saint Blue?”
He stopped.
“No.”
Kai looked at Jennie.
“Did your family belong to a church?”
“Saint Michael’s when I was a child.”
“Any blue stained glass?”
Jennie thought.
Then she remembered.
The old hospital chapel where Rosie had volunteered after Thomas died had an entire wall of blue stained-glass saints.
The chapel had closed six years ago when the hospital built a new wing.
The original building still stood two blocks from Jennie’s current hospital.
“Blue saints,” Jennie whispered.
Kai understood.
They left Rosie under additional private security, though Jennie insisted the guards report to an outside firm rather than Sterling.
Kai did not argue.
The old chapel had been converted into records storage.
A maintenance supervisor recognized Jennie’s hospital badge and let them into the basement after Edward produced a legal access letter.
Rows of abandoned lockers lined one wall.
Jennie’s heart accelerated.
She looked at the blue tag.
418.
Locker 418 stood near the end.
The key fit.
Jennie turned it.
Nothing happened.
She tried again.
The lock clicked, but the door would not open.
Kai pulled the metal edge.
It was stuck.
Edward found a flat tool from maintenance.
The door finally gave with a groan.
Inside sat a red leather ledger.
Jennie stopped breathing.
Her father’s initials were stamped into the lower corner.
T.H.
She touched the cover.
For four years, she had believed her father died buried under shame and debt.
Now his handwriting might be the only thing capable of explaining why.
She opened the first page.
Dates.
Truck numbers.
Shipment codes.
Names.
Some entries were underlined in red.
KAI STERLING appeared dozens of times.
So did DR. MARCUS VALE.
Jennie knew the name.
Marcus Vale was the reproductive endocrinologist who had signed Kai’s first and sixth infertility reports.
“That is impossible,” Kai said.
“What?”
“Vale told me he had never handled my case directly until last year.”
Jennie turned pages.
Thomas had written dosage amounts beside some shipment dates.
A recurring code appeared every four weeks.
AX-17.
At the bottom of one page, Thomas had written a sentence in block letters.
THE BOY IS NOT INFERTILE.
HE IS BEING MADE INFERTILE.
Kai read it over her shoulder.
His breathing changed.
Jennie turned another page.
There was a list of six clinic names.
They matched the six specialists in Kai’s file.
Beside each name, Thomas had written PAID THROUGH M.S.
Malcolm Sterling.
Edward whispered.
“My God.”
Jennie kept turning pages.
Near the back was an envelope taped to the paper.
Her name was written on it.
JENNIE.
Her hands shook as she opened it.
Inside was a small flash drive and a note.
IF YOU ARE READING THIS, I DID NOT GET TO KAI.
DO NOT TRUST THE REPORTS.
DO NOT TRUST THE DEBT.
AND DO NOT TRUST THE MAN WHO SAYS HE SAVED ME ON ROUTE 94.
Jennie read the final sentence twice.
Then slowly turned toward Edward.
Edward had told her Thomas saved his life on a highway near Rockford.
Route 94 ran directly through that corridor.
Kai saw the same connection.
“Edward.”
Edward’s face went white.
“I can explain.”
Jennie stepped back from him.
Her father’s warning shook in her hand.
“Then explain why a dead man told me not to trust you.”
Edward did not reach for the note.
He stared at Thomas Hart’s handwriting from several feet away.
Kai moved between Edward and Jennie without appearing to.
It was subtle.
Jennie noticed.
Edward noticed too.
“I lied about Route 94,” Edward said.
Jennie’s anger rose instantly.
“What part?”
“Thomas did save my life after the crash.”
“Then why would he warn me about you?”
“Because I later betrayed him.”
The words hit the storage room like a dropped weight.
Kai’s expression hardened.
“How?”
Edward looked at him.
“I reported him.”
Jennie stared.
“You reported my father for opening your medical shipment.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I was Sterling security.”
“That is not an answer.”
“I was twenty-seven by then.”
“I had a career.”
“A mortgage.”
“A mother I was supporting.”
“And Malcolm told me Thomas had stolen executive biological material for blackmail.”
Jennie’s voice shook.
“So you chose your job.”
“Yes.”
“My father saved your life, and you chose your job.”
“Yes.”
Edward did not defend himself.
That somehow made it worse.
“What happened after you reported him?”
“He was fired.”
“And then?”
“He came to me two days later.”
“What did he say?”
“He said the samples proved Kai’s diagnosis was false.”
Kai’s face went still.
“You knew?”
“No.”
“Not then.”
“I thought Thomas was desperate.”
“He showed me shipment logs.”
“I still did not believe him.”
“Then he showed me a laboratory memo.”
Jennie gripped the ledger.
“What memo?”
“A baseline analysis from when you were twenty-two.”
Edward looked at Kai.
“It showed normal reproductive markers before the suppression protocol began.”
Kai’s eyes became cold.
“And you said nothing.”
“I told your father.”
Silence.
Kai’s face changed.
“My father was alive then.”
“Yes.”
“What did he do?”
Edward looked away.
“He told me to forget what I had seen.”
Kai did not move.
Jennie understood the depth of that wound.
The directive Helena produced had supposedly come from Kai’s father.
Now Edward was saying his father knowingly protected the scheme.
“Did Thomas know you went to him?” Jennie asked.
“Yes.”
“That is why he stopped trusting me.”
“And the day before his crash?”
“He called me.”
“What did he want?”
“To meet Kai directly.”
Kai’s voice was barely audible.
“Did you arrange it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Your father forbade me.”
“My father was already sick by then.”
“He was still chairman.”
Kai’s jaw tightened.
“You could have called me.”
“I know.”
“You could have sent the file.”
“I know.”
“You could have done anything.”
Edward met his eyes.
“I know.”
Jennie wanted to hate Edward completely.
It would have been easier.
But guilt had lived on his face long before this morning.
He had paid attention to Rosie’s photograph.
He had traced the brooch.
He had placed evidence in Kai’s reach without explaining why.
Perhaps he had spent years trying to repair one cowardly decision without admitting it.
Jennie held up the flash drive.
“What is on this?”
Edward shook his head.
“I do not know.”
“Do you expect me to believe that?”
“Yes.”
Kai took out his phone.
“We do not plug it into any Sterling device.”
Jennie nodded.
They drove to an independent digital-forensics company Kai had used during corporate litigation.
The technician isolated the flash drive on an offline workstation.
There were four files.
One was a scanned laboratory memo.
One was a spreadsheet of payments.
One was an audio recording.
The fourth was encrypted.
The laboratory memo matched Edward’s description.
It was dated twelve years earlier.
Kai’s baseline hormone profile was normal.
A separate note stated that no genetic cause of infertility had been detected.
Two months later, Kai’s official first specialist report declared severe non-obstructive azoospermia likely caused by congenital testicular failure.
Jennie placed the documents side by side.
“These do not match.”
Kai stared at them.
“The same clinic?”
“Yes.”
“The same date?”
“Within eight weeks.”
“Could my condition have changed that fast?”
“Not in the way these reports claim without a major medical event.”
“I had none.”
Jennie pointed to the medication code in Thomas’s ledger.
“AX-17 began between the two tests.”
The payment spreadsheet showed transfers from Sterling Heritage Foundation to six consulting companies.
Each company connected to one of Kai’s specialists.
The amounts ranged from eighty thousand to four hundred thousand dollars.
The payments were labeled research support.
Most arrived within ten days of a new infertility report.
Kai sat very still.
“Six doctors.”
Jennie heard the betrayal in his voice.
“Six.”
“Every one of them looked me in the eye.”
“Yes.”
“Every one of them told me there was nothing to be done.”
Jennie did not know what to say.
Kai had built his adult life around a lie people had repeated in white coats.
He had refused relationships because he believed he could never give anyone a child.
He had allowed his family to turn marriage into a contract because he believed the future was already decided.
Jennie reached for his hand.
He looked at her fingers on his.
He did not pull away.
The forensic technician cleared his throat.
“The audio file is ready.”
Thomas’s voice filled the room.
Jennie stopped breathing.
She had not heard her father’s voice in four years.
For one terrible second, the conspiracy disappeared.
She was simply his daughter again.
Thomas sounded tired.
“If anything happens to me, this recording goes with the ledger.”
A second voice answered.
Dr. Marcus Vale.
“You are making a mistake.”
“You have been falsifying his tests.”
“I did what I was instructed to do.”
May you like
“By Malcolm?”
And when the flash drive finally spoke, Edward would have to admit the lie he had carried for years.
