Chapter 3: The Secret in the Vault
Eva felt as though she were suffocating. The air in the workshop suddenly tasted like ash.
"You took the money," she repeated, her voice barely a whisper. "You let him buy your silence while I sat in this chair, believing it was just bad luck."
"I had a three-year-old daughter who had just lost her mother," Daniel said, his voice thick with emotion. "I was a broke carpenter up against a billionaire who controlled the police, the media, and the courts. If I fought him, I would have ended up dead in a ditch, and Lily would have been sent to an orphanage. I took the money to keep my daughter safe. But I never spent a dime of it on myself. It’s all in a trust for Lily."
He took a step back, looking defeated. "I came back to this city because Lily kept asking about her mother. She wanted to visit the place we met. I didn't plan on running into you, Eva. I swear."
Eva stared at him, her mind spinning. The pain of her father's betrayal was a gaping wound, but something else Daniel said caught her attention.
Experimental nerve-regeneration drugs.
"Daniel," Eva said, her voice dropping. "If my father’s company was developing nerve-regeneration drugs... why didn't they use them on me? He flew in the best doctors from around the world. He spent tens of millions on my rehabilitation. Why am I still paralyzed?"
Daniel’s face went pale. "I don't know. But Sarah’s notes... she kept a backup of all her research. She hid a digital drive somewhere. I've been looking for it for years, but I could never get past Lancaster's security to find where her old lab files were archived."
"I can get past it," Eva said, a cold, dangerous resolve settling over her. "I am a Lancaster. I have unrestricted biometric access to the family private vault in our home."
"Eva, it's too dangerous," Daniel warned. "If your father or his security chief, Vance, catches you—"
"They won't," Eva interrupted, her jaw set. "My father thinks I am a helpless cripple who does nothing but cry and stare out the window. It's time to use that to my advantage."
That evening, the Lancaster mansion was quiet. Her father was attending a high-profile charity gala in the city center.
Eva wheeled herself down to the basement level. At the end of a reinforced concrete corridor stood the family vault—a state-of-the-art security door requiring a retinal scan and a fingerprint.
She positioned herself in front of the scanner. A thin red laser swept across her eye.
Access Granted.
The heavy steel door hissed open. Inside, the vault was lined with climate-controlled shelves containing historical family documents, rare art, and secure servers.
Eva plugged a blank decryption drive—one she had secretly purchased online—into the main server terminal. Using her personal administrator credentials, she began searching the archived files of Lancaster Biomedical from four years ago.
The progress bar crept forward slowly.
10%... 30%... 50%...
Suddenly, a file directory marked PROJECT PHOENIX caught her eye. She opened it.
Inside were clinical trial reports, patient lists, and chemical formulas. But the most shocking document was a medical report dated just three months ago.
It was her own medical file.
Eva clicked on the most recent entry, signed by her personal physician, Dr. Aris—the man her father paid a million dollars a year to oversee her care.
PATIENT REPORT: EVA LANCASTER Subject continues to receive monthly 'therapy' injections of Compound 44-B. Nerve pathways remain successfully suppressed. Motor function in lower limbs blocked at 95%. Patient remains wheelchair-bound. As long as dosage is maintained, spinal cord regeneration will be permanently inhibited.
Eva’s heart stopped. She couldn't breathe.
Her father wasn't trying to cure her.
He was actively keeping her paralyzed.
The realization hit her like a physical blow, knocking the wind from her lungs. She stared at the screen, tears of pure horror spilling over her eyelids. The man she had loved, the father she had defended despite his coldness, was the monster who had locked her in this silver cage.
"I see you've found the truth," a cold, smooth voice echoed from the vault doorway.
Eva spun her chair around.
May you like
Standing in the doorway, holding a silenced pistol, was Julian Vance—her father's security chief and business partner.
"It's a shame, Eva," Julian sighed, stepping into the vault. "Your father wanted to protect you. He really did. But you just couldn't let it go."
