Chapter 35 - The Final Secret
Hannah slowly stood up from the desk, placing the architectural blueprints down. Her heart beat a cautious, steady rhythm against her ribs. “What are you talking about, Arthur?”
Arthur reached into the deep inside pocket of his mud-splattered trench coat and pulled out a heavy, sealed metal data box—the kind used for secure bank vault deposits. He dropped it heavily onto the mahogany table between them.
“When Julian Sterling was arrested, his legal team wiped his primary servers,” Arthur breathed heavily, wiping sweat from his forehead. “But I kept a backup. I know everything that happened twenty-five years ago in the laboratory fire that killed your father, Dr. Richard Vance.”
Ethan stepped forward, shielding Hannah with his body as he glared at the former lawyer. “Speak quickly, Arthur. If this is another one of your extortion games— shipment’s over. You’re going away for twenty years.”
“It’s not extortion!” Arthur shouted defensively, opening the metal latch of the box with a sharp click. “It’s insurance. Sterling planned to pin the entire laboratory fire on your father, Hannah, making it look like he committed insurance fraud before he died. But that’s not what happened.”
Hannah’s breath hitched. She stepped around Ethan, her fingers trembling slightly as she reached into the box and pulled out a charred, fire-resistant digital drive.
“What really happened?” she whispered.
“Your father discovered that Victoria Caldwell was planning to tamper with the gene-therapy clinical trials to cut manufacturing costs,” Arthur said grimly, looking down at the floor. “He threatened to go public with the FDA. The laboratory fire wasn't an accident, Hannah. It was arson, ordered by the corporate board to silence him. And your mother had the local fire chief falsify the report.”
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The silence that followed was absolute. The weight of the revelation crashed over the library with suffocating force.
Ethan turned around, his face turning pale with absolute horror. He looked at Hannah, terrified of what he would see in her eyes. The woman who had just forgiven Victoria, the woman who had finally found peace—was now staring at proof that the woman living in the carriage house outside was a murderer.
