Chapter 4 - The Poisoned Protocol
The oncology ward of Bellevue was suffocatingly quiet, the silence broken only by the rhythmic beep of monitors and the distant, muffled sounds of the city below.
Ethan pushed through the double doors, the twins flanking him like tiny, terrified bodyguards. He found Room 412 guarded by two private security officers wearing badges from Vance Security—not the NYPD.
"Step back, sir," one of the guards said, his hand moving toward his holster. "This room is restricted."
"I am Ethan Blackwood," Ethan said, his voice echoing down the corridor with the authority of a man who owned half the real estate in the city. "And those badges don't give you jurisdiction in a municipal hospital. Move, or my legal team will have you arrested for unlawful restraint of a dying patient within thirty minutes."
The guards hesitated. In that split second, the door to Room 412 opened, and Dr. Sarah Chen, Ethan’s personal medical consultant, stepped out. Her face was pale.
"Ethan," she whispered, pulling him aside. "You shouldn't be here. The patient... she’s not just failing from leukemia. Her blood chemistry is a disaster. She’s being systematically poisoned."
Ethan felt a cold spike of adrenaline. "With what?"
"A targeted immunosuppressive agent," Chen said, keeping her voice low. "It mimics the final stages of blast crisis in AML, but it’s synthetic. It’s designed to make her look like she’s dying of her disease, but it’s actually destroying her cellular structure. If we try a bone marrow transplant now, the graft-versus-host disease will kill her instantly. We can't use your stem cells even if you are a match."
"Unless?"
"Unless we neutralize the toxin first," Chen said. "But the antidote is proprietary. It’s a monoclonal antibody developed by... Vance Biogenics. They call it V-29. It’s still in clinical trials. Julian Vance holds the only patent."
Ethan let out a harsh laugh. It was a perfect trap. To save the mother of his children, he had to beg Julian for the antidote. And the price of that antidote would be the Vance Trust clause—the loss of his entire life’s work.
"Can we synthesis it?" Ethan asked.
"Not in time," Chen said. "She has forty-eight hours. Maybe less."
Suddenly, a weak voice drifted from the hospital bed inside the room.
"Tyler...? Ryan...?"
The boys bypassed the guards and ran into the room, throwing themselves against the side of the bed. Ethan followed slowly, his eyes adapting to the dim light of the room.
Clara Thorne lay beneath the thin hospital sheets, her face gaunt and pale, but her eyes—a warm, deep hazel—shone with a fierce, protective light as she held her sons. She looked up at Ethan, her breath shallow.
"You shouldn't have brought them," she whispered, her voice cracking. "He... he’s watching us, Ethan. He’s always watching."
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"Julian?" Ethan asked, stepping closer.
"No," Clara said, a tear escaping her eye and rolling into her temples. "Not Julian. Victoria. She’s not dead, Ethan. She never was."
