Chapter 15 - The Flight to Zurich
At 4:00 AM, Julian’s private Gulfstream G650 tore into the stormy skies above New Jersey, banking hard toward Zurich.
In the cabin, Julian paced like a caged predator. Vanessa sat across from him, her face ashen, having been intercepted by Julian’s men just as she boarded her commercial flight at JFK. She had not been running to escape; she had been running because she had discovered a coded ledger in Marcus’s safe deposit box before the raid.
"I didn't know she was alive, Julian! I swear to God!" Vanessa cried, clasping her trembling hands. "Marcus told me Clara died on impact! He told me the surrogate program was using Clara’s frozen embryos stored in an IVF bank in Manhattan!"
"Then why did you have the flight itinerary for the Zurich clinic hidden in your makeup bag?" Julian roared, slamming the ledger onto the table between them. "Why did Marcus have payments listed to your maiden name dating back to before the crash?!"
Vanessa shrank back, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Because my sister was a nurse there! My sister worked at the Alpina Sanatorium in the Swiss Alps! She called me three months ago, sobbing, saying they were keeping an American woman in a coma under an alias—Subject 0-A! Marcus found out my sister knew, and two weeks later, my sister ‘fell’ from an overlook in Lucerne!"
Julian stared at her, the pieces of the nightmare locking into place with terrible clarity. "Marcus wasn't using you as a pawn. He was holding your family hostage to keep you in the marriage."
"Marcus was terrified of the people running the Sanatorium," Vanessa whispered. "He told me there’s a consortium called The Caduceus Group. Billionaires who fund private reproductive and genetic black markets. Clara’s bloodline carried a rare genetic immunity marker for degenerative neural disorders. They didn't want Marcus’s money, Julian. They wanted Clara’s womb."
Henderson entered the main cabin, holding an encrypted satellite tablet. "Boss, radar just picked up an unidentified aircraft trailing us off the coast of Ireland. No transponder. It’s matching our airspeed."
Julian looked out the small oval window into the blackness of the North Atlantic sky. Far in the distance, a pair of red blinking lights cut through the storm clouds, tailing their jet with relentless precision.
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"They aren't going to let us land in Zurich," Julian said, his eyes narrowing into cold flint. "Henderson, tell the pilot to ditch the flight plan. We aren't landing at the commercial airport. We’re dropping over the border."
***
