Chapter 14 - The Double Life of Dr. Reed
The rain in Los Angeles fell with unprecedented fury, washing the smog from the concrete canyons and turning the highways into slick ribbons of black glass. Julian sped down Sunset Boulevard in his armored Maybach, weaving through traffic at breakneck speed. Victoria's dying words rattled in his mind like shrapnel: *The doctor always cleans up the mess.*
He dialled Marcus on the encrypted satellite channel.
"Marcus! Report on Leo. Right now!"
"Leo is safe in the underground safe room, sir," Marcus answered immediately. "He’s watching cartoons. Dr. Reed just prepared his afternoon meal and his multivitamin infusion. Everything is locked down."
"Stop her!" Julian screamed into the mic. "Do not let her touch Leo! Do not let him ingest anything!"
"Julian, what are you—"
"Detain Evelyn Reed immediately! Put her in cuffs! I’m three minutes away!"
Julian hung up and slammed his foot through the floorboard. The Maybach’s twin-turbo engine roared as the car smashed through the outer perimeter gate of his own estate, tires screeching across the cobblestone courtyard.
Julian burst through the front double doors, drawing his weapon, his coat dripping rainwater onto the marble foyer. He sprinted down the private corridor toward the medical wing he had built specifically for Leo’s recovery.
When he kicked the door open, he was met with total stillness.
Evelyn Reed was not running. She was not holding a weapon. She was sitting calmly behind her mahogany desk, her hands folded neatly over an open leather dossier. In the corner of the room, through the reinforced glass window, Leo was happily playing with a set of wooden train tracks under the watchful eyes of two heavily armed private operators.
"Julian," Evelyn said, her voice steady, gentle, and utterly devoid of fear. "Lower the gun. You're scaring the security team."
Marcus stood in the doorway, his rifle lowered, looking between Julian and the doctor with acute confusion. "Sir, I searched her bag. I scanned the IV line and the vitamins. Everything is clean. There is no poison."
Julian didn't lower the barrel. He stepped forward until the cold metal was inches from Evelyn's forehead. "Victoria was murdered forty-five minutes ago inside a maximum-security prison. Her last words were 'the doctor cleans up the mess.' And you have been Leo’s primary physician since the day he was born."
Evelyn didn't flinch. Instead, she slid the leather dossier across the desk toward Julian.
"Look at it, Julian," she whispered. "Before you pull that trigger, look at who I actually am."
Julian kept his weapon trained on her with his right hand while his left flipped open the file. Inside were military intelligence credentials from the Department of Defense, a high-level clearance badge from the Defense Intelligence Agency, and a series of covert surveillance photographs.
Every photograph was of Clara.
"Clara wasn't an innocent heiress who fell in love with a tech titan," Evelyn revealed, her voice heavy with sorrow. "Clara was an operative for a covert asset-recovery task force. Her family—the Vance family—is not a dynasty of blue-blood aristocrats. They are the financial architects behind the largest money-laundering syndicate in Eastern Europe and South America. Clara stole twelve billion dollars of their blood money and hid it inside your company’s infrastructure before she tried to fake her death."
Julian felt the room tilt beneath his feet. "What are you talking about? Clara loved me. She gave birth to my son!"
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"She did love you, Julian," Evelyn said, standing up slowly. "And that was her fatal mistake. She tried to leave the syndicate. She thought if she died, they would leave you and Leo alone. But they discovered the child has the biometric encryption to access the offshore accounts built directly into his DNA sequence. Victoria was their first attempt. Vivienne is their second. And the man who commands them both... is Clara’s father, Lord Alistair Vance."
***
