Chapter 4 - The Blood Type They Forgot to Change
Odette stood behind the steel door.
She looked exhausted.
Cassian's hand moved toward his jacket.
"Don't," she said.
I stared at her.
"You called me."
Odette nodded.
"You switched the tube?"
"No."
"But you said—"
"I said what I needed to say to get you to understand the test had been switched."
Cassian's voice was ice.
"Start talking."
Odette sat.
Twenty-eight years of service disappeared from her face. She suddenly looked like a woman carrying twenty-eight years of fear.
"Your mother hired me."
Cassian stiffened.
"My mother died when I was seventeen."
"I know."
Odette pulled a sealed envelope from beneath the table.
"Before she died, she made me promise that if anyone ever tried to use your infertility against you, I would give you this."
Inside was a laboratory report.
Cassian read it.
Then read it again.
His hands began shaking.
The report was from Bellwether.
Cassian Raldi.
Age nineteen.
Normal fertility parameters.
"No," he whispered.
Odette looked at him.
"Your original test."
His eyes lifted.
"Why?"
"Your father."
Cassian went completely still.
Odette explained.
Cassian's father had believed heirs created vulnerability.
After Cassian's older brother was murdered, he decided the bloodline would end with Cassian until the family's enemies were eliminated.
A doctor was paid.
Records were changed.
Then Cassian's father died before reversing it.
Vittorio inherited the secret.
"And Ezra?" I asked.
Odette looked at me.
"Ezra inherited more than the secret."
She showed us another document.
A trucking manifest.
My father's name appeared at the bottom.
Daniel Marsh.
My stomach dropped.
"What does my father have to do with this?"
"He drove for Raldi Meridian."
"No. He drove independently."
"That's what you were told."
Odette explained that Daniel had transported sealed medical shipments for Bellwether.
Four years earlier, he'd discovered irregular specimen transfers.
Then his truck went over an overpass.
Cassian looked at me.
My throat closed.
"My father was murdered?"
"I don't know," Odette said. "But he was frightened before he died."
She handed me a key.
"Your father gave this to me."
"Why?"
"He said if anything happened, I should wait until someone came asking about blood."
Engraved on the key:
D.M. — 340.
Three hundred forty.
The same number as the debt I'd supposedly inherited.
$340,000.
It wasn't debt.
It was a code.
Cassian looked toward the steel door.
A sound came from the basement outside.
Footsteps.
Odette turned pale.
"Nobody else knows this room."
Cassian switched off the light.
The footsteps stopped.
Then Ezra's voice came through the door.
"Cassian?"
Nobody breathed.
The keypad beeped.
Once.
Twice.
Then green.
May you like
Ezra knew the code.
And the steel door began opening.
