Chapter 994:

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Upstairs, Cailin had just ended a call with her friend Mia, asking for a small but crucial favor. She looked at her own pale reflection in the dark screen of her phone, took a deep breath, and pressed the nurse’s call button.

When the nurse entered, Cailin’s voice was weak, but her command was absolute. “I want to see Giselle Van Doren.”

The nurse paled. “Ma’am, I can’t. Mr. Holloway’s orders are that no one—”

Cailin’s eyes turned to ice. “Then go tell Mr. Holloway that if I don’t see her, he will never get that antidote.”

The sheer force of her will sent the nurse scurrying from the room.

A moment later, the door to the lounge downstairs was knocked. Ethan Cole leaned in, whispering urgently in Hilliard’s ear.

Hilliard’s expression shifted, a complex mix of alarm and frustration. He glanced at the tormented, pacing figure of Donovan Van Doren. He stood up and strode out of the room.

He had to see what Cailin was planning.

Hilliard burst into Cailin’s room. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, his voice a low, furious whisper.

Her face was as white as the hospital sheets, but her eyes burned with a cold, resolute fire. “Your way is too slow,” she said. “I don’t have time to wait.”

𝘚𝘢ve 𝘺о𝗎𝘳 fа𝘃𝗼𝗿𝘪𝗍𝘦 𝗻𝗼v𝘦l𝘴 оո 𝗴𝘢𝗹𝘯𝗼v𝘦𝘭𝘀.𝘤𝗈𝗆

She told him her plan. She wanted to speak with Giselle. Alone. She promised him she could make her talk.

He looked at her, at the fragile tremor in her hands, the dark circles under her eyes. “Absolutely not,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”

A humorless smile touched her lips. “I’m the only one who can do this,” she insisted. “Because I can give Giselle the one thing she wants more than anything else.”

Hilliard stared at her, uncomprehending. She didn’t explain. She just held his gaze, her will an unbreakable force.

He was the first to look away. “Fine,” he ground out. “But I’ll be watching on a monitor from the next room. The second she lays a hand on you, my men are going in.”

Cailin nodded. He left to make the arrangements.

Down in the lounge, Donovan’s phone buzzed. It was Eleonora, her voice a frantic, tearful whisper, begging him to come home, claiming there was a crisis. He hung up, his stomach churning. He knew it was a ploy.

The door opened and Hilliard and Julian walked back in. Hilliard’s face was grim.

He tossed a file onto the table in front of Donovan. It was a preliminary analysis of the data Ethan Cole had copied from the lab.

“Your daughter wasn’t working alone, Donovan,” Hilliard said, his voice flat.

Donovan opened the file. His eyes fell on a name he never expected to see.

Charla English.

The report was damning. Shipping manifests. Encrypted financial transfers. A clear, undeniable trail of chemical precursors moving from Giselle’s lab to an offshore shell corporation controlled by the English Group.

Donovan’s mind went blank. It made no sense. Why would his daughter, a Van Doren, ally herself with that disgraced, pathetic social climber?

“They were partners,” Hilliard said, his voice like a hammer blow. “One supplied the poison. The other provided the access. The target was my wife.”

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