Chapter 14 - The Choice They Expected
The demand required Claire to sign control of the company into a trust administered by anonymous protectors. If she refused, the Council threatened to execute Eleanor and Nathaniel when the countdown ended.
The agreement contained a tracking mechanism. Any attempt to alter it would alert the captors.
Board members urged Claire not to trade a global corporation for two lives. Federal agents warned that compliance could give criminals control of ports, hospitals, and defense logistics.
Claire never considered surrendering the company. She also refused to abandon her family.
“They designed this as a choice between love and duty,” she told Carter. “That means they believe those forces cannot work together.”
Anna traced tiny timing variations in the live feed to a satellite relay serving northern Vermont and southern Quebec. Daniel identified the mountain view as a private rehabilitation center once funded by a Janus subsidiary.
The facility sat on the Canadian side of the border.
Claire publicly announced an emergency board session to consider the transfer. Council watchers focused on Vale headquarters while Canadian authorities prepared a covert rescue.
Everett, still in federal custody, requested to speak with Claire.
“The facility is a decoy,” he said. “They know you traced the relay.”
“Why help me?”
“Because the Council ordered Margaret taken. They have broken the old rules.”
“You tried to kill me.”
“And I will answer for it. But if Gideon takes control, Janus becomes something even I cannot contain.”
It was the first time anyone had named the Council’s leader.
Gideon Cross was a billionaire philanthropist whose investment group owned security and biotechnology firms across three continents. He had attended Claire’s wedding and toasted Bradley’s devotion.
Everett revealed that the real prisoners were held beneath a Cross medical research campus in Vermont, while the video background was digitally replaced.
Authorities could not obtain a warrant quickly enough without revealing Everett’s classified evidence. Claire used her position as a major investor in the campus to request an emergency safety inspection, forcing the facility to open its gates while a judge reviewed the evidence.
Inside, Daniel’s team located underground rooms matching the video.
They found Nathaniel alive.
Eleanor’s room was empty.
Margaret was discovered in a medical ward, sedated but breathing. Before losing consciousness again, she gripped Claire’s hand and said, “Eleanor escaped. Someone helped her.”
The countdown stopped with eleven minutes remaining.
Gideon Cross released a public statement denying involvement and claiming rogue employees had misused the campus. By the time agents reached his residence, he had vanished.
Nathaniel awoke in a guarded hospital room the next morning. Claire stood beside him, torn between the child who wanted to embrace him and the woman who needed answers.
“Where is my mother?” she asked.
Nathaniel’s eyes filled with tears.
“Looking for you,” he said.
He gave Claire a small brass key marked with the number two.
“Eleanor has the first key. Gideon has the third. Together they open the original Janus archive.”
“What is inside?”
May you like
Nathaniel looked toward the guarded door.
“Proof that Claire Vale was not the only child born to your mother.”
