Chapter 64 - The Ghost in the Flesh
Ryan stepped directly between Julian and Claire, his firearm leveled dead center at his brother's forehead.
"Step back, Julian. Or I finish what Montauk started."
Julian didn't blink. He didn't even raise a hand in defense. Two heavily armed private contractors materialized from the shadows behind him, their red laser targeting dots settling instantly on Ryan’s chest and forehead.
"You won't shoot," Julian whispered, coughing into a silk handkerchief that came away speckled with dark arterial blood. "You spent your entire childhood trying to earn my approval. When I broke my wrist at Phillips Exeter, you slept on the floor beside my bed for three nights. You’re cursed with a conscience, Ryan. That’s why Father had to invent a crisis to turn you into a predator."
"Father didn't invent anything," Ryan said coldly, his finger tightening incrementally on the trigger. "Father was a sick old lunatic who thought human beings were commercial inventory. And you let him torture Victoria, you let him try to butcher Claire, all so you could lurk in the dark like a parasitic tick."
Julian’s single good eye flashed with genuine venom. "Victoria was an embarrassment! A hysterical social climber who couldn't produce a second healthy son without artificial insemination! Did you really believe she loved you, Ryan? She looked at you every day of your life and saw nothing but the silver medal. The replacement part."
"Don't listen to him, Ryan," Claire whispered behind him, her voice trembling but fierce. She pulled Leo tighter to her chest, her fingers shielding the infant's face.
Julian turned his gaze toward Claire, his lips peeling back in disgust. "And you. The kindergarten teacher from South Boston. The pristine, morally upright virgin our little Ryan brought home to spite the family name. Do you really think you're innocent in this, Claire?"
"I don't care about your family name," Claire spit back, her eyes burning through the shadows. "I care about my son. And if you take one step closer to him, I will kill you myself."
Julian chuckled, a sickening, wet sound. "Your son? Is that what you think he is? Eve, tell her. Tell her what you found in the offshore banking transfers from the Zurich clinic in the spring of 2023."
Ryan didn't lower his gun, but his eyes flicked sideways toward Eve. The geneticist was standing frozen against the damp brick wall, her face drained of every drop of color.
"Eve?" Ryan’s voice was dangerously low.
"Ryan..." Eve’s voice cracked. "I... I thought it was an accounting redundancy. I found a wire transfer six months ago, during the preliminary audit of the St. Jude Foundation. I thought Charles had merely used Julian’s preserved stem cells to stabilize the in-vitro fertilization process when Claire was undergoing fertility treatments at Mass General."
"Stabilize?" Julian sneered, taking a slow step forward, tapping his cane against the flagstones. "My dear, naive sister-in-law. Claire wasn't fertilized with Ryan's seed. Charles replaced the donor sample forty-eight hours before implantation. That child isn't your son, Ryan. He's my clone. The clean, uncorrupted genetic copy of Julian Vance, grown in the womb of a woman who was too dim-witted to question a high-risk pregnancy protocol!"
The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the hum of the auxiliary generator and the soft, innocent breathing of the child.
Claire’s knees gave out. She slumped against the iron garage door, her gaze dropping to the infant in her arms in utter, paralyzing horror.
"No," Ryan breathed, the room spinning around him. "No. That's impossible. We did the amniocentesis. We ran the paternity markers."
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"Through the Vance Memorial Lab," Julian whispered, taking another step closer, his hand reaching out toward the baby. "Where every single sequencer reports directly to me. Hand over my future, Ryan. Or watch me paint these bricks with your wife’s blood."
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