Chapter 3 - ROSALIE’S EIGHT MISSING HOURS
Rosalie regained full consciousness the following evening.
Theodore sat beside her bed.
Sebastian remained outside the room because she had not yet agreed to see him.
A police officer guarded the hallway.
Rosalie looked down at the bruises around her wrist.
“I thought I dreamed the coffin.”
“You didn’t.”
“You heard me?”
“Twice.”
She closed her eyes.
“The first time I tapped, I thought nobody would.”
Theodore leaned closer.
“What happened?”
Rosalie remembered drinking tea in the estate library the previous night.
Dr. Mercer had brought it personally.
He said Eleanor was worried because Rosalie had not slept.
The tea tasted metallic.
Minutes later, her body became heavy.
She could hear voices but could not move.
Mercer examined her on the library sofa.
Eleanor stood near the fireplace.
“She asked whether I could still hear.”
“What did Mercer say?”
“He said hearing usually faded last.”
Rosalie began shaking.
Theodore took her hand.
“She knew you were alive?”
“Yes.”
Mercer injected something into Rosalie’s neck.
Her vision darkened.
When she woke again, she was lying on a metal table.
Someone was brushing her hair.
She heard funeral workers discussing the unusual order to complete preparation before sunrise.
Eleanor had insisted there be no embalming because Rosalie feared needles.
The irony almost made Theodore sick.
“Why didn’t they notice you were breathing?”
“I could barely feel it myself.”
“They kept the room cold.”
“Mercer told them it would preserve me.”
Rosalie drifted in and out.
She remembered the coffin lid closing.
She remembered a strip of satin being placed across her mouth after she made a sound.
A woman’s voice whispered that mourners should not see her lips open.
“What were they trying to hide?” Theodore asked.
Rosalie looked toward the hospital door.
“My twenty-fifth birthday is in nine days.”
Their father’s will divided Vale Consolidated into three trusts.
Sebastian controlled operations.
Theodore’s shares remained protected until he turned twenty-five.
Rosalie’s trust carried the deciding vote.
On her twenty-fifth birthday, she would gain direct authority over fifty-one percent of the foundation and the family’s biomedical companies.
If Rosalie died before that date, her shares would not pass to Theodore.
They would return to a temporary family trust managed by Eleanor and Sebastian.
“I was going to remove Mercer.”
“And Mother.”
Theodore stared at her.
“From what?”
Rosalie looked at the closed door again.
“Project Bellglass.”
The name meant nothing to Theodore.
Rosalie explained.
Vale Biotech had never truly abandoned V-17.
The experiments had continued through private nursing homes funded by the Vale Foundation.
Residents without active relatives were given experimental doses.
Their slowed breathing was recorded.
Several died.
The reports described natural cardiac failure.
Rosalie discovered the payments three months earlier.
She intended to bring them before the board on her birthday.
“Who knew?”
“Mercer.”
“Mother.”
“And Sebastian.”
Theodore looked toward the shadow beneath the hospital door.
His brother had been sitting outside for six hours.
“He says he knew nothing about the coffin.”
May you like
Rosalie’s eyes filled with pain.
“He knew enough to stop me from exposing them.”
