Evan blinked. “No? I’m offering you—”
“I don’t want more money, Evan. And don’t fire the medical team yet. They provide the safety net we need if something goes wrong. But I do need you to do something.“
“Anything,” he said, and he meant it.
Rachel walked over to her bag and pulled out a manila folder. Her expression turned from warm to ice-cold in a second. “I found this while I was cleaning the study in the North Wing. The files from the Dr. Sterling’s private consultations.“
Evan frowned. “Sterling is the best in the country. He’s the one who coordinated the surgeries.“
“He’s also the one who has been receiving ‘research grants’ from the insurance consortium and the specialized equipment manufacturer you use,” Rachel said, sliding the folder across the marble. “Look at the third page. The neurological conductivity tests from six months ago.“
Evan opened the folder. His eyes scanned the technical data. He wasn’t a doctor, but he was a man of numbers. He saw the graphs. He saw the spikes in neural activity.
“This… this shows significant signal response in the lower lumbar,” Evan whispered, his face turning pale. “Sterling told me the tests were negative. He told me the atrophy was irreversible.“
“If they get better, Evan, you stop buying the $50,000 chairs every six months. You stop paying for the $2,000-an-hour ‘maintenance’ sessions,” Rachel said, her voice trembling with anger. “They aren’t just treating your sons, Evan. They’re farming them.“
The room seemed to tilt. Evan Roth, the man who controlled markets, the man who had built an empire on seeing the truth through the lies of competitors, had been blinded by his own grief. He had trusted the white coats because he was too broken to look at the data himself.
“They lied to me,” Evan breathed. The grief that had been his constant companion for eighteen months was suddenly replaced by something else. A cold, surgical rage.
“They didn’t just lie to you,” Rachel corrected. “They stole eighteen months of progress from two little boys who deserved to be fighting.“
Evan looked out the window at the sprawling, dark grounds of his estate. He had been living in a fortress of despair, paying the very people who were keeping his sons imprisoned in their own bodies.
