Chapter 12 - The Subpoena at Dawn
The knock on my apartment door came at five in the morning, before the streetlights along Lake Shore Drive had even flickered off.
I had barely slept, spending the entire night cross-referencing my mother’s old laboratory notebooks with the Chimera files.
I cracked the security chain and peered into the dim hallway.
A tall man in a charcoal suit stood under the fluorescent bulb, holding a manila envelope stamped with the seal of the United States District Court.
"Dr. Emma Hayes?" he asked in a voice flat and hollowed by routine.
"Yes."
"You’ve been served, Doctor."
He slid the envelope through the opening before I could even draw a breath.
I closed the door, my hands trembling as I tore the adhesive strip.
It was not a witness summons for Daniel’s upcoming fraud trial in Indiana.
It was a civil lawsuit filed in the Northern District of Illinois, naming me as a primary co-defendant.
The plaintiff was a holding company called Vancorp Bio-Therapeutics.
They were alleging trade secret theft, patent infringement, and breach of non-disclosure agreements regarding the artificial valve matrix my mother spent her final decade developing.
The damages requested were staggering: forty-two million dollars.
Taped to the final page of the summons was a handwritten sticky note without a name, but the handwriting was unmistakable.
*You took my career, Emma. Now let's see how much your mother’s ghost is worth when the wolves come to feed.*
Daniel had not been crushed by the board meeting.
He had simply found a bigger predator to hide behind.
May you like
I grabbed my coat, shoved the files into my leather briefcase, and ran down to the garage.
I needed answers, and there was only one person in Chicago who possessed the keys to the Whitaker vault.
