The Romance Revival(92)
At first I think she means getting me to bring the compound tonight. But then her true meaning lands, and I feel a heavy wave of nausea roll through me.
“You hit Luca. You actually hit him with your fucking car.”
“I sure did. Well, not my car, I’m not that stupid. But a big one, heavy, with protruding parts for maximum damage.”
My mind fills with the image of him on the street, blood everywhere, and rage rises hot and electric in me. “Why on earth would you do that?”
She straightens and looks directly at me. “Because I already have the specs for the BioVIVE and I’m being paid a truly disgusting sum to procure the compound.”
“This is about money?”
“How are you surprised?” she asks. “Of anyone, you know how incredible this technology is. Russia could never. China is years behind. No government in the world has access to this.” Lifting the lid, she grins when she sees vials of the compound safely inside. “And let me tell you, these international companies have some hefty checkbooks.”
I look over at Vince. “Were you in on this from the beginning? You act like such a holier-than-thou scientist and then you pull some shit like this?”
“I am a scientist,” he says, his voice thin and anxious. “But I—”
I cut him off. “So what about the BioSCAN? That was your innovation. You’re just going to abandon it?”
“Where did it get me?” he asks. “I spent fifteen years perfecting the technology. It hasn’t even hit the market yet and the board is already treating it like it’s obsolete. You’re the golden child. Everyone has already moved on to the shiny new thing.”
“Grow the fuck up, Vince! That’s called progress. We all have to just keep innovating and pushing forward.”
“While the guys at the top are the ones who get rich. Not me, not you. I’ll get my name in a few publications and a nice bonus. Leonard will buy another yacht.” He shakes his head, disgusted. “No, thank you.”
“It was wonderfully easy to get Vince on board,” Claire says. “His ego is so fragile.”
“Fuck off, Claire,” Vince mutters, but she ignores him.
“I have connections to buyers through my history in politics, of course,” she says casually, “but I needed a scientist to help communicate with the scientists on the other side of the transaction. I just wish I’d have found someone better at subversion so we didn’t have to resort to murdering your husband.”
I suddenly realize that Claire wasn’t lecturing Vince on my behalf the day I overheard them at the office. She was lecturing him for being an incompetent idiot. Vince was never smart enough to derail my research, and I was never smart enough to realize who was truly trying to undermine me.
“I see you struggling, Emery,” Claire says with feigned sympathy. “So, let’s talk it through: I knew if you saw your husband hit by a car, you wouldn’t call an ambulance. Not with your tragic backstory.”
I clench my jaw, staring at her with such hatred I’m shaking.
“An ambulance couldn’t save your parents—so no, you wouldn’t trust it to get there in time. I gambled that you’d inject him with the compound—just like you did—and put him in the BioVIVE.” She smiles smugly. “Then it’s a win-win for me: If he dies, I have the backup AISS footage showing that you conducted an unauthorized experiment on a human, who did not come out of the pod alive. The board would immediately terminate the project, declassifying the protocol in-house for full review, and I would get access to the Compound Y structure. Or Luca is successfully resurrected, proving the protocol works, and I’m able to negotiate for far more money. Especially now that the US government wants in on the game.” She spreads her arms. “And voilà. I’m thrilled with how this has turned out. Well, at least for me.”
I look over at Luca, who is staring at me with wild eyes. They’re filled with such terror that it hits me as if he’s said it out loud: She’s told us too much.
46 LUCA
They say hindsight is 20/20, and now when I look back over my life with Emery, it’s like having a light turned on, a prescription filled, everything coming into focus.
The first time I realized she was lying to me was when she missed a dinner reservation. It was about six months ago, and Crash had managed to date someone longer than it takes milk to expire; he wanted us to meet for a double date. I made sure Emery would be free and gave her plenty of notice, putting the dinner in our shared calendar. I left Post-it notes on every surface and called her at work that day to remind her of the place and time.
She didn’t show.
When she got home that night, she was apologetic. She explained that her team was presenting a new Lasik technique that week and there’d been a supply chain issue with a part used to create the corneal flap.
It wasn’t that I suspected she was lying about where she was, it was that I somehow knew her absence had nothing to do with supply chains and everything to do with priorities. Whatever had kept Emery at the office hours longer than she had planned was more important to her than keeping her word to me.
After that, it wasn’t that I was keeping score, it was that I couldn’t not see the excuses and late nights and every distracted conversation when she would rather be working. That’s just who Emery was. She was everything to me, but Emery’s everything was her job.