chapter thirteen

*Ten years earlier.*

Lucian.

James finds me in the records annex at half past ten at night, which is exactly the kind of hour James Hart operates in — after the Institute has gone quiet enough that nobody notices who's still walking its halls.

"You look terrible," he mutters, which is rich, coming from a man who hasn't slept properly in a month by the look of him. Grey under his eyes. A folder pressed flat against his side like it might try to leave if he loosened his grip.

"Long shift." I don't look up from the chart I'm reviewing. Second-year resident work, the kind nobody remembers doing once they're a surgeon, but somebody has to chase the paperwork the attendings won't.

"What's wrong?"

"Why does something have to be wrong?" He shots back at me, almost defensive.

"Because you're here at ten thirty holding that folder like it's radioactive, and you've been doing this for a month. Sit down, James. You're making me tired just watching you."

He sits. Doesn't open the folder yet. That's how I know it's bad — James doesn't hesitate about anything except the things that scare him, and I've known him five years now. Long enough to count those times on one hand.

I found him the way you find most of the people who end up mattering — sideways, at the worst possible moment.

He was a junior researcher back then, and I watched Adrian take him apart in a conference room over a data inconsistency Adrian didn't want flagged, the kind of quiet public humiliation my family's always been fluent in.

“I told you to forget that part of the data, and move on with work” Adrian snapped, hitting him hard.

He didn't say a word.

Afterward I found him sitting on a stairwell step, not crying — worse than crying, just very still, the way a person goes still when showing anything at all costs more than they can afford.

I asked him about the data. He didn't say anything to me.

Then he looked at me and said, flat, unbothered, like commenting on the weather, "You’re just like them I'm sure."

I was confused.

“What do you mean?” I was curious.

“Spare me dude! Don't act like you don't know about the baby farm.” He snapped.

I was confused then, he explained to me. We became friends out of shared benefits: Adrian must not get away with the secret baby farm.

And now, I see him as my only brother. I'm an illegitimate son of the Vales anyway.

They never cared about me, I don't even have up to two photos with the whole family, and by ‘whole family’, I mean Edmund — my dad, my mom, and me.

And those photos was me as a baby, and seven years old me: my mom wanted to take a last photo with me before Edmund took me away from her.

I haven't seen her since then.

James taught me things nobody else in that family bothered to — how to read a room before it turns on you, how to hold silence instead of filling it with an apology you don't owe. I don't know what kind of man I'd have become at twenty-eight without him showing up in my life five years ago exactly when he did. I've never wanted to find out.

Which is the only reason I'm still sitting here at half past ten, waiting for him to open a folder he clearly wishes he'd never had to.

"Another case Lucian," James says now. "Another young girl just died trying to deliver a baby in the farm, a baby that is not hers.” His voice almost cracks. “She is just Seventeen Lucian. Seventeen. And they just stopped her life, because of their selfishness”

"James—"

"She's not the first, Lucian." His voice doesn't rise. That's the thing about James that scares me more than shouting ever could — the quieter he gets, the worse it is.

"I've been pulling threads on this for the past twelve years, Lucian. Quietly. Carefully. I thought I was chasing a coincidence. I was hoping it wasn't Adrian involved."

"What did you find this time?"

He finally opens the folder. Doesn't hand it to me yet. Just lets me see the edge of what's inside — intake forms, a payment ledger that has no business existing inside a hospital's records, numbers where diagnoses should be.

"They're using people, Lucian." His hand is shaking on the folder like he's holding something down that wants to move.

"The ones with the least power to say no. Girls who need the money badly enough not to ask what they're carrying, or why, or who's paying for it and what they expect to get back." He stops. Swallows. "I have a daughter at home who doesn't know any of this exists. I intend to keep it that way. But I can't look at what's in this folder and pretend I didn't see it, and I can't do what needs doing alone."

The annex is very quiet. Somewhere down the hall a cart wheel needs oiling, squeaking against the linoleum, ordinary and absurd against what's sitting on the table between us.

"What do you need," I say.

"Access." He looks at me — really looks, the way he did that first day on the stairwell, like he's deciding how much truth a person can carry before it breaks something in them. "You're a Vale, whether they act like it or not. Doors open for you that don't open for me. I need someone inside who can get close to the records I can't reach on my own."

"You're asking me to spy on my own family."

"I'm asking you to help me stop something that's killing girls. Your family's Institute is supposed to be healing. I need to know the location of the farm, I need as much information as I can get." His jaw sets. "I know what I'm asking. I wouldn't be sitting here at eleven at night if there were anyone else I trusted enough to ask it."

I think about that conference room five years ago. I think about every dinner I've sat through since, tolerated rather than welcomed, the son who exists at the family's convenience. I think about how easy it would be to say no, and how I already know I'm not going to.

Edmund died two years ago, I don't know if he knew about this farm, or if he was funding it before he died. But one thing I know: Adrian is the one running it.

"Show me the folder," I muttered. Already determined.

James's hand doesn't move off it. Not yet.

"If I show you," he says, quiet, final, "there's no version of tomorrow where you get to un-know it. I have been at this for years, I know you didn't believe me until your father died, but I need you to understand that before I open this."

Down the hall, the cart wheel stops squeaking. The annex goes fully silent, and in that silence I hear myself say the word that ends whatever version of my life was heading somewhere safer than this one.

"Show me."