Chapter 3 - What Lies Beneath the Lining
Back in the main house, Caspian found Marlo sitting at the large kitchen island. She hadn't touched the warm pancakes or orange juice the estate chef had prepared for her.
She sat with the dark navy coat resting squarely across her knees, her small fingers tracing the heavy stitching along the inner seam.
"They came, didn't they?" Marlo asked softly, without looking up.
Caspian poured himself a fresh cup of coffee and sat on the barstool across from her. "A lawyer named Julian Croft came to the gate with a warrant from Chicago. He said he represents the Vance Foundation."
Marlo’s small body went rigid. The color drained from her cheeks until she looked as white as the snow falling outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.
"Julian is the one who put Mommy in the hospital," Marlo whispered, her voice trembling with an incredible, terrifying weight. "He brought the papers to our house when Mommy was too sick to sign them. He took her pens away when she tried to write something else."
Caspian leaned forward, his expression grave. "Marlo, who was your mother?"
Marlo looked at him, her gray-blue eyes brimming with unshed tears, but she refused to let them fall. "Eleanor Vance. She built Vance Medical Logistics. She made machines that helped sick people get better."
Caspian’s mind raced. Eleanor Vance—the brilliant, reclusive biotech founder who had tragically died six months ago from a sudden, aggressive neurodegenerative illness. The news had dominated business headlines for weeks. The Vance Foundation had immediately taken control of the company's massive patent portfolio, shutting down several key research divisions and preparing for a multi-billion-dollar buyout by a foreign pharmaceutical conglomerate.
"Marlo," Caspian said gently. "Why did you run away?"
"Because Julian told me I was going to a boarding school in Switzerland," Marlo said, her breath hitching. "He said I couldn't bring anything with me. Not my books, not my toys... and not Mommy’s coat. He tried to take it from my closet three nights ago. I hid under the back porch until the house was dark, then I took the coat and ran to the train station."
She looked down at the navy wool. Her small hands found a hidden seam inside the inner breast pocket—a seam that had been stitched over with heavy black thread.
"Mommy made me promise," Marlo whispered, pulling a tiny set of embroidery scissors from her pocket—something she must have taken from her mother’s sewing box before running. "She said, 'Marlo, if Julian ever tells you I’m gone, don't give this coat to anyone. Take it to the old corner store in Milwaukee where we used to buy ice cream before the company got big. Someone will be watching.'"
Caspian’s heart hammered against his ribs. "The corner store... Eleanor bought her first warehouse down the block from that store twenty years ago."
"Mommy told me," Marlo said, snip-sniping the black thread with painstaking precision, "that inside the coat is the truth. The truth about why she got sick. And why they want Vance Medical so badly."
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With a final snip, the inner lining of the trench coat opened up like a hidden compartment.
Marlo reached her small hand deep into the dark wool and pulled out a heavy, vacuum-sealed silver hard drive and a hand-written letter sealed with red wax.
