Chapter 29 - Julian’s Confession
The station wagon died permanently at the gates of the cannery, steam billowing from the cracked radiator as I coasted through the broken iron barriers and into the cavernous shadow of the main packing plant.
I gathered Leo in my arms, the kitchen shears gripped tight in my right hand, and slipped inside through a shattered loading bay.
The interior smelled of brine, rusted iron, and oil. High above, the storm whistled through broken skylights, casting fractured beams of moonlight across the concrete floor.
"Clara!" a voice echoed through the vast, hollow chamber.
I froze, ducking behind a row of rusted industrial sorting bins.
A figure emerged from the shadows of the central aisle. He was limping heavily, his clothes soaked, his hair plastered to his forehead.
It was Julian.
He looked ruined. The immaculate, composed, sociopathic husband who had smiled across the dining room while slipping poison into my son's formula was gone. His left arm hung limp in an improvised sling, his face was bruised and mottled with yellowing hematomas, and his eyes were wide with a frantic, unhinged terror.
"Clara, please!" he rasped, scanning the dark rafters above him as if expecting bullets to rain down at any second. "Don't run! You don't understand what’s happening!"
"Stay back!" I screamed, stepping out just far enough to raise the heavy shears toward his throat. "Don't you come near him! You poisoned him! You tried to steal him!"
"I didn't have a choice!" Julian cried out, collapsing onto one knee on the concrete, clutching his broken arm. "They had my sister, Clara! Eleanor’s people—they’ve had my family collateralized in Zurich for ten years! The drops... the drops weren't poison! It was an enzyme blocker! Eleanor wanted him injected with the Vance protocol, and I was trying to neutralize it so he wouldn't develop the genetic markers!"
I stared at him, my mind reeling in disbelief. "You expect me to believe you were saving him? You tried to have me committed!"
"Because if you were committed, I got legal custody and I could take him to an unlisted clinic in South America!" Julian sobbed, his voice cracking with genuine, desperate agony. "If you stayed sane, Eleanor knew you’d take him to your father's old colleagues. And Ethan... Clara, you have to listen to me! Who told you to come to Maine? Who arranged the cottage? Who gave you the car?"
My heart stopped beating.
May you like
"Ethan," I whispered.
"Ethan isn't an attorney fighting for your exoneration," Julian whispered, terror bleeding through every syllable. "Ethan is Eleanor Vane’s primary liquidator."
