Her Vengeful Rebirth novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Blue Hands

"Ask me again when I trust you," I said.

Jericho Lund looked at me for a long moment across his desk.

Then he nodded once.

"Then I'll wait," he said.

His counsel photographed my notebook the next afternoon in a bank basement in Boston, and sealed it, and gave the key to him.

After that I went back to being a fool.

It was easy, the second time around.

I laughed at Cameron's jokes, I ordered the wrong wine, and I asked my father what a "fiduciary" was.

Every night I lay awake and counted the days to October twenty-second.

In my first life, that was the day Daphne cried in front of the board.

The Markham boardroom had a table made from one slab of walnut and twelve directors who had never once looked at me properly.

Cameron sat at my right, my father at the head, and Daphne in the chair across from me with a vial in a plastic bag.

She had dressed in white, with her hair pinned back and her eyes already wet.

"I'm so sorry to bring this to you all," she said, her voice shaking just enough. "I found it on the bench in Lab 4."

She set the bag on the walnut.

"It's from the cell stock for the next batch. It's contaminated. If Thalia had shipped it, we could have poisoned people."

A murmur ran around the table.

My father went grey.

"Thalia," he said. "Is this true?"

In the first life I had stammered and apologized for something I never did.

I had lost my lab for two months over a vial I had never touched.

This time I folded my hands in my lap and let my lip tremble.

"Oh, Daddy," I said. "I don't know what happened. I always label my vials."

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