The private jet was obscene. All cream leather and polished wood, cutting through the night sky like we were escaping to some luxury vacation instead of racing to stop a psychopath from killing our daughter.
Surreal didn't even begin to cover it.
I sat in a seat that probably cost more than my entire apartment, staring at nothing. My mind was stuck in that hospital room. Amélie's hand in mine. Her whispered "promise."
Forty-eight hours. That's all Sofia had. That's all we had.
The countdown was a physical thing now, ticking under my skin like a bomb.
Alan sat across from me, phone in hand, scrolling through data with mechanical precision. His face was carved from stone, jaw tight, eyes dark and focused.
We hadn't spoken since takeoff.
The silence was suffocating. Not the angry, crackling tension from before—this was heavier. Shared dread. Shared terror. The kind of silence that happens when you're both too scared to say what you're thinking.
I shifted in my seat, restless. My hand brushed the armrest and found his already there.
The contact was electric. Just our fingers touching, barely, but I felt it everywhere—down my spine, in my chest, pooling low in my stomach. I should have pulled away. Made some sardonic comment about personal space.
I didn't. Neither did he.
We stayed like that—not quite holding hands, but not quite separate either. Two people drowning in the same nightmare, reaching for something solid. His pinky hooked around mine, subtle but deliberate.
When I finally looked up, he was staring at me. Not at his phone. At me. His eyes were dark, intense, searching my face like he was trying to memorize it.
"We're going to fix this," he said quietly.
"You can't promise that." My voice came out rough.
"I just did." The certainty in his voice made something crack in my chest. Like maybe—just maybe—we weren't completely fucked.
His thumb moved. Just slightly. Brushing against my knuckle. Deliberate. Intentional. Not an accident.
My breath caught. "Élise—"
The pilot's voice crackled over the intercom. "Beginning our descent into Geneva. Please prepare for landing."
The moment shattered. We both pulled back, the connection severed as reality crashed back in.
Professional distance. That's what we needed. What we should maintain.
Except I could still feel where his thumb had touched my hand. Burning.
We landed at a private airfield just before midnight. Geneva was pristine and silent—the kind of rich-people quiet that feels vaguely threatening.
A black Mercedes waited on the tarmac. Alan held the door open for me. Our eyes met for half a second as I slid past him into the car.
Close. Too close. I could smell his cologne—that expensive scent that had been all over me in his office three days ago when his fingers were inside me and the world made a twisted kind of sense.
Focus. Our daughter is dying. This is not the time.
The drive to the lab was silent. But I was hyperaware of him beside me in the backseat. The way his leg almost touched mine. The way he kept glancing at me when he thought I wasn't looking.
The way I kept glancing back.
Veridian Dynamics - Bio-Gen was a glass fortress on the outskirts, all modern architecture and discreet silver logos. The kind of building that screamed "evil corporation" in every dystopian novel ever written.
Fitting.
Alan used his security card on the main doors. A night-shift technician nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw us.
"Monsieur Delaunay? We weren't expecting—"
"Immediate audit of Protocol 1810." Alan's voice left zero room for argument. "Grant me access to the central server. Now."
The technician led us through sterile corridors to a server room that hummed with expensive technology. Cold air. Rows of blinking lights. The nerve center of Henri's fucked-up experiment.
"It's all here, Monsieur."
"Get out."
The technician practically ran.
Alan sat at the terminal, fingers flying across the keyboard. I stood behind him, close enough to see the screen. Close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body.
Close enough to put my hand on his shoulder.
He went still. Just for a second. Like my touch had short-circuited something.
Then he kept typing, but I felt the tension in his muscles. The awareness.
"I'm in," he said, voice rough.
The main directory for Protocol 1810 opened. Raw data. Years of it. The core of Henri's obsession laid bare.
"What is this?" I whispered, leaning closer. My hair brushed his shoulder.
"A predictive model." His voice was tight. Horrified. "It's an AI. He's been feeding it patient data for decades."
He opened a file labeled PROJECT CHARTER - H.D. EYES ONLY.
And there it was. Everything.
The genetic flaw in the Delaunay women. Henri's obsession with "purifying the bloodline." The Iris Project wasn't about curing anyone—it was about screening future heirs. About control.
About perfection.
"My God," I breathed, my hand tightening on his shoulder.
He covered my hand with his. Held it there. Squeezed once.
We're in this together. That's what the gesture said.
He scrolled deeper. Found the logs. The clinical, cold documentation of what Henri had done.
Amélie wasn't a patient. She was Phase 2. A test subject. The serum wasn't treatment—it was a control variable in Henri's experiment.
"He's been testing her," Alan said, his voice hollow. "Testing the AI's ability to predict disease progression in a live subject."
"The dosage reduction." My voice cracked. "He destabilized her on purpose. To feed the AI regression data."
"To see how fast the machine could predict her death date."
The words hung in the cold air. Monstrous. True.
He was sacrificing his own great-granddaughter to perfect a machine that would screen all future Delaunay heirs for genetic "purity."
Eugenics wrapped in medical research and family legacy.
I choked on rage and grief. Tears blurred my vision.
Alan stood up suddenly, turning to face me. We were inches apart in that cold server room. His eyes were black. Wild. Filled with a murderous fury that should have terrified me.
It didn't.
Because I felt the exact same thing.
"He's going to pay for this," Alan said, his voice deadly quiet.
"Yes. He is."
His hand came up, cupping my face. Thumb brushing away a tear I hadn't realized had fallen.
"I'm sorry," he said. "For all of it. For not knowing. For not being there. For—"
"Stop." I grabbed his wrist. Held his hand against my face. "We fix this now. We destroy him. Then we save her."
"Together?"
"Together."
He pulled me against him. Not a kiss. Just—contact. His forehead pressed to mine. Both of us breathing hard. Both of us shaking with fury and fear and something else I couldn't name.
"I won't let him take her from us," he whispered against my temple. "I swear to God, Élise. I won't."
"I know."
Because I did. For the first time since this nightmare started, I believed him. Believed we could win.
We stood like that for maybe ten seconds. Holding each other in a server room in Geneva while the evidence of Henri's crimes blinked on screens around us.
Then Alan pulled back. His jaw set. His eyes cold and focused.
"We need a plan," he said.
"We need a weapon."
He looked at the screen. At the years of data. At the proof of Henri's illegal experiments.
A slow, dangerous smile crossed his face.
"We just found one."