The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 184

Chapter 184 The Data Of Betrayal

Finished

The lab was quiet, humming with the sound of machines that never slept. It was three in the morning, and Elera was running another cellular analysis. Sleep was for people whose husbands weren’t fighting a genetic war inside their own bodies, she’d decided. Or for people who could turn their brains off. She’d never been good at that.

Drakonius was asleep in the medical suite next door, finally resting without the help of drugs. His latest scans were… good. Surprisingly good. Better than her models had predicted. She should have been over the moon. Instead, she felt a nagging itch between her shoulder blades. A scientist’s instinct. When the data was too perfect, you hadn’t looked hard enough for the error.

She pulled up the last six weeks of treatment logs, side by side. The Chimera Protocol’s efficacy was plotted on a smooth, upward curve. But there were tiny, almost imperceptible dips. Regular little stutters in the data, like a heartbeat skipping. They always correlated with Simon’s morning blood draws.

Her own draws, taken at random times; showed a steeper, cleaner improvement.

Coincidence? Maybe. Simon used a slightly different brand of collection tube. Maybe there was a chemical interaction. But the itch got worse.

She pulled up the security logs for the lab. They were exhaustive. Frost saw to that. Every entry and exit, every access of a terminal, every sample logged in and out. She filtered for Simon’s ID.

There it was. Every morning, like clockwork. Access the centrifuge. Access the analyzer. Upload data to the secure server. Then, a few minutes later, a second, brief access to the server logs themselves. To edit them.

Her blood went cold.

Just then, the lab door hissed open. Frost stepped in, his face like granite. He held a tablet.

“We need to talk,” he said, his voice low. “About Simon.”

*

Simon was in his small office adjacent to the medical suite, updating patient notes. He looked up when Frost and Elera entered, and a faint, professional smile touched his lips. It faltered when he saw their expressions.

“Mrs. Vex? Is everything alright? Is Mr. Vex-?”

“He’s fine, Simon,” Elera said. Her voice was calm. Too calm. She walked to his desk and placed her own tablet on it. On the screen were two data graphs. One was jagged, with those small, regular dips. The other was a rocket ship heading for the moon.

“Care to explain the discrepancy?” she asked.

Simon’s face went pale. His eyes darted from the graph o Elera’s face to Frost, who was now standing silently by the door, blocking it. “I… I don’t understand. There must be a calibration error with the secondary analyzer. I’ve mentioned its sensitivity to temperature fluctuations before-”

the

crap,

encrypted da Frost said, his voice like a steel cable snapping. “The server logs. The edits. The

encrypted data packets you’ve been piggybacking on outgoing diagnostics to a server registered to a shell corporation in the Caymans. The one that traces back to a holding company owned by Kieran Nethys.”

3.39 Mon, Apr 13

Chapter 184 The Data Of Betrayal

27%

Finished

All the color drained from Simon’s face. He looked suddenly old and deflated. His shoulders slumped. He didn’t even try to deny it. He just stared at his hands, clasped tightly on the desk.

“How long?” Elera asked. The hurt was a cold, sharp thing in her chest. Simon had been here for years for Drakonius. He was part of the furniture. Part of the family, in a weird, sterile, medical way.

“Two years,” Simon whispered. “He approached me… after the incident with Mr. Vex’s previous treatment. The one that failed.”

“What incident?” Elera pressed.

Simon swallowed hard. “There was… an adverse reaction. To an experimental medication. I miscalculated the dosage. It was a tiny error, a decimal point in the wrong place. It wouldn’t have harmed a healthy person. But Mr. Vex… he crashed. We almost lost him.” He looked up, his eyes haunted. “I fixed it. I stabilized him. No one ever knew. But Kieran… he knew. He had someone in the pharmacy. They had the original, incorrect script. He showed me the evidence. Told me he’d send it to the medical board, to the press. I’d lose my license. I’d go to jail for malpractice. My career… my life… will be over.”

“So you agreed to spy,” Frost stated.

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The Heiress He Underestimated