Chapter 2 - THE PATENT THAT BELONGED TO HER MOTHER
Elena reached St. Catherine's Medical Center shortly after eleven.
Her mother's room was on the seventh floor, overlooking a parking garage and a narrow strip of city lights.
Margaret Carter was fifty-four, but illness had aged her beyond her years.
Her once-thick auburn hair had thinned.
Her hands trembled when she held a cup.
Yet her eyes remained sharp.
“Elena?”
Her daughter approached the bed.
“Mom, I need to ask you something.”
Margaret immediately noticed her expression.
“What happened?”
“Did you work for Bennett Biomedical?”
The silence answered before Margaret did.
She slowly set down her crossword puzzle.
“Who told you that?”
“Vanessa Bennett.”
Margaret's face drained of color.
“Elena, listen to me carefully.”
“Is it true?”
“Yes.”
Elena stared.
“Why did you never tell me?”
Margaret closed her eyes.
“Because I thought the past was finished.”
“What past?”
Her mother looked toward the door.
Then whispered, “I helped develop a treatment delivery system for patients with degenerative neurological disorders.”
Elena glanced at the infusion pump beside the bed.
“Like the condition you have?”
Margaret nodded.
“The technology was supposed to make treatment safer and more accessible.”
“What happened?”
“Richard Bennett wanted to sell the research before the safety trials were complete.”
Elena sat down.
“And you refused?”
“I reported the missing safety data.”
Margaret's eyes filled.
“Three weeks later, they accused me of stealing company property.”
Elena felt the room tilt.
Her mother had always described leaving research work as a career change.
She had never mentioned an accusation.
“Did you steal anything?”
“No.”
“Then why didn't you fight?”
“I tried.”
Margaret looked at her daughter.
“They had lawyers. I had a mortgage and a twelve-year-old child.”
Elena swallowed.
“Me.”
“Yes.”
Margaret reached for her hand.
“I was terrified they'd come after you.”
Elena remembered the year everything changed.
Their house sold.
Her mother working nights.
The sudden move to a smaller apartment.
She had assumed it was because her father had abandoned them.
Now she wondered how many parts of her childhood had been carefully concealed.
“Mom, Vanessa threatened your treatment.”
Margaret went still.
“What?”
“She said it might stop if I didn't stay away from Dante.”
Margaret gripped Elena's hand.
“Then you need to leave that house.”
“I will.”
“Tonight.”
Elena hesitated.
She needed the salary.
But the fear in her mother's eyes frightened her more than the possibility of losing her job.
“All right.”
Margaret exhaled shakily.
Then whispered, “There's something else.”
Elena leaned closer.
“The research wasn't mine alone.”
“Whose was it?”
Margaret looked toward the window.
“Your father helped me develop it.”
Elena's heart stopped.
Her father had supposedly died in a boating accident when she was thirteen.
“What?”
Margaret's voice broke.
“He discovered what Bennett was doing.”
“And?”
“He disappeared two days before he was supposed to testify.”
Elena stared.
“You told me he drowned.”
Margaret began crying.
“They found his boat.”
“Did they find his body?”
“No.”
Elena pulled her hand away.
May you like
For thirteen years, she had mourned a man whose death had never been confirmed.
And now the woman she trusted most was telling her that everything might have been a lie.
