Chapter 4 - The project hidden beneath Blackthorn Hall
Blackthorn Hall was older than my marriage.
Older than my father.
Parts of the estate dated back nearly two centuries.
But the underground medical wing beneath the east gardens was modern.
James built it during the final years of his pharmaceutical career.
After his death, I closed the facility.
At least, I believed I had.
The formal inventory described the wing as decommissioned.
Research materials transferred.
Animal licenses terminated.
Laboratories emptied.
Richard had handled much of the paperwork because I was grieving and raising Claire.
I signed whatever he placed in front of me.
That sentence now felt unforgivable.
Samuel opened another ledger.
Project Six concerned venom research—not weaponization, not some cinematic secret poison, but pharmaceutical studies exploring compounds that might become useful in clotting, pain control, and neurological treatments.
James’s researchers studied six snake species.
That explained the licensed enclosure still maintained in the library.
The animals themselves were never the secret.
The human data were.
During early work, a small group of private contractors collected biological samples under consent procedures that were later questioned.
James discovered irregularities.
He ordered the project suspended.
According to Richard, every file was destroyed.
According to Samuel’s ledger, they were not.
Richard revived the program through shell laboratories after James died.
Using charity money.
Why?
Because one compound developed during Project Six had become commercially valuable.
Not as a poison.
As a potential medical treatment.
A multinational biotech firm had quietly offered hundreds of millions for the patent rights.
But the ownership was complicated.
The original research belonged partly to the Blackthorn Foundation.
If the project resurfaced officially, Richard would have no personal claim.
So he financed the work secretly, planning to transfer the intellectual property through fake companies before anyone discovered its origin.
The forged will solved his final problem.
If I died and he controlled the foundation, he could “discover” the abandoned research and claim authority over the transaction.
Claire stared at him.
“You weren’t trying to inherit the house.”
Richard looked at her.
“You think I care about this mausoleum?”
He gestured toward Blackthorn Hall.
“The patent was worth more than all of it.”
That was the first honest sentence he had spoken.
I asked:
“And the charity money?”
“Temporary capital.”
“For nine years?”
“I was going to replace it.”
Samuel laughed quietly.
Every thief eventually invents the same word.
Temporary.
Richard turned on him.
“You think Eleanor built this fortune cleanly?”
I looked up.
“What does that mean?”
He pointed toward the floor.
“Ask her precious husband.”
James had been dead for two decades.
Richard was still afraid of him.
Special Agent Cross instructed us not to pursue that line further until the hidden lab could be secured.
But Claire was already moving.
She crossed to the bookshelf where James used to keep his field notebooks.
One volume remained.
A leather-bound book I had never opened after his death.
Claire pulled it free.
A key dropped from behind the binding.
Not a modern electronic key.
Old brass.
Samuel’s face changed.
“That opens the south archive.”
“There is no south archive,” I said.
“There wasn’t supposed to be.”
Richard lunged toward Claire.
The security doors prevented him from leaving.
They did not prevent movement inside the room.
Claire stepped back.
Samuel moved between them.
Richard stopped.
Not because Samuel was stronger.
Because a camera above the fireplace turned toward him.
Everything was still recording.
Claire held up the brass key.
“Dad left this?”
Samuel nodded slowly.
“James gave it to me before he died. I hid it after Richard started asking about the project.”
“Why in that book?”
“Because your mother never touched James’s research journals.”
That was true.
Grief had turned an entire shelf into sacred territory.
For twenty years, I avoided it.
Richard had counted on that.
So had Samuel.
We opened the south archive only after federal investigators secured the corridor.
Inside were not formulas.
Not weapons.
Not dangerous samples.
Records.
Consent forms.
Patent drafts.
Letters.
And one sealed video cassette labeled in James’s handwriting:
For Eleanor, if Richard ever brings back Project Six.
My hands shook when Agent Cross placed the digitized copy on the library monitor.
James appeared on the screen.
Older than I remembered.
Tired.
He looked directly into the camera.
“Eleanor, if you’re seeing this, then my brother-in-law has done exactly what I was afraid he would do.”
Richard stopped breathing.
Then James said:
“Richard didn’t discover Project Six after my death.”
May you like
“He started it.”
Cliffhanger: My late husband had known Richard was involved from the beginning—and his recording suggested Claire’s uncle had been stealing research, money, and identities long before anyone called him family protector.
