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“You’re still not making sense,” I said. “Neither of us fits the indigenous criteria, and we just happened to forget to invite a government representative to our wedding.”

He looked positively giddy when he answered. “Wrong on both counts. The law also addresses marriage ceremoniesperformedby indigenous people regardless if those getting married are native or not. Your unusual circumstance met exactly this criteria, and therewasan government representative present...me. So, let me be the first to officially congratulate you on your marriage. Your marriage certificate should arrive in the mail in a couple of months—I’ll see to that personally. So, congratulations to you both.”

Slash and I looked at each other and started laughing. Gwen, Natelli, and some of the other researchers in the lab who were eavesdropping on our conversation, cheered and started congratulating us.

After that died down, I asked Vicente if he intended to remain a part of the vaccine trials.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I have special permission from the government to do exactly that. Now with most, if not all, the obstacles out of our way, we can finally do what we came to do.”

I couldn’t have agreed more.

Chapter Sixty

Arjun Singh

“The data makes absolutely no sense!”

Arjun paced back and forth in front of his computer guy, Krish Anand, madder than he could ever remember being. “Our scientists can’t make heads or tails of it. They believe it’s all bogus. Either you grabbed the wrong stuff or they played you for a fool. You’re a useless idiot and deserve to be fired for incompetence.”

As he finished his rant, his brother and Director of Security, Vihaan, entered the office, not even issuing a greeting before speaking. “Brother, I have some bad news. Our contact in Brazil is no longer communicating with us. In fact, his email appears to have been shut down. I can’t reach him.”

Arjun closed his eyes, feeling his blood pressure going through the roof. “I promised our investors a big breakthrough surprise this week, and we havenothing. We’re facing a significant crisis. Start setting some resources aside while we still have some in case we have to shut down quickly and start over again somewhere else.”

He heard a knock on the door that was ajar and saw his secretary standing there. “Excuse me, sir. This just arrived for you.” She brought him a sealed envelope with nothing but his name on the front.

Arjun held the envelope gingerly in his hand as if it were a bomb. “What’s this? It can’t possibly be more bad news, because it can’t get any worse than it already is.”

Vihaan snatched it out of his hand. “As your Director of Security, let me read it first.” He tore open the envelope and pulled out two sheets of paper, scanning the contents on the first page. Slowly he raised his gaze to meet his brother’s.

“It’s from Ajay Dewan, that punk journalist. He’s telling us that he’ll be doing an interview about the company at eleven o’clock on the local news, and invites us to watch.” Vihaan glanced at his watch. “That’s in ten minutes. He also says it’s been quite an enlightening experience going through all of our company and personal emails that were provided to him anonymously.”

“What?”Arjun whirled on Krish. “He can’t have our emails, can he?”

“I warned you that downloading the information from Vaccitex without isolating it was dangerous,” Krish retorted. “But you were willing to accept the risk because it was urgent.”

“That’s ridiculous. You were supposed to prevent this from happening. That’s what I pay you for. This is a disaster.”

“Of your own making,” Krish shot back with such venom, it caught him totally off guard. “You don’t have to fire me because I quit! Good luck finding someone else who will put up with your underhanded and shady dealings. You’re a disgrace to your country.”

Krish stormed out of the office, leaving him and Vihaan with mouths wide open. Arjun ran a hand through his hair, wondering if he should have insisted on getting all the passwords to everything before he’d left. “Can we salvage anything from this?”

Vihaan shook his head. “I doubt it.” He handed his brother the second sheet. “He has our investor pitch.”

“No. How is that possible? That’s proprietary information.”

“Someone has access to all our files apparently. Dewan says he intends to broadcast copies of the documents to prove that once we developed the vaccine, we intended to charge India and some of the poorest countries in the world over five hundred times the cost of a dose of vaccine. We could do it because we were going to have a monopoly. But that isn’t all, they have access to everything. That means all of the deals, the bribes and cover-ups. It could all be exposed.”

Panic filled him. “We need to make plans to cut our losses and run.” He dashed to his computer and pulled up his banking information. “No! They’ve frozen our accounts.” He banged his fist on the keyboard. “They can’t do this.”

His secretary stepped into his office again. “Excuse me, sir. The news is coming on the television now, and I’ve been informed the company is going to be featured on it. Would you like to watch it?”

The woman had no clue. He glanced in despair at his brother. “What do we do, Vihaan?”

His brother closed his eyes, a pained look on his face. “We surrender.”

Chapter Sixty-One

Lexi