Chapter 2 - THE CHOICE RAFE DID NOT EXPECT
Greer dropped the pen.
She did not sign.
She also did not stay.
“Emergency protocol seven,” she told Nolan. “Seal the growth chamber. Remove no tissue. Touch nothing until I arrive.”
Rafe closed his eyes.
“I love you,” Greer said. “But if someone sabotaged a living specimen, this is no longer a normal lab emergency.”
“You always have a reason.”
“And you chose the one moment I could not ethically ignore.”
She picked up her handbag and ran.
The elevator doors closed on Rafe standing beside the broken wedding photograph and unsigned divorce papers.
At Aldercrest Botanical Research, Nolan waited in protective gear outside the sealed chamber. The last Aurelia orchid drooped beneath white lights. Its translucent petals had begun turning gray.
Greer scanned her thumb to override the lock.
“Nutrient pressure?” she asked.
“Dropping.”
“Root oxygen?”
“Normal until nine minutes ago.”
Greer entered, isolated the roots, and flushed the delivery lines. The reservoir contained salt concentrations five times above protocol. This was not natural collapse. Someone had contaminated the system.
She stabilized one viable stem before midnight. The specimen survived, barely.
For forty minutes, Greer worked without noticing tears running beneath her protective mask. She adjusted salinity in fractional steps, massaged air from a clogged root line, and spoke to the orchid as if calm could travel through gloves.
When the pressure graph finally leveled, no one cheered. The gray petals remained folded. Survival looked like a line that stopped falling.
Greer knew marriages could survive that way too—technically alive, visibly damaged, waiting for someone to mistake stability for recovery.
Nolan hugged her. Greer stood rigid in his arms, thinking of Rafe’s empty ring on the desk.
“You saved it,” Nolan said.
“Who changed the reservoir?”
His arms dropped. “The system logs show your credentials.”
Greer checked the terminal. Her login opened the chamber remotely at 3:17 that afternoon, while she was in Rafe’s office.
Only two people had copies of her biometric backup token: Nolan and Aldercrest corporate security.
Rafe chaired Aldercrest Holdings.
Greer refused the thought before it formed. Whatever had happened between them, Rafe would not destroy living research to force a choice.
Her phone displayed no messages from him.
At 1:08 a.m., a courier arrived at the lab with an envelope. Rafe had filed the divorce petition. The agreement was no longer an ultimatum on his desk. It had become a court case.
Greer signed only the courier’s receipt. Her hand shook at the similarity: another pen, another line, another document altering her life while the orchid lights hummed behind her.
She called Rafe once. He did not answer. She typed three messages and deleted them because each became an argument before reaching its second sentence.
Nolan offered to drive her home. Greer declined and slept for ninety minutes in the conference room, using her handbag as a pillow. When she woke, the divorce petition lay beside the lab alarm report. Two emergencies had become paper, and paper made both look calmer than they were.
Attached was notice that Aldercrest’s board had suspended the orchid project pending a security review.
Nolan read over her shoulder. “He did this.”
Greer looked through the glass at the damaged plant.
May you like
The sabotage and Rafe’s filing occurred within minutes of each other.
Someone wanted her to believe the marriage and the research had the same enemy.
