Chapter 6 - PROJECT ORCHARD
Roman remembered Isabella’s death too clearly.
Night highway.
Black SUV.
Rain.
A truck crossed lanes.
Impact.
Driver dead.
Isabella dead at the scene.
Eva survived in a rear child seat with minor injuries.
Roman had not been in the vehicle.
Cole reached the hospital before him.
Cole handled security footage.
Police liaison.
The driver’s family.
Funeral logistics.
Everything.
At the time, Roman called it loyalty.
Now every helpful action looked different.
Dangerous.
He needed facts.
Roman ordered an independent reconstruction of Isabella’s crash using records outside his organization.
State police archive.
Insurance photos.
Hospital records.
Not internal summaries.
Meanwhile, Project Orchard.
The ledgers showed twelve million dollars.
Recipients disguised through clinics, security contractors, consultants, and private schools.
Roman’s accountants traced them.
One clinic:
Northwood Pediatric Development.
Eva had been evaluated there at age two.
Another:
Shoreline Behavioral Institute.
Eva attended for six months.
Another:
Cresthill Medical Research.
Roman never heard of it.
All received funds from shell companies tied to Project Orchard.
Captain Cole had recommended every provider.
Roman sat across from Jonah Reese.
“How much did you know?”
“Nothing about Orchard.”
“Do not answer quickly.”
Jonah looked angry.
“At him or me?”
“Both.”
Jonah had served under Cole for eight years.
He admitted Cole controlled Eva’s security schedule independently.
No one questioned it because Roman wanted privacy.
Cole sometimes paid specialists through security companies instead of family office accounts.
Reason given:
Keep Eva’s identity out of medical billing systems.
Roman approved privacy in principle.
Not specific payments.
Again.
A reasonable concern became a blind spot.
Northwood Pediatric Development no longer existed.
Closed four years earlier.
Former director:
Dr. Alan Mercer.
Where was he?
Florida.
Retired.
Roman did not send armed men.
He sent attorneys.
Alan initially refused.
Then records showed Project Orchard paid his clinic three hundred thousand dollars above treatment invoices.
He agreed to speak.
“What was Orchard?”
Alan looked exhausted.
“Observation.”
“Of Eva?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Captain Cole said Roman wanted a confidential long term developmental record.”
“I never did.”
Alan’s face changed.
“He had authorization letters.”
“Signed by me?”
“Yes.”
Roman knew what was coming.
“Did you verify directly?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Cole was your head of security.”
Again.
Roman’s authority weaponized through another person.
“What were you observing?”
“Speech development. Stress response. Attachment. Behavioral inhibition.”
“Why?”
“Cole said there had been threats against the family and you wanted to understand whether Eva remembered the crash.”
Roman stopped.
“The crash?”
Alan nodded.
“Specifically whether she remembered seeing anything.”
Eva was eleven months old.
Too young for reliable narrative memory.
But fragments.
Images.
Fear associations.
Could exist.
“Did you drug her?”
“No.”
“Experiment?”
“No.”
“Anything without medical consent?”
Alan looked away.
“We conducted repeated stimulus sessions.”
“What kind?”
“Photographs. Voices. Recorded vehicle sounds.”
Roman’s jaw tightened.
“Why?”
“To measure recognition.”
“Whose voices?”
“I do not know names.”
Alan provided archives.
One audio set contained Roman’s voice.
Isabella’s.
Cole’s.
Michael’s.
A fifth man.
The video of Eva’s reactions remained.
At age two, when Cole’s voice played, Eva froze.
When Isabella’s played, she cried.
When a specific male voice played, Eva covered her ears.
Who?
Roman did not know.
Then the same voice appeared inside a Project Orchard conference recording.
Speaker:
“Subject E7 still reacts to Morrow.”
Morrow.
Roman recognized the surname.
Victor Morrow.
Former chief financial officer.
Killed in a warehouse shooting five years earlier.
Officially rival violence.
Cole handled that investigation too.
Roman felt the walls closing.
“What was Morrow’s connection to Isabella?”
Michael’s ledgers gave one clue.
Payment from Morrow to a private driver two days before Isabella’s crash.
Then the crash reconstruction arrived.
The truck that crossed lanes had not randomly drifted.
Its GPS route changed minutes before impact.
Driver phone received a call.
From a burner.
Burner purchased by a Vale security contractor.
Not proof Cole.
But inside Roman’s perimeter.
The truck driver died in the collision.
Could he have been ordered to force Isabella’s SUV off road?
Maybe.
Then the insurance photographs showed something else.
Isabella’s SUV brakes.
A rear hydraulic line had been cut.
Investigators at the time attributed it to crash damage.
Modern review suggested the cut may predate impact.
The driver might have been unable to slow before the truck entered his lane.
Roman stared at the report.
Two possible manipulations.
Truck.
Brakes.
Redundancy.
Someone wanted that crash.
Then Alan Mercer produced the final Project Orchard file.
A statement signed by Captain Cole:
Objective: determine whether E7 retained identifying memory of V. Morrow at scene prior to Isabella event.
Roman read it twice.
Scene prior to Isabella event.
Eva may have seen Victor Morrow before the crash.
If she remembered him, somebody feared she might one day identify him.
That could explain why Cole monitored her development.
Not why she was silent from infancy.
Then Hannah Price reviewed early records.
Eva had babbled normally before the crash.
Afterward, developmental regression appeared.
No spoken words.
The timeline changed everything.
Roman had remembered her as always silent because infancy blurred after Isabella’s death.
But medical records were clear.
Eva vocalized before the crash.
Stopped afterward.
Trauma could explain it.
Project Orchard may have spent years watching whether that trauma ever loosened.
Roman looked at the camera footage of Eva screaming for Marcus.
Why Marcus?
What made him safe enough to break seven years of silence?
Marcus’s brother Ethan had spent time with Michael.
Maybe Marcus’s voice resembled Ethan’s.
Or something about him connected to an earlier safe memory.
Then Hannah noticed one Project Orchard image.
A photograph shown repeatedly to Eva at age three.
Young Ethan Shaw.
Marcus’s older brother.
Roman stopped breathing.
May you like
Why had Eva been shown Ethan’s face years before Marcus ever entered the estate?
Continue to the next part: Project Orchard had been monitoring Eva’s reaction to Marcus’s own brother for years.
