novelnext Chapter 348 : The Goose That Lays Golden Eggs (6)
Chapter 348 : The Goose That Lays Golden Eggs (6)
After the dial tone rang three times, the call finally connected.
[What is it?]
Gerard’s voice was ice-cold.
He was never exactly warm to begin with, but today there was an especially sharp chill in his tone.
‘No way... did he pick up on something?’
For a moment, what had happened with Rachel flashed through my mind, but I quickly shook my head.
‘No, there’s no way.’
We had agreed to pretend it never happened.
The odds that Rachel would be the one to break that promise and confess everything to Gerard were slim.
She was the one who had suggested we bring it up and clear the air in the first place.
‘And Rachel’s not the type to report every little thing to her family anyway.’
It was a topic that would be hard to bring up even between normal siblings, and Gerard was someone who obsessively fixated on his sister’s love life.
The idea of her going up to him and saying, “I accidentally spent the night with Sean,” was beyond imagining.
‘If that had happened, he would’ve already stormed over here with a gun.’
He’d have kicked down the door of my house or my office and shoved the barrel against my head.
So this cold attitude of his had to be coming from something else entirely.
[I asked what you want.]
“Is this a bad time to talk?”
[Why?]
“If it’s inconvenient, I can call you back later.”
[Just get to the point.]
“It’s about the joint animal hospital project. I wanted to discuss a possible expansion of the business.”
Right then.
[Why? What kind of disaster are you trying to cause this time?]
His voice exploded through the receiver, practically shouting in my ear.
“Disaster?”
[Every time I get involved with you, it turns into some massive disaster! Not just any mess either, but the kind that flips a whole country upside down, that has the entire world buzzing!]
I couldn’t help but let out a short laugh.
‘So that’s what this is about.’
It became clear where Gerard’s frosty attitude was coming from.
To be fair, things had never ended as a simple commotion whenever we got tangled up together.
Especially the stunt where I shook up China to put him in the CEO’s chair had apparently left him with something like trauma.
Still, it was a problem if he kept acting like this.
‘This is not ideal.’
I needed his approval for this animal hospital matter, no matter what.
And if he was already this jumpy, there was a good chance he’d panic and shut this one down too.
To calm him down, I continued in the gentlest tone I could manage.
“It’s nothing bad. If anything, it’s actually a pretty good opportunity.”
[You think I’m going to fall for that line again? Last time you said that...!]
“And did you lose anything by listening to me?”
Of course he hadn’t.
I had kept my promise and put Gerard in the CEO seat at Marquis.
Granted, the process hadn’t exactly been smooth.
But I’d never once promised it would be easy, so it wasn’t like I’d lied.
“I keep my promises.”
He still sounded hesitant, so I drove the point in more firmly.
“If you really don’t want to hear it, that’s fine. Just don’t complain to me later.”
You’ll regret it if something big happens and you turned down the chance to know.
What came next was obvious.
“Well, I can’t promise anything right now... but I’ll at least hear you out. I’m planning to be in New York this weekend, so maybe then...”
“It’s a little time-sensitive.”
Another brief silence followed.
I could clearly hear him swallow over the phone.
[...Fine, then I’ll see you in New Jersey tomorrow. I happen to have business there anyway. You know where our R&D center is, right?]
***
The next day, I headed to New Jersey as promised.
The Marquis Food Research Lab was quite different from the main office.
It had a sleek glass exterior, a neatly landscaped courtyard, and a geometric sculpture guarding the entrance.
The whole place had a strikingly modern, clean atmosphere.
Gerard was already waiting for me at the entrance.
“Since you’re here, want to check out our new product before you go?”
“I don’t have time for that.”
I turned him down flat.
Borrowed time is an especially precious resource.
I wasn’t free enough to spend it touring Gerard’s pet project.
“It’ll only take a moment. You can’t even spare ten minutes?”
“I’m not that into sweets.”
“Really? That’s not what Rachel told me.”
My heart dropped for a second.
“She said you actually eat sweets all the time, and Rachel’s not the type to lie about something like that.”
I suddenly had no idea how I was supposed to react to that.
He wouldn’t suspect anything as long as my attitude stayed consistent with how I usually acted whenever he mentioned Rachel.
If I slipped, he’d start prying, asking if something had happened between us.
The problem was, I couldn’t even remember what my “usual” attitude was supposed to be.
Letting this conversation drag on would only lead to awkward slip-ups.
It was better to just cut it short.
“Fine, then I’ll take a quick look for ten minutes and go.”
“You should’ve just said that from the start.”
And so we walked down the hallway together.
The whole way there, he chattered excitedly about how the ambitious “molecular gastronomy snack project” he’d been pushing since becoming CEO was finally starting to show real results.
“Did you see the promo video for this product yet? Oh, right, you said you don’t use social media, didn’t you? Anyway, it’s blowing up right now. We skipped celebrity ads and tried influencer marketing instead, and the market response has been way better than we expected. It’s insanely popular with our main target, the younger crowd. We sold out in just a month and we’re ramping up production as we speak.”
Pride was dripping from Gerard’s voice.
But inwardly, I clicked my tongue.
‘This isn’t good.’
He looked way too absorbed in his own project.
If I brought up the animal hospital venture while he was in this state, there was a high chance he’d cut me off with something like, “This isn’t the time to get distracted. I need to focus on this.”
While I was thinking that, we somehow arrived at the test kitchen.
A researcher pulled a small clear container from a test cooler and handed it to Gerard, and he in turn held it out to me.
Inside were small, perfectly round beads that glowed with a soft orange hue.
‘Orange, huh...’
A memory rose up unbidden.
The orange-lit procession that had filled Talia’s funeral hall.
The mourning scene painted by that color.
But Gerard, who hadn’t been there, didn’t notice any of that and continued explaining in an upbeat, cheerful tone.
“We call it Orange Blast. It’s a candy we make by flash-freezing juice with liquid nitrogen......Go on, try it. It’s pretty fun.”
I carefully picked up one of the little spheres Gerard offered and popped it into my mouth.
A burst of cold hit first, then the candy shattered with a crisp crunch, releasing a bright, tangy orange flavor.
When I opened my mouth, white vapor puffed out like steam.
“Cool, right?”
I frowned slightly.
“It’s interesting, but it doesn’t taste very good.”
That was the truth.
The aftertaste was kind of flat and murky.
Even with my cool, blunt review, Gerard didn’t budge an inch.
“I really don’t get what young people like these days. They’re more into how things look than how they taste. And this stuff looks great on camera. There’s already an Orange Breath Challenge going around on social media… Oh, right, you said you don’t know much about that world, didn’t you?”
“It’s not like I know nothing about social media.”
Honestly, thanks to Talia’s bucket list video, I’d been getting a decent amount of attention over there myself lately.
“So does that mean your new strategy is to sell flashy candy that doesn’t taste good?”
I deliberately tried to pick a fight, but it didn’t seem to land at all.
Gerard was clearly already neck-deep in his own project.
‘That’s just going to make him harder to convince.’
While I was running the numbers in my head, he suddenly asked,
“So, what did Rachel decide to do?”
My breath caught again.
“I’m not sure what you mean...”
“The offline showroom. She said she might open one in D.C. too.”
I had no idea what he was talking about.
It’s not like Rachel and I keep in regular contact, and even when we do talk, the conversation is always limited strictly to Castle-related things.
Seeing me stand there blankly without responding, Gerard tilted his head and went on.
“She said she’s getting so many inquiries that she’s thinking about opening another space in Washington on top of the New York gallery. Oh, she never mentioned that to you?”
“No. This is the first I’m hearing of it.”
A puzzled look crossed Gerard’s face.
“Weren’t you two basically glued together in Philadelphia? I heard you were running into each other almost every day... you were, right?”
Suspicion flickered in his eyes.
Did he pick up on something?
We hadn’t just seen each other for a day or two; we’d practically spent a whole month together.
My gaze drifted, almost on its own, to the liquid nitrogen tank sitting on the workbench next to him.
Liquid nitrogen sits at minus 196 degrees Celsius.
Just touching your skin is enough to freeze the tissue in an instant, causing severe cold burns or frostbite.
I’d heard of cases where just a few seconds of exposure was enough to start necrosis, and if a wide area was exposed, the skin could shatter like glass.
Next to it, a row of culinary torches hung neatly in a line.
High-pressure butane torches that spat out flames at 1,300 degrees.
‘No way...’
The thought finally hit me.
Why had Gerard insisted on meeting me here of all places?
If he just wanted a tasting, he could’ve used a safe, finished-product testing room—so why the middle of a lab surrounded by dangerous equipment?
That strange sense of wrongness overlapped, oddly enough, with the memory of the first time I’d met him.
Back then too, he’d been grilling me while surrounded by rows and rows of shotguns.
‘No... there’s no way.’
No matter what, Gerard wasn’t the kind of person who’d do something that insane.
Of course he wouldn’t...
I forced myself to shake my head and answered calmly.
“Rachel and I didn’t really have time for small talk. We both had to focus on the patient. This time she needed a lot of hands-on care.”
“Ah. Talia...”
A shadow passed over Gerard’s face.
“She was a good kid. It’s really a shame.”
He must have been there to see Talia’s final moments too.
After a brief stretch of silence, he finally lifted his head.
“But back then...did anything... weird happen?”
Caught off guard, my eyes flicked to the table right next to him.
Within arm’s reach sat one of those high-pressure torches that spewed 1,300-degree flames.
“What do you mean, ‘weird’?”
“I mean, Rachel’s been acting a little strange since what happened with Talia. She’s subtly different from before. Feels like she’s even keeping a bit of distance from me. And you were right there, closest to her, weren’t you? I figured maybe you knew something.”
Damn it.
So Rachel really had been acting off, and Gerard had picked up on that discomfort.
If I handled this wrong, he might start suspecting me too.
In situations like this...
“I honestly don’t know much. If anything, you’d probably get more out of asking that woman, Jessie.”
“Ah... her.”
A faint look of displeasure crossed Gerard’s face.
Come to think of it, I’d heard David and Jessie had met him once before.
“She and I don’t exactly get along that well...but maybe I should still call her myself...”
For a second, I remembered the way Jessie had looked at me at the funeral, like she’d noticed something.
I really hoped I was wrong, but if Gerard heard anything from her...
“If you’d like, I can ask her for you and let you know what she says.”
I didn’t like the idea, but I didn’t have much of a choice.
It was better than leaving room for things to spiral out of control.
“But giving it a little more time is also an option. It might just be that this case hit her harder because the patient was such a young girl, and she got too emotionally invested.”
“You think so...?”
“Let’s watch her for about a week. If nothing changes by then, I’ll look into it myself.”
Gerard finally nodded.
I subtly flashed the piece of art on my wrist.
“Anyway, we don’t have much time left. Let’s get to the main topic.”