Chapter 86

Claire's POV The days following Nicole's arrival at VM Group settled into a pattern that could only be described as psychological warfare disguised as professional collaboration. Every morning, I arrived at the lab with the same knot of tension in my stomach, knowing that she would be there—watching, waiting, looking for any crack in my armor that she could exploit. "Good morning, Claire!" Nicole's voice rang out across the laboratory with that particular brand of artificial cheerfulness that made my skin crawl. "I just wanted to say how much I admired your immunoassay results yesterday. So... meticulous." The compliment was delivered with exactly the right tone—warm enough that our colleagues would hear genuine appreciation, but with just enough emphasis on "meticulous" to plant the subtle suggestion that perhaps I was being overly cautious, possibly wasting time on unnecessary precision. "Thank you," I replied evenly, not looking up from the spectrophotometer where I was analyzing en