Chapter 6
Camille released her statement before noon.
A polished video.
Soft lighting.
No bruised cheek.
No screaming.
No overturned wheelchair.
She sat beside Franklin in what looked like a private plane lounge, wearing cream silk and sorrow like jewelry.
“Nico Alfieri is unwell,” she said to the camera. “His recovery has been heartbreaking. Last night, under the influence of a manipulative nurse, he suffered a paranoid episode.”
I stood in Wes’s hospital room and watched her lie to the world.
My hands shook.
Wes was asleep after another round of tests.
Nico sat beside the window in his wheelchair, face unreadable.
Camille continued.
“I love him deeply. But I fear he is being isolated by people who want access to his fortune.”
My stomach turned.
Then Franklin spoke.
“Our family has contacted authorities regarding Miss Adeline Marsh, a nurse with severe financial motive and a dependent child requiring expensive surgery.”
The video cut off.
I could not breathe.
Dependent child.
He meant Wes.
Nico took the phone gently from my hand.
“Don’t watch more.”
“They’re making me the villain.”
“Yes.”
“They’ll say I planted everything.”
“They’ll try.”
“They’ll drag Wes into it.”
Nico’s eyes hardened.
“No. They won’t.”
“You can’t stop every headline.”
“No. But I can drown them in evidence.”
Jonah arrived with Helen Price and two federal agents.
The case had crossed lines now.
Kidnapping.
Medical fraud.
Financial coercion.
Attempted incapacitation.
Possibly attempted murder.
Agent Maria Cole took my statement.
She was direct, sharp, and kind enough not to soften hard questions.
“When did you first suspect medication tampering?”
I told her.
“When did you document it?”
I showed her.
“Why didn’t you report immediately?”
I looked at Wes.
“Because I was afraid they’d fire me before I could prove it.”
“And because your brother needed insurance.”
“Yes.”
She wrote that down without judgment.
That almost made me cry.
Helen testified too.
The first nurse.
She had found substituted pills two months before I did.
Franklin threatened her sister.
They held Helen in the closed rehab wing for three days, forced her to sign a nondisclosure agreement and a resignation letter, then left her with enough fear to stay gone.
The second nurse had moved to Arizona.
The third was missing.
That word sat in the room like a loaded gun.
Missing.
Nico looked at Agent Cole.
“Name.”
“Sandra Mills.”
I searched his face.
He did not know.
That was clear.
It did not absolve him completely.
It hurt him anyway.
By evening, Sandra Mills became the center of the investigation.
She had disappeared six weeks earlier after telling her roommate she had discovered something “too big for a nurse to hold.”
Her car was found near O’Hare.
No flight record.
No bank activity.
No phone.
Nico retreated into silence after hearing that.
I found him later in the hospital chapel.
He sat near the back, hands folded, head bowed.
I stopped at the door.
“You’re hiding.”
He did not turn.
“I’m praying badly.”
“I didn’t know you prayed.”
“I don’t. That’s why I’m bad at it.”
I moved beside him but did not sit.
“Wes is stable.”
“I know. I had Luca posted outside his room.”
“Thank you.”
He nodded.
Silence settled.
Then he said, “Sandra Mills worked in my house. She vanished, and I did not know.”
“You were being drugged.”
“I was still responsible.”
I had no comforting answer.
He looked up at the front of the chapel.
“After the crash, everyone started speaking around me. Camille answered questions before I could. Voss interpreted every symptom. Franklin handled legal details. My men stopped bringing me problems. They called it reducing stress.”
“That sounds like a cage.”
“It was. I helped build it by being ashamed.”
I sat then.
“You were ashamed of the wheelchair?”
His jaw tightened.
“Of needing it. Of needing anyone.”
“That’s not weakness.”
“I know that in theory.”
“In practice?”
“In practice, I wanted every mirror removed from the house.”
My chest softened despite myself.
He looked at me.
“When you said I was human, I hated that I needed to hear it.”
“You didn’t need me to say it. You needed everyone to stop forgetting it.”
His eyes held mine.
Then his phone buzzed.
He checked it.
His face changed.
“What?”
“Camille sent me a message.”
He handed it to me.
A photo filled the screen.
Sandra Mills.
Alive.
Sitting in a chair in a windowless room, holding a newspaper from that morning.
Under it, Camille had written:
Keep the nurse quiet, or the next one becomes a body.
My blood went cold.
“The next one,” I whispered.
Nico’s face was stone.
“You.”
A second message arrived.
And tell Adeline the boy’s surgery can still go wrong.
My vision blurred.
I stood too fast.
Nico caught the wheel of my panic with his voice.
“Adeline.”
“They can get to Wes.”
“They will not.”
“They already did once.”
“Yes. And I failed once. Not twice.”
The chapel door opened.
Agent Cole stepped in.
“Nico, we traced the photo metadata.”
“Where?”
She looked at me.
“An Ashcroft-owned hospice property outside Kenosha.”
Nico’s hands tightened.
“Camille knows we’ll find that.”
“Yes,” Cole said. “We think it’s bait.”
Nico looked at Sandra’s photo.
May you like
Then at me.
“Then we take the bait carefully.”
