I didn’t sleep that night.
Vincent didn’t either.
Marcus put two guards outside my guest room, one at the hallway entrance, and another near the staircase.
I still carried a chair beneath the door handle.
Paranoia was only irrational when nobody was trying to kill you.
At three in the morning, I sat on the edge of the bed staring at the photograph of my car.
Three weeks earlier.
My nursing agency had contacted me only nine days earlier.
That meant someone had been tracking me before the official job offer existed.
Why?
At 3:26, someone knocked.
“Megan.”
Vincent.
I opened the door.
He stood in gray sweatpants and a black T-shirt, looking less like Chicago’s feared crime boss and more like a stubborn patient who had escaped bed rest.
“You’re supposed to be asleep.”
“So are you.”
“I’m not the one with poison in my bloodstream.”
“No. You’re the one with armed guards outside your bedroom.”
He stepped inside.
I noticed the exhaustion around his eyes.
“How long did you know Rachel Monroe?” I asked.
He went still.
“The missing nurse.”
“Six weeks.”
“What was she like?”
“Quiet. Competent. Terrified by the end.”
“Of you?”
“No.”
That mattered.
“What happened?”
Vincent looked toward the window.
“She started asking questions about my medication. Howard said she had become unstable.”
“And you believed him?”
“Yes.”
He said it without defending himself.
That was another thing I had begun to notice about Vincent.
He could be brutal.
Arrogant.
Controlling.
But when he realized he had made a mistake, he didn’t waste time pretending otherwise.
“Rachel disappeared after thirty thousand dollars went missing from a security account,” he said. “Her apartment was empty. Car abandoned.”
“Did she have family?”
“One sister in Wisconsin.”
“And nobody asked her?”
“Marcus did. She hadn’t heard from Rachel.”
I stood.
“Get dressed.”
Vincent frowned.
“It’s three-thirty.”
“Great observation.”
“Where are we going?”
“Rachel’s apartment.”
“You are not going anywhere.”
I looked at him.
“You’ve clearly misunderstood how our relationship works.”
“What relationship?”
“Patient and nurse.”
“That does not give you authority over me.”
“It gives me enough authority to tell you to put on a coat.”
Thirty minutes later, we left through a service gate in an armored SUV.
Marcus drove.
Two more vehicles followed.
Rachel Monroe’s former apartment was in Evanston, on the third floor of a brick building near the lake.
The landlord was less interested in helping until Vincent quietly asked Marcus to buy the building.
Ten minutes later, we had access.
Money was efficient.
I disliked how impressive that was.
Rachel’s apartment had been cleared.
Too cleared.
No photographs.
No clothes.
No dishes.
No toiletries.
It looked staged.
I opened kitchen drawers.
Empty.
Closets.
Empty.
Bedroom.
Empty.
Vincent stood in the doorway.
“What are you looking for?”
“Something someone forgot.”
I checked beneath the bathroom sink.
Nothing.
Behind the toilet tank.
Nothing.
Inside an air vent.
Nothing.
Then I noticed a scratch along the baseboard beneath the bedroom radiator.
I knelt.
The molding was loose.
Behind it was a tiny flash drive wrapped in plastic.
Marcus stared.
“How did you see that?”
“People who clean up crimes tend to overlook people who’ve spent years looking for lost pills beneath hospital furniture.”
We returned to the mansion before sunrise.
Marcus opened the drive on an isolated laptop.
There were twenty-seven files.
Photographs of Vincent’s medication bottles.
Copies of pharmacy receipts.
Screenshots of text messages.
Audio recordings.
And one video.
Rachel appeared on screen.
She looked exhausted.
“If anyone finds this,” she said, “I did not steal from Vincent Vale.”
Vincent’s face hardened.
Rachel continued.
“I found duplicate medication orders. Dr. Bell told me not to interfere. Then someone entered Mr. Vale’s room at night and changed supplements.”
She held up a bottle.
“I sent one tablet to a lab. It contained thallium.”
My stomach dropped.
Rachel looked directly into the camera.
“I told Thomas Rourke.”
Vincent went completely still.
“He promised to protect me.”
Rachel swallowed.
“The next morning, thirty thousand dollars disappeared and Marcus accused me of theft.”
Marcus looked sick.
“I followed evidence,” he whispered.
Rachel continued.
“I think the money was planted to discredit me.”
She held up another document.
“There’s also a succession agreement that gives Thomas control if Vincent is declared medically incompetent.”
We already knew that.
Then Rachel said something we didn’t.
“Dr. Bell has been changing lab results.”
Marcus froze the video.
Vincent’s voice was quiet.
“Play it.”
Rachel continued.
“I compared the hospital portal with the printed copies in the mansion. Vincent’s arsenic level was flagged six months ago. The paper report says normal.”
I felt my pulse increase.
Dr. Bell had known.
The video ended with Rachel looking off camera.
“I’m leaving tonight. I don’t know who I can trust.”
Then the screen went black.
No goodbye.
No explanation.
We sat silently.
Finally, Vincent asked Marcus, “Can you find her?”
“I’ll try.”
“Not try.”
Marcus nodded.
“I’ll find her.”
Vincent walked away from the desk.
I followed.
He stopped near the window.
“You should leave.”
“Again?”
“I was wrong about Rachel.”
“Yes.”
“She warned me indirectly. I listened to Bell.”
“Yes.”
“She disappeared because she tried to protect me.”
“We don’t know that.”
He turned.
“You think she’s alive?”
“I think assuming she’s dead won’t help us find her.”
His eyes moved across my face.
“You always talk like that?”
“Like what?”
“As though emotion is inefficient.”
That landed closer than I wanted.
“I stopped crying years ago.”
“Why?”
I looked at him.
“That’s not part of your treatment plan.”
He almost smiled.
Then Marcus called.
They found Rachel.
Alive.
She was living under another name in a small town near Madison.
Four hours later, she was on a secure video call.
When she saw Vincent, her face went white.
“I’m sorry.”
Vincent answered first.
“No. I am.”
Rachel started crying.
Vincent looked uncomfortable.
I understood.
We were both apparently bad with tears.
Rachel confirmed everything.
Bell altered reports.
Thomas asked questions about Vincent’s symptoms.
Someone cloned Marcus’s authorization codes.
Then came the detail that broke the case open.
“Thomas asked me for blood.”
Vincent leaned closer.
“What?”
“He said he needed a sample for a private genetic screening.”
“When?”
“Two months ago.”
My eyes moved to Marcus.
The stolen blood samples.
Not about toxicology.
Genetics.
“Why would he need Vincent’s DNA?” I asked.
Rachel hesitated.
“Something about inheritance.”
Vincent’s expression changed.
“There is no inheritance dispute.”
Rachel shook her head.
“Thomas said there might be.”
After the call, we started digging into corporate records.
Elias Mercer, Vincent’s attorney, arrived at noon.
He denied knowing about the forged deed.
He denied approving changes to the succession agreement.
He looked terrified.
That made me wonder whether he was guilty or frightened.
Maybe both.
Then Marcus discovered a hidden clause.
If Vincent died without a recognized biological heir, several controlling interests passed through a trust.
Thomas Rourke would become trustee.
But if Vincent had an heir, the transfer changed completely.
“Do you have children?” I asked.
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
Vincent stared at me.
“I generally believe I would know.”
Marcus coughed.
I ignored him.
“What about relatives?”
“One younger brother.”
“Where is he?”
Vincent’s face closed.
“Dead.”
“When?”
“Twenty-one years ago.”
Thomas had joined Vincent’s organization twenty years earlier.
I felt something click into place.
“Your brother have children?”
“No.”
“Girlfriend?”
Silence.
Marcus looked at Vincent.
Vincent frowned.
“What?”
Marcus had gone pale.
“Daniel was seeing someone.”
Vincent turned.
“Who?”
“Before he died. A woman named Leah.”
Vincent’s expression sharpened.
“You never told me.”
“You were twenty-three. Daniel died. The organization was collapsing. I thought it ended.”
My mind was already moving.
“If Daniel had a child, that child could affect the trust.”
Vincent stared at me.
Then his phone rang.
Thomas Rourke.
Nobody moved.
Vincent answered on speaker.
“Thomas.”
The voice sounded calm.
Friendly.
“Vincent. I heard about the window. Are you all right?”
Vincent looked at me.
I held up one finger.
Keep him talking.
“Fine.”
“I’m coming over.”
“No.”
Silence.
Thomas laughed softly.
“That nurse has you changing habits already.”
I felt cold.
Vincent’s expression darkened.
“How do you know about her?”
Another pause.
Then Thomas said, “Everyone knows everything in that house.”
That was a mistake.
Vincent knew it.
Marcus knew it.
So did I.
Because at that exact moment, Marcus had already isolated the mansion’s internal communications.
Nobody outside should have known I was still there.
Thomas tried to recover.
“Get some rest. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
The call ended.
Vincent stared at the phone.
Twenty years of trust broke without making a sound.
Then Marcus’s computer chimed.
One of his analysts had found Leah.
She had died eleven years earlier.
But she had left behind a son.
Twenty years old.
His name was Daniel Vale Mercer.
And according to state records, he had disappeared three days earlier.
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