Chapter 2 - The Doctor Who Was Supposed to Be Gone
Dr. Julian Vale emerged from behind the lemon trees with both hands visible.
He was in his early sixties, thin, gray-haired, dressed in a wrinkled navy suit that looked as if he had slept in it.
Alessandro did not lower his guard.
“You have ten seconds.”
Vale looked at Lily.
“So she's the gardener.”
Lily frowned.
“You know who I am?”
“I know what happened twenty minutes ago.”
Alessandro moved closer.
“How?”
“Because the same people watching this estate have been watching me for fourteen months.”
Marco and two guards entered from the opposite door.
Vale stopped.
“Search him,” Alessandro said.
“I’m not carrying a weapon.”
Marco checked anyway.
Phone.
Wallet.
Keys.
A folded envelope.
Nothing else.
“What do you want?” Alessandro asked.
Vale glanced at Lily.
“I want her out of New York before midnight.”
Lily crossed her arms.
“That’s getting old.”
“You received the message?”
“Yes.”
“Then take it seriously.”
Alessandro stepped between them.
“You don't issue orders in my house.”
Vale laughed once, without humor.
“This stopped being your house the day they put Ethan in that chair.”
The words changed everything.
Alessandro grabbed him by the front of his jacket.
Marco moved but did not intervene.
Lily did.
“Stop.”
Alessandro ignored her.
“What did you say?”
Vale did not resist.
“I said what I should have told you eighteen months ago.”
“Say it again.”
“Ethan’s condition was never as simple as you were told.”
Alessandro released him slowly.
Lily’s pulse accelerated.
“What does that mean?”
Vale looked at her.
“You saw movement?”
“Yes.”
“Voluntary?”
“I think so.”
“Once?”
“Twice.”
Vale closed his eyes.
When he opened them, grief had replaced fear.
“Oh, God.”
Alessandro stepped closer.
“Explain.”
Vale looked toward the mansion.
“Not here.”
“Explain.”
“They may have microphones.”
Alessandro almost smiled.
“You came through my greenhouse and now you're worried about microphones?”
“They found me in Philadelphia.”
The humor disappeared.
Vale continued.
“I changed apartments three times. They found all three. I stopped using my own name. They still found me.”
“Who?”
Vale looked directly at Alessandro.
“People who work for your family.”
Lily glanced at Alessandro.
His expression turned stone-hard.
“My family?”
“Your company.”
“I own my company.”
“No,” Vale said. “You inherited part of it.”
Alessandro stared at him.
Vale lowered his voice.
“The other part inherited you.”
For several seconds nobody moved.
Then Alessandro said, “Library.”
They crossed the mansion under security escort.
Lily had entered only the ground-floor service areas before.
The Romano house was enormous, but its luxury felt strangely impersonal.
Marble.
Dark wood.
Muted artwork.
Silence.
Everything looked expensive enough to make ordinary people afraid of touching it.
The library was different.
Books filled the walls.
Ethan’s school projects sat on one shelf.
A model bridge leaned beside legal volumes.
A photograph of a younger Alessandro holding a toddler Ethan stood near the fireplace.
No wife.
No mother.
Lily noticed.
She did not ask.
Marco closed the doors.
Vale placed the folded envelope on the desk.
Inside were medical records.
Old ones.
Ethan Romano.
Lily recognized his birth date.
Alessandro flipped pages rapidly.
“These are copies.”
“Yes.”
“From where?”
“Private archives.”
“What private archives?”
Vale hesitated.
“Romano Medical Consortium.”
Alessandro slammed the papers down.
“Stop saying the name like I know what it is.”
Vale sat.
“Your father created it twenty-three years ago.”
“My father ran shipping terminals.”
“Your father funded more than shipping.”
Alessandro’s eyes narrowed.
Lily watched both men.
“What did the consortium do?”
Vale looked at her.
“Neurological research.”
Lily felt cold.
“On children?”
“No. At first.”
Alessandro leaned across the desk.
“Choose your next words carefully.”
Vale swallowed.
“After Ethan’s accident, your uncle Victor authorized an experimental treatment.”
Alessandro went still.
“My uncle had no authority.”
“He had enough.”
“What treatment?”
Vale looked at Ethan’s file.
“A nerve-regeneration protocol.”
Lily’s thoughts raced.
“Was Ethan enrolled?”
Vale said nothing.
Alessandro understood the silence.
“You treated my son without permission?”
“I opposed it.”
“Did you touch him?”
“I was his consulting neurologist.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Vale looked ashamed.
“I administered the first phase.”
Alessandro moved so quickly that Lily barely saw it.
One second he was behind the desk.
The next he had Vale against the wall.
“You experimented on my son?”
“Alessandro.”
Lily put herself between them.
“Move.”
“No.”
“Lily.”
“If he knows what happened, you need him conscious.”
Alessandro looked at her.
Then at Vale.
His hand loosened.
Vale slid down the wall and coughed.
“The treatment was supposed to stimulate damaged pathways,” he said. “It was based on promising animal trials.”
“Was it approved?” Lily asked.
“No.”
Her face hardened.
Vale continued.
“I wanted to stop after the first dose.”
“Why didn't you?”
“Because Victor Romano owned the clinic.”
Alessandro’s voice dropped.
“My uncle is retired.”
Vale looked at him almost pityingly.
“No, Alessandro. Victor disappeared from public view. That is very different.”
Lily picked up the records.
Several pages contained codes.
R-801.
R-802.
R-803.
Her finger stopped.
R-806.
“The wheelchair.”
Vale’s face changed.
“What?”
“The number scratched into Ethan’s chair. R-806.”
Vale stood.
“Show me.”
Alessandro pulled up the photograph on Lily’s phone.
Vale stared.
“That isn't an inventory number.”
“What is it?”
Vale looked sick.
“It’s a patient designation.”
Lily gripped the desk.
“Ethan?”
Vale shook his head.
“No.”
Alessandro looked confused.
“Then whose?”
Vale pointed toward one of the medical pages.
R-806 appeared beside another name.
Most had been redacted.
But not all.
One remained partially visible.
BRO—
Lily stopped breathing.
Vale looked at her.
Alessandro noticed.
“What?”
Lily took the file.
“No.”
“What is it?”
She traced the letters.
BRO—
Brooks.
“No,” she repeated.
Alessandro stared at her.
“Lily.”
“My last name is Brooks.”
Vale’s face had lost all color.
“What was your mother’s name?”
Lily looked at him.
“Why?”
“Answer me.”
“Margaret Brooks.”
Vale sat down.
Lily stepped closer.
“What?”
He pressed both hands to his face.
“What?”
Vale looked up.
“I knew your mother.”
The room tilted.
Lily gripped the desk.
“My mother died when I was nineteen.”
“I know.”
“How?”
Vale looked at Alessandro.
Then back at Lily.
“Because she worked for the consortium.”
Silence.
Lily laughed once.
It sounded wrong.
“My mother taught biology at Roosevelt High.”
“After she left us.”
“She never worked for you.”
“She did.”
“No.”
“She was one of the original researchers.”
Lily shook her head.
“My mother hated hospitals.”
“Because of what happened.”
“What happened?”
Vale glanced toward Alessandro.
“Margaret discovered the protocol was being diverted from research into something else.”
“What?”
Vale swallowed.
“Control.”
Lily frowned.
“Control of what?”
“Nerve function.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It wasn't about healing paralysis anymore. They were studying how chemical stimulation could suppress or restore movement selectively.”
Alessandro’s face hardened.
“You’re telling me someone deliberately made Ethan worse?”
“I’m telling you I don’t know.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I left before the full protocol.”
Lily stared at the file.
“What does my mother have to do with R-806?”
Vale did not answer.
“Tell me.”
He looked at her with unmistakable regret.
“R-806 was Margaret.”
Lily’s grip loosened.
The papers fell.
“No.”
“It wasn't a patient code at first. It was a research identity.”
“But why put it on Ethan’s wheelchair?”
Vale looked toward the door.
“Because someone wanted the right person to recognize it.”
“Me?”
“Possibly.”
“How would anyone know I’d work here?”
Vale said nothing.
That silence was worse than an answer.
Alessandro leaned forward.
“You're saying Lily didn’t arrive here by accident?”
“I don't know.”
“Did you hire her?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
Lily answered.
“Mrs. Bellamy.”
Alessandro looked toward Marco.
“Bring her.”
Marco opened the door.
A guard stood outside.
“Find Bellamy.”
The guard hesitated.
“What?”
“Sir…”
“What?”
“Mrs. Bellamy left the property forty minutes ago.”
Alessandro’s expression changed.
“Why?”
“She said her sister was ill.”
“Call her.”
Marco did.
No answer.
Lily’s phone vibrated.
Everyone looked at it.
Another unknown message.
This time there was no photograph.
Only an address.
A storage facility in Queens.
Below it:
YOUR MOTHER LEFT SOMETHING FOR YOU.
COME ALONE.
Lily stared.
Alessandro took the phone.
“You’re not going.”
“Yes, I am.”
“No.”
“My mother is dead.”
“Exactly.”
“If she left something—”
“It’s bait.”
“I know.”
“Then why would you go?”
“Because bait only works when somebody wants what’s on the hook.”
Alessandro looked almost angry at her calmness.
“You are not walking into a trap alone.”
“They said alone.”
“They also threatened you.”
Vale stepped forward.
“There may be another reason.”
They turned.
“What?” Lily asked.
Vale pointed toward the address.
“I know that facility.”
Alessandro’s eyes narrowed.
Vale continued.
“It belonged to Romano Medical.”
“When?”
“Until the year Margaret died.”
Lily’s heart hammered.
Alessandro looked at Marco.
“Cars. No company plates.”
Lily frowned.
“You just said I wasn't going.”
“I said you weren't going alone.”
Twenty-five minutes later, two black SUVs moved through Queens.
Lily sat beside Alessandro in the back seat.
Neither spoke.
Her mind was full of her mother.
Margaret Brooks making pancakes.
Margaret Brooks correcting science homework.
Margaret Brooks refusing pain medication during her final illness because she hated feeling foggy.
Had it all hidden another life?
“What if this is nothing?” Lily whispered.
Alessandro looked out the window.
“Then we lose an hour.”
“And if it isn't?”
He looked at her.
“Then someone made a mistake bringing you into my house.”
Lily studied him.
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It is.”
“To me?”
“No.”
The storage facility was nearly empty.
Marco’s men entered first.
No movement.
No guards.
No ambush.
Unit 806 was at the far end.
Lily noticed the number and stopped.
Alessandro saw it too.
Marco cut the lock.
The metal door rose.
Inside sat one wooden table.
One old computer.
One cardboard archive box.
And one red gardening glove.
Lily recognized it.
Her mother's.
She stepped inside.
“No.”
There was a photograph beneath the glove.
Margaret Brooks stood beside a much younger Dr. Vale.
Between them was another man.
Alessandro stared.
His face became unreadable.
Lily picked up the picture.
“Who is he?”
Alessandro took it from her.
The third person was Victor Romano.
Alessandro’s uncle.
On the back, Margaret had written one sentence.
IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO ME, NEVER TRUST VICTOR.
Lily turned toward Alessandro.
Before either could speak, the old computer switched on by itself.
The screen flickered.
A video file opened.
Margaret Brooks appeared.
Older than in the photograph.
Frightened.
Alive.
She looked directly into the camera.
“If Lily is watching this, then they found Ethan.”
The screen froze.
A second later, the storage unit door began descending behind them.
May you like
Someone had activated it remotely.
Then the lights went out.
