Chapter 5 - Midnight at Saint Jude
The clinic had once been called Saint Jude Rehabilitation Center.
It closed eleven years earlier after a fire damaged the western wing. The state condemned the building, but no one demolished it because ownership had become tangled in lawsuits.
According to county records, the property now belonged to a shell corporation controlled by Samuel Whitaker.
I read the report twice.
Then I loaded my weapon.
Rosa stood across from me in the library.
“You are not taking me.”
“They asked for you.”
“And you intend to give them what they want?”
“I intend to make them believe I will.”
She looked toward the hidden safe-room door where Daniela and Martina slept under Dr. Pierce’s supervision.
“I can help.”
“No.”
“Mr. Moretti—”
“My name is Gabriel.”
Rosa became quiet.
After all the years she had lived in my home, she had never called me by my first name.
“You protected my daughters when I did not know they needed protecting,” I said. “You are not walking into that clinic.”
“They threatened Mateo.”
My anger cooled into something sharper.
“What?”
She showed me her phone.
A photograph had arrived minutes earlier.
Mateo stood outside his school beside a gray van. The image had been taken that afternoon.
Beneath it was a message.
Midnight. No police. No tricks.
“They have been watching him for weeks,” Rosa said.
“I’ll send men.”
“And if they already have someone inside his school? Inside my sister’s building?”
“You still aren’t going.”
“You cannot protect everyone by ordering them to hide.”
I looked at her bruised cheek.
“No. But I can start by protecting the person Patricia blamed for her crimes.”
Rosa stepped closer.
“This is not only your fight.”
She placed Elena’s invoice on the desk.
“Elena gave this to me because she trusted me. I allowed Samuel Whitaker to frighten me into silence. For four years, I have wondered whether speaking sooner could have saved someone else.”
“You were grieving too.”
“I was afraid.”
“So was I.”
Rosa’s eyes softened, but only for a moment.
“Then perhaps neither of us should face tonight alone.”
At 11:42, we approached Saint Jude in an old utility van.
Marcus drove.
Officially, I was alone.
In reality, twelve members of my private security team surrounded the property. Two occupied the wooded ridge. Four entered through the damaged western wing. The rest waited beyond the main road.
Rosa wore a transmitter beneath her blouse.
The invoice in her handbag was a copy.
The original remained inside my estate vault.
“Once we see Bell,” Marcus said, “we move.”
“No gunfire unless necessary,” I replied.
“Victor won’t hesitate.”
“Neither will Patricia.”
Rosa looked out the window.
“She was different when she first came.”
“So I believed.”
“No. She was different.”
I turned toward her.
“What do you mean?”
“She was patient with the girls. Sometimes I thought she truly cared for them.”
“People like Patricia imitate kindness.”
“Perhaps. But something changed six months ago.”
Six months.
That was when my board began discussing a merger that would place Moretti Holdings under tighter independent oversight. Victor had opposed it privately.
The merger would expose hidden transactions.
Patricia’s wedding pressure had begun at the same time.
She did not merely want access to my fortune.
She needed legal standing before auditors opened the books.
Marcus parked near the clinic.
The front entrance stood open.
A single light burned in the lobby.
I stepped out first.
Rosa followed.
“Stay behind me.”
“I am not one of your employees tonight.”
“You are still behind me.”
For the first time in hours, the corner of her mouth almost moved.
We entered.
The lobby smelled of mold, wet plaster, and old smoke.
A wheelchair lay overturned near the reception desk.
“Gabriel,” Patricia called through the darkness. “You always did enjoy dramatic entrances.”
She appeared at the end of the corridor.
Victor stood beside her holding a pistol.
Samuel Whitaker emerged from a side room.
Seeing all three together should have surprised me.
It did not.
Samuel wore a dark overcoat and leather gloves.
“You were instructed to come alone,” he said.
“I didn’t consider Rosa company.”
Patricia’s eyes narrowed.
Rosa held up the handbag.
“We brought the invoice.”
“Place it on the floor,” Victor ordered.
“Where is Thomas Bell?” I asked.
A door opened.
Nolan Price dragged Bell into the corridor.
The mechanic looked twenty years older than the photograph in his old license record. His beard was gray, one eye swollen shut.
But he was alive.
“Let him go,” I said.
Victor laughed.
“You still think you’re negotiating.”
“I think you need the original document.”
Samuel studied me.
“You brought a copy.”
“I brought enough to get inside.”
Nolan pressed his gun against Bell’s head.
Patricia sighed.
“You see why I told you Gabriel was impossible?”
She was not speaking to Victor.
She was speaking to Samuel.
Something passed between them.
Familiarity.
Possession.
Then Samuel placed his hand on the back of Patricia’s neck.
Not affectionately.
Intimately.
My stomach turned.
Victor noticed my expression and smiled.
“You thought she was sleeping with me?”
Patricia looked almost amused.
“Victor was useful. Samuel was the architect.”
Samuel’s hand remained on her neck.
“How long?” I asked.
“Does it matter?” she replied.
“Were you with him when you met me?”
“I met you because of him.”
The truth landed without pain.
Whatever I had felt for Patricia had already died in the surveillance room.
“What did Elena discover?” I asked.
Samuel’s eyes became cold.
“Your wife discovered that Victor had diverted twenty-two million dollars through logistics contracts.”
“And you helped him.”
“I protected the company.”
“You protected yourself.”
“Elena intended to expose everything to the board. She refused to understand the consequences.”
“So you killed her.”
Samuel did not answer.
Bell began shaking.
Victor turned toward him.
“Tell Gabriel what happened.”
Bell swallowed.
“I changed the brake line.”
Rosa closed her eyes.
“Who ordered you?” I asked.
Bell looked toward Samuel.
“He did.”
Samuel’s face revealed nothing.
Bell continued.
“They said Mrs. Moretti would be frightened, maybe suffer a minor crash. They said nobody would die.”
“You believed that?”
“They had my daughter.”
His voice broke.
“They knew where she went to school.”
The same method they used against Rosa.
Bell looked at me desperately.
“I tried to warn her. She already knew something was wrong. She wrote down my number.”
“Why did you disappear?”
“Victor kept me in a property upstate. When I escaped, Whitaker found me again.”
Patricia stepped forward.
“That is enough.”
She reached for Rosa’s handbag.
Rosa dropped it.
Samuel nodded toward Nolan.
He picked it up, opened it, and removed the invoice.
“One problem,” I said.
Samuel glanced at me.
“Elena’s handwriting isn’t on that copy.”
His eyes sharpened.
“Where is the original?”
“Safe.”
Nolan struck Bell across the face.
“Where?”
“You can kill me,” I said, “and you’ll never find it.”
Patricia lifted her pistol.
“But your daughters might know.”
Every light in the clinic went out.
Marcus had cut the power.
Gunfire erupted from the western corridor.
I pulled Rosa behind a concrete pillar as bullets tore into the wall.
My security team stormed the building.
Victor fired blindly.
Samuel dragged Patricia toward the rear exit.
Nolan abandoned Bell and ran.
Within seconds, the corridor filled with shouting.
I reached Bell and cut the rope from his wrists.
“Can you walk?”
“I think so.”
Rosa helped him stand.
A shot cracked from the darkness.
Bell jerked.
Blood spread across his shirt.
Rosa screamed.
I fired toward the muzzle flash.
Someone fell.
Emergency lights flickered on.
Victor lay near the doorway, clutching his shoulder.
Samuel and Patricia were gone.
Bell collapsed against me.
Dr. Pierce’s field team rushed forward, pressing gauze against the wound.
Bell’s hand closed around my sleeve.
“There’s something else,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Elena survived the crash.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
“I saw her moving when they pulled her from the car.”
“She died at the hospital.”
Bell shook his head weakly.
“She was alive when Whitaker arrived.”
May you like
His grip tightened.
“He went into her room alone.”
