Chapter 7 - The Man Who Asked for Her at the Hospital
Richard looked smaller in a hospital bed.
Not kinder.
Just smaller.
Emily had imagined this meeting on the drive over. In some versions she screamed. In others she slapped him. In one especially satisfying version, she walked in wearing Nicholas’s coat and watched Richard panic.
Reality was less cinematic.
Her hands shook.
Richard noticed.
“Still scared of me.”
Emily looked down at her hands.
Then she placed them flat on her knees.
“Yes.”
His smile faltered.
She continued. “Fear doesn’t mean you’re in control.”
Nicholas’s gaze shifted toward her.
Richard looked away first.
That tiny victory mattered more than she expected.
Not kinder.
Just smaller.
His left hand was splinted. Bruising covered one side of his face.
Two detectives waited outside the room.
Nicholas stood near the wall.
Emily sat in the chair closest to the door.
She had insisted on choosing the seat herself.
Richard laughed weakly when he saw her.
“Still alive.”
Emily said, “Disappointed?”
“I tried to warn you.”
“You threw me outside.”
“I was trying to make you leave the estate.”
“In a blizzard.”
“I panicked.”
Nicholas’s voice came from the wall.
“You put your hand on her again in this life and the police will be the least of your problems.”
Richard looked at him.
“There he is.”
“The monster?” Nicholas asked.
“The son pretending he isn’t his father.”
Emily interrupted.
“You asked for me. Talk to me.”
Richard’s eyes moved back to her.
“Your father found Victor’s proof.”
Emily leaned forward. “Why are you telling me now?”
“Because Victor broke my fingers.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Richard’s eyes flashed. “Because I spent twenty years making myself useful to people who would kill me for becoming inconvenient.”
Nicholas said, “You want protection.”
“I want a deal.”
“You threw her into a blizzard.”
Richard looked at Emily. “I thought she’d reach the guardhouse.”
“You didn’t care if I did.”
He said nothing.
Emily nodded slowly. “Good. At least don’t insult me with regret you don’t feel.”
For the first time, Richard looked ashamed. Not enough to redeem him. Enough to make him human, which was somehow worse.
“Your father found Victor’s proof.”
Emily did not answer immediately. She studied Richard’s face the way nurses study monitors: not for drama, but for changes. His breathing quickened when he said her father’s name. His right hand tightened against the sheet. Whatever came next frightened him more than Nicholas standing ten feet away.
“You’re scared of Victor,” Emily said.
Richard gave a humorless laugh. “Everyone who knows him is.”
“Nicholas isn’t.”
Richard glanced toward the wall. “Nicholas is smart enough to be. That’s different.”
Nicholas said nothing.
Emily leaned back. “Then give me something useful enough to justify calling me here.”
Richard’s expression changed. For a second, she saw the manager who had once enjoyed making her feel small. Then that man disappeared beneath exhaustion.
“What proof?”
“A ledger. Not the payroll book. The real one.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Emily stood.
Richard said quickly, “Your mother did.”
She froze.
“The song,” Richard added.
Nicholas moved forward.
“How do you know about the song?”
Richard’s eyes flicked toward him.
“Because Victor knows.”
The lullaby was a map.
Three bells referred to Trinity Church, whose old bell tower could be seen from the street where Elena once lived.
The lighthouse referred to a decorative lamp outside a storage warehouse.
The green door belonged to a basement office Thomas Turner rented under another name.
Emily remembered visiting as a child.
Her mother told her it was “Daddy’s old music room.”
They went there with police.
The green door was still green.
Behind it stood an empty room with water stains and dust.
Nicholas tapped the walls.
Emily hummed the lullaby under her breath.
Three bells ring, the keeper sleeps.
Green door waits where daylight weeps.
Under the light where shadows bend,
Count seven boards and start again.
She stopped.
“Floor.”
The seventh board beneath the old lighthouse-shaped wall fixture lifted.
Under it was a waterproof case.
Inside were ledgers, photographs, and a cassette tape.
The tape was labeled:
IF ELENA HEARS THIS, I FAILED.
Thomas Turner’s voice filled the room from an old player Dario found.
Emily had never heard her father speak.
She cried before he finished saying his own name.
Thomas described Victor’s theft network.
He described Richard as a young assistant who moved records.
He described payments to officials.
Then he said the sentence that changed Nicholas.
“Alessandro Grimm knows I’m doing this. He told me if I disappear, he’ll protect Elena and the baby.”
Nicholas closed his eyes.
His father had known.
More than that, his father had tried to stop Victor.
Thomas continued.
“Victor thinks Alessandro is part of it. He isn’t. But if Alessandro moves openly, there’ll be blood. So we’re doing this quietly.”
The tape ended abruptly.
Emily wiped her face.
Nobody rushed her.
That mattered.
After a minute, she rewound ten seconds and played her father’s voice again.
He said her mother’s name.
Just Elena.
Warmly.
Emily replayed it once more.
Dario turned away as if checking the room. Nicholas stayed perfectly still.
“I thought I wanted proof,” Emily said. “I didn’t know proof had a voice.”
Nicholas sat on the dusty floor across from her, expensive suit and all.
“My father left me letters too,” he said.
“Did they help?”
“No.”
She laughed wetly. “You’re terrible at comfort.”
“I know.”
“But I believe you.”
“That’s usually the problem.”
The tape ended abruptly.
Emily wiped her face.
Nicholas stared at the recorder.
“My father wasn’t protecting Victor.”
“No,” Dario said.
“He was hunting him.”
One photograph showed Victor standing beside a man none of them recognized.
Emily turned it over.
A date.
Three months earlier.
Victor was alive.
And beside him stood Nicholas’s uncle, Carlo Grimm.
Nicholas’s expression turned to stone.
Dario swore softly.
Emily asked, “Who is he?”
May you like
Nicholas answered:
“The man who taught me everything I know.”
