Chapter 8 - The Woman in Room 412
Margaret Cole was not missing.
She was inside the same hospital.
Room 412.
Admitted under another name.
Marisol found her.
Head injury.
Sedated.
No visitors allowed.
Ordering physician:
Dr. Lawson.
I stared at the chart.
The hospital had become part of the battlefield.
Not the whole hospital.
Maybe one doctor.
Maybe more.
We couldn't assume.
Margaret woke briefly that afternoon.
I entered wearing a hood and mask, escorted by Marisol.
Her eyes found my bandages immediately.
“Genevieve?”
“You know me?”
“I've been trying to reach you for eleven years.”
My stomach dropped.
“Why?”
“Your mother hired me.”
My mother.
Before she died.
Margaret had been a junior trust attorney then.
Mom discovered Evelyn Prescott had begun buying interests in companies connected to Hartwell.
She suspected someone was targeting our family assets.
“She told me if anything happened to her, keep you away from the music business.”
“What happened to my mother?”
Officially?
Car accident.
My entire body went cold.
“Was it an accident?”
“I don't know.”
Margaret had no proof otherwise.
Important.
No dramatic certainty where none existed.
She continued.
For years she monitored Hartwell quietly.
Then Christian began dating me.
She investigated.
Discovered Evelyn arranged the meeting.
Tried warning me through anonymous letters.
I remembered those.
Three letters during our first year together.
Christian called them fan harassment.
Security disposed of them.
Probably Gabriel.
His face when I told him confirmed it.
“I never read them,” I said.
Margaret closed her eyes.
“Then I failed.”
“No.”
Failure belonged to people making choices.
Not always people unable to stop them.
Margaret recently discovered Lawson had falsified medical records affecting trust succession.
She intended to file an emergency injunction.
Then someone hit her car.
She couldn't identify who.
She woke here.
“What’s inside the sealed file?” I asked.
Her eyes sharpened.
“What file?”
“The one Lawson was deleting.”
Margaret whispered:
“Not medical records.”
“Then what?”
“Hartwell succession testing.”
My stomach tightened.
Before I could ask, the room alarm sounded.
Not medical.
Fire alarm.
Marisol opened the door.
Smoke in the corridor.
Patients began moving.
Someone had triggered evacuation.
Margaret grabbed my wrist.
“Genevieve.”
“What?”
“Leo cannot inherit Hartwell.”
“Why?”
“Because Leo isn’t Christian’s son.”
Gabriel stiffened.
She looked directly at him.
“He isn't yours either.”
Sabrina’s uncertainty finally had an answer.
“Then whose?”
Margaret whispered a name.
May you like
“Dr. Henry Lawson.”
And somewhere down the corridor, a man shouted that Room 412 was empty.
