Chapter 2 - The Number on the Card
Lena read the warning twice.
“Victor… you just told me to call him.”
“I did.”
“But this says not to trust him.”
Victor’s breathing became shallower.
“That is why you must call.”
Lena wanted an explanation, but Victor suddenly folded forward, clutching his ribs.
Whatever game he had been playing could wait.
She drove to her apartment in East Baltimore, helped him upstairs, and turned her tiny living room into an improvised recovery space. Victor looked almost absurd beneath the faded quilt on her sofa. A man whose name appeared on skyscrapers was lying beneath a ceiling stained by an upstairs plumbing leak.
Lena cleaned his hand.
“You need imaging, oxygen, antibiotics, and someone who earns more than fourteen dollars an hour pretending she’s a trauma team.”
Victor almost smiled.
“Fifteen twenty-five.”
“What?”
“That’s what Celeste’s agency pays you.”
Lena stopped wrapping his fingers.
“You knew?”
“I know exactly what everyone around me is paid.”
“Then why didn’t you fix it?”
Victor’s expression darkened.
“Because six months ago, I stopped controlling my own company.”
That answer disturbed her more than she expected.
Lena called the engraved number.
A man answered immediately.
“Reed.”
She hesitated. “I have something belonging to Victor Vale.”
Silence.
Then:
“Is Victor alive?”
Lena glanced toward him.
“Yes.”
“Do not tell me where you are.”
Victor’s eyes opened.
Reed continued.
“Do not take him to Mercy General. Do not contact Vale Meridian security. And whatever happens, do not insert that memory card into an internet-connected device.”
Lena’s grip tightened.
“Why?”
“Because someone inside my task force is feeding information to Celeste Vale.”
Victor closed his eyes.
So the warning had been real.
Twenty minutes later, Lena’s younger brother Malik returned from his night shift and nearly dropped his grocery bag when he recognized the injured billionaire on their couch.
Before anyone could explain, headlights swept across the apartment window.
Lena froze.
A black SUV had stopped outside.
Victor whispered, “Turn off the lights.”
Three men climbed out.
One wore a hospital identification badge.
Lena’s blood ran cold.
Victor had been missing less than an hour.
Yet someone already knew where he was.
Malik quietly locked the door.
Then Victor noticed something through the curtains.
The man with the hospital badge was carrying a medical case.
The same silver case Victor had seen beside his bed three days earlier—minutes before the unexplained sedative entered his bloodstream.
Someone knocked.
“Mr. Vale? We’re here to return you to the hospital.”
Victor looked at Lena.
“Now,” he whispered, “we find out whether Celeste sent them…”
May you like
Another voice came from the hallway.
“…or whether I was never her real target.”
