Chapter 4 - What Brin Believed
Brin refused to see me for eleven hours.
I deserved every minute.
She remained in intensive care while our son stayed under observation.
I sat outside both rooms.
Yara was escorted to a private room under hospital security.
Not my men.
Actual hospital security.
I wanted everything clean.
Documented.
Legal.
My attorney, Miriam Voss, arrived before dawn.
She was sixty-one, ruthless, and one of three people who could tell me I was being stupid without consequences.
“You abandoned a pregnant woman?”
“I didn’t know.”
“You abandoned a woman.”
Fair.
She reviewed Brin’s folder.
Then frowned.
“This guardianship document isn’t standard.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It creates a temporary trust.”
“For the baby?”
“Partly.”
She turned several pages.
“If Brin dies, you become guardian. But ownership of something called Holloway Medical Holdings transfers into a protected trust controlled jointly by you and the child.”
I stared at her.
“Brin was a bartender.”
“Apparently she was also something else.”
Miriam opened the attached corporate record.
Holloway Medical Holdings owned twelve percent of Lakefront Cardiac Systems.
I knew the company.
Everyone in Chicago did.
Medical-device manufacturer.
Government contracts.
Hundreds of millions in annual revenue.
Brin’s twelve percent stake was worth roughly ninety million dollars.
My first thought wasn’t money.
It was Yara’s sentence.
You don’t know Brin at all.
“What did Lakefront manufacture?”
Miriam looked at me.
“Implantable cardiac devices.”
My stomach tightened.
Brin had arrived in cardiac distress.
Our son carried evidence of an unexplained prenatal procedure.
Coincidence had stopped being believable.
Then a nurse appeared.
“Ms. Holloway will see you.”
I entered alone.
Brin looked impossibly small beneath the blankets.
No oxygen mask now.
Just exhaustion.
Her eyes opened.
“You look terrible,” she whispered.
I almost laughed.
“So do you.”
“I almost died. What’s your excuse?”
“Cowardice.”
That surprised her.
I sat beside the bed.
“Our son is alive.”
Her eyes filled immediately.
“You saw him?”
“Yes.”
“Does he have the mark?”
I froze.
“You knew.”
She closed her eyes.
“Brin.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“Who operated on our child?”
She looked toward the door.
Then whispered:
“Your future father-in-law.”
“Rafael?”
“No.”
Confusion must have shown on my face.
“Yara’s father isn’t Rafael Salcedo.”
My body went still.
Brin reached weakly toward the bedside drawer.
Inside was another envelope.
“Everything started when I discovered who he really was.”
“Who?”
She looked directly at me.
“Dr. Elias Vane.”
I knew that name.
He had been declared dead seventeen years earlier.
May you like
Founder of Lakefront Cardiac Systems.
And the man accused of killing my father.
