Chapter 12 - The surgeon who saved me
Dr. Evans had saved my life.
Now his voice was inside my mother’s final recording.
Federal investigators questioned him before I confronted him.
He did not run.
He asked to speak with me.
“You knew my mother?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I was a surgical resident when Helena began investigating Blackwood Memorial.”
“Were you helping her?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I promised her.”
I wanted to hate him.
Instead I remembered him standing over my gurney while Caleb chose Khloe.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
Everyone seemed to know enough to ruin me and never enough to finish the story.
Evans explained Helena contacted him after escaping the hospital.
She believed Sebastian had located her.
Evans helped arrange another transfer.
Then Jonathan took over.
“What happened?”
“Jonathan changed the destination at the last minute.”
“Why?”
“He believed someone inside Helena’s circle was compromised.”
“Ara?”
“No.”
“Marianne?”
“No.”
“Who?”
Evans hesitated.
“Helena herself.”
That made no sense.
Then he explained.
My mother had begun experiencing memory gaps.
Missing hours.
Confusion.
She suspected someone had been medicating her.
The hospital incident might not have been a stroke at all.
Toxicology records were missing.
Exactly like portions of my crash report had nearly disappeared.
“Sebastian?”
“Probably.”
“Probably isn’t enough.”
“No.”
Evans opened a sealed envelope.
“So I kept this.”
A blood analysis from Helena’s final hospital admission.
It showed traces of a sedative not listed in her medications.
Someone had been dosing my mother.
Evans preserved the sample privately because Jonathan begged him to.
“Why would Jonathan trust you?”
“Because he knew Victoria was compromised.”
The Blackwood marriage had been a battlefield disguised as a dynasty.
Then Evans gave investigators the final location Jonathan intended to use.
A private residence in northern Italy.
Federal authorities coordinated with Italian police.
The property had been abandoned for years.
But inside they found Helena Sinclair’s belongings.
Clothes.
Letters.
Photographs of me.
A newspaper clipping from my wedding.
Across Caleb’s face my mother had written:
No.
My chest hurt.
She had known.
She had been alive when I married him.
Then why didn’t she stop me?
Rebecca found another letter.
Lucia,
If you ever read this, understand that approaching you would have exposed you. Sebastian watches everyone I love.
The letter ended unfinished.
The final page was missing.
Then investigators found a photograph dated eighteen months earlier.
Helena.
Alive.
Standing beside Jonathan Blackwood.
Both older.
Both unmistakable.
Behind them was a sign for a rehabilitation clinic.
Not Italy.
Massachusetts.
I knew the building.
Everyone in New York did.
It belonged to Blackwood Memorial’s most exclusive neurological center.
My mother had been hiding inside Caleb’s family hospital network.
May you like
And according to access logs, one person had visited her every month.
Khloe.
