Chapter 2
Victor kept the burner phone in his open hand as we crossed the mansion corridor. He didn’t pocket it. He didn’t ask for the passcode again. The cracked screen glowed between us, throwing a weak blue light over his rolled sleeves and the pistol at his thigh.
I followed him only because Sam was waiting somewhere beyond the hospital’s locked doors.
At the side entrance, Victor stopped beside a dark sedan. The night air smelled like wet stone and clipped hedges. He held the passenger door open, but didn’t touch me.
“Before we leave,” he said, “you call the hospital.”
“I know.”
“And you ask for Sam yourself.”
“I know.”
His jaw shifted, like he was holding back an order. Then he stepped away from the door.
I got in.
My hands shook so badly that I missed the first number. The hospital switchboard answered on the second ring, a woman’s voice calm and practiced beneath a wash of distant alarms and overhead pages.
I gave my name and asked for my brother. I didn’t mention the call. I didn’t mention Victor. I didn’t mention the threat.
“Can you confirm he’s still in the hospital?” I asked.
The woman asked me to verify his date of birth. I did. After a short pause, she connected me to the unit.
A nurse answered. I asked whether Sam was awake, whether his condition had changed, and whether he had asked for me. The nurse gave me only what she was allowed to give, but it was enough. Sam was still there. His condition had not changed. No one had told him I was coming.
I closed my eyes.
“Please don’t give anyone his room number,” I said. “Not unless they’re family or hospital staff.”
There was a pause on the line.
“Has something happened?” the nurse asked.
“I’m not sure yet.”
That was the closest I came to the truth.
Victor started the car after I ended the call. He didn’t ask what the nurse had said. The silence between us felt different from the one in the corridor. It wasn’t empty. It was waiting.
The hospital rose ahead of us in a block of pale windows and reflected streetlights. Victor pulled into the emergency entrance instead of the main drive. People moved through the sliding doors with paper cups, folded coats, and tired faces. Nobody looked twice at us.
Inside, the air smelled like disinfectant and old coffee. I went to the desk while Victor remained several feet behind me.
“I’m here to see Sam Hayes,” I told the clerk.
She typed his name. Her expression changed—not dramatically, just a slight tightening around her mouth.
“He’s on the fourth floor,” she said. “Before I give you directions, are you family?”
“I’m his sister.”
She checked my identification. Then she looked past me at Victor.
“And him?”
“My employer.”
Victor’s eyes moved to me. He didn’t correct me or offer his name.
The clerk handed back my license. “Someone else asked for Mr. Hayes earlier.”
My fingers tightened around the edge of the counter. “Who?”
“Man in a dark jacket. He didn’t have a visitor badge. He said he was a family friend.” She glanced at the monitor. “He knew your brother’s full name and room number.”
The lobby seemed to tilt.
“Did you let him upstairs?”
“No. The desk nurse called the floor. By the time security arrived, he was gone.”
“What did he look like?”
“Average height. Gray hair, maybe. I’m sorry. He kept his head down.”
Victor stepped closer, not crowding me. “When was this?”
The clerk looked at him now. “About an hour ago.”
My mouth went dry. The caller had known Sam was in the hospital. That part could have been guessed. But the room number was different. The room number belonged to a list I’d seen only once—printed on a charity-network transfer sheet at the mansion, beside a hospital foundation logo and a set of initials.
I hadn’t told anyone.
Not even Victor.
“Did he use any particular wording?” I asked.
The clerk frowned, trying to remember. “He said he needed to check on the patient before the foundation liaison arrived.”
Foundation liaison.
The phrase pressed against something inside me. I had heard it in the mansion’s administrative office, spoken by men who never carried their own coffee and never waited for anyone to finish a sentence.
Victor watched my face. “Sadi.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
He said it quietly. That made it worse.
A security officer met us near the elevators. He was broad-shouldered, gray at the temples, and carried a small notebook instead of a radio clipped to his belt. He asked me to describe the call and the visitor. I answered the questions I could.
When he asked whether I wanted the hospital to notify law enforcement, I looked at Victor.
He didn’t answer for me.
“If you want security only,” he said, “we do security only. If you want a report, I’ll stay while you make it. Either choice is yours.”
The officer waited.
I thought of the mansion’s polished halls, the people who could make a complaint sound like an inconvenience. I thought of Sam alone behind a hospital door while someone else repeated his name and room number.
“Security first,” I said. “And I want the visitor documented. If he comes back, call the police.”
The officer nodded and wrote it down. “We’ll put an alert on the floor.”
When we reached Sam’s room, I paused with my hand on the handle. Victor stood behind me, close enough to hear but far enough not to decide.
I opened the door.
Sam was there, safe for the moment. I could see only part of him from the threshold, but the sight loosened something in my chest.
Victor lowered his voice. “I’ll wait outside.”
I looked back at him. “No.”
His expression changed by a fraction.
“Stay nearby,” I said. “Don’t come in unless I ask.”
“I can do that.”
I entered the room and shut the door almost completely. Through the narrow opening, I saw Victor take a position in the corridor, his back to the wall, the burner phone secured in his hand.
May you like
I still hadn’t told him why the words foundation liaison frightened me.
Not yet. But someone had used information from the mansion’s world to reach Sam, and for the first time, keeping silent felt less like protection than participation.
