Chapter 4 - THE TRAITOR IN THE MANSION
I reached Oliver before anyone else.
His chest was rising too fast.
His eyes were wide.
“Mom.”
“I’m here.”
I grabbed the emergency inhaler from his medical bag.
Two measured doses.
Slow breaths.
Stay calm.
Do not let your child see you panic.
I had practiced that ritual too many times.
Sebastian stopped at the doorway.
“Doctor?”
“No.”
I held up one hand.
“Quiet.”
For once, he obeyed.
Oliver’s breathing gradually slowed.
When his oxygen monitor finally showed numbers I could live with, my hands started shaking.
Gabriel picked up the cut tube.
The slice was clean.
Deliberate.
Sebastian’s voice came from behind him.
“Seal the floor.”
“It already is.”
“Search everyone.”
Gabriel nodded.
“Staff too?”
“Everyone.”
I stood.
“You told me this place was safe.”
Sebastian looked at Oliver.
“I was wrong.”
Something about the way he admitted it stopped my anger for half a second.
Men like Sebastian probably did not say those words often.
I pointed at the ruined tubing.
“This wasn’t a threat. Someone came close enough to my sleeping child to touch his medical equipment.”
“I know.”
“Then get us out.”
“We don’t know where safe is yet.”
“I know where safer is. Anywhere your family isn’t.”
His expression tightened.
Oliver touched my wrist.
“Mom, I’m okay.”
I looked down at him.
He was trying to make me feel better.
My eight-year-old son was comforting me.
That almost broke me.
Sebastian called one of his men.
“Bring a replacement nebulizer. Pharmacy, hospital, steal one if necessary.”
“Sebastian.”
His eyes met mine.
“Buy one,” I said.
For the first time that night, he smiled.
Barely.
“Buy one.”
An hour later, Oliver slept beside me in another room while Gabriel searched security footage.
At three in the morning, Sebastian summoned me to the library.
He had changed.
Not clothes.
Something deeper.
The mocking arrogance from our first meeting had disappeared.
A large medical file rested on the desk.
“We found this in Mercer’s old storage unit.”
I opened it.
Sebastian Lombardi.
2006.
Original hospital notes.
The first page contained language I understood immediately.
Incomplete thoracolumbar spinal cord injury.
I read it twice.
Then again.
“Sebastian.”
“I know.”
“You were diagnosed as incomplete.”
His hands curled around the wheelchair armrests.
“Mercer told me the damage became functionally complete after swelling.”
“Where are the follow-up reports?”
Gabriel slid another folder toward me.
“Those are the copies Sebastian received.”
I compared them.
Dates matched.
Physician names matched.
The findings did not.
Someone had altered descriptions.
An early note recorded preserved sacral sensation.
Another documented weak voluntary contraction in the right leg.
A rehabilitation physician recommended intensive neurological therapy after stabilization.
That recommendation disappeared from Sebastian’s official file.
My throat tightened.
“You had motor activity.”
His stare remained fixed on the paper.
“For how long?”
“According to this, at least six weeks after the explosion.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You were heavily medicated.”
Gabriel placed a third item on the desk.
A financial ledger.
Payments.
Mercer’s name did not appear directly.
A medical consulting company did.
The money came from a Lombardi-controlled business overseen by Carlo.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Year after year.
Sebastian looked almost frighteningly calm.
“How did no other specialist notice?”
I thought carefully.
“They may have seen exactly what they expected to see.”
“That’s convenient.”
“It’s common human behavior. A famous physician tells the next physician you have a complete injury. Years pass. Muscles atrophy. Joints stiffen. You lose function. Eventually the current condition seems to prove the original diagnosis.”
“And Mercer controlled the records.”
“Yes.”
Sebastian looked toward his legs.
“Can you fix it?”
The question was quieter now.
“I can help determine what remains.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“I’m not going to sell you a miracle.”
He looked angry.
Good.
Anger was safer than false hope.
“Tomorrow, we get independent imaging and nerve testing,” I continued. “Then we build from facts.”
A guard suddenly appeared.
“Gabriel.”
Something in his tone was wrong.
Gabriel stepped into the hallway.
Two minutes later he returned with a gun in his hand.
“Boss, we found who entered the boy’s room.”
Sebastian’s chair turned.
“Who?”
Gabriel looked almost sick.
“Anthony.”
One of Sebastian’s senior guards.
Anthony had apparently served him for eleven years.
Sebastian ordered him brought downstairs.
I should have stayed away.
Instead, I followed.
Anthony sat handcuffed in a stone-walled security room.
He had blood on his lip from resisting arrest, but otherwise looked calm.
Sebastian positioned his wheelchair across from him.
“Why Oliver?”
Anthony stared at the floor.
“No answer?”
Sebastian rolled closer.
“You had access to my home. My rooms. My life. Claire’s child had nothing to do with this.”
Anthony finally looked up.
“They said nobody would hurt him.”
“Who?”
Silence.
Sebastian’s voice hardened.
“Carlo?”
Anthony’s face answered before his mouth did.
Sebastian leaned back.
“How long?”
“Three years.”
Gabriel looked stunned.
Anthony swallowed.
“Carlo paid my sister’s medical bills. Then he started asking questions. Schedules. Visitors.”
“Mercer?”
“Yes.”
“And tonight?”
“He told me to scare Claire. Make her leave.”
I stepped forward.
“You cut my son’s breathing machine.”
“I knew he had the inhaler.”
“You knew?”
My voice shook.
“You gambled with my child’s lungs because you knew he had an inhaler?”
Anthony looked away.
Sebastian’s face became stone.
“Where is Carlo?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wrong answer.”
“I swear.”
Sebastian rolled closer.
“Who planted the bomb in 2006?”
Anthony looked confused.
“I wasn’t there.”
“Who knows?”
Anthony hesitated.
Then he whispered one name.
“Mercer.”
Sebastian went completely still.
Anthony continued.
“Carlo told me once that Mercer wasn’t just paid to keep you from recovering.”
“What else?”
“He was there the night your father died.”
Silence filled the room.
Sebastian’s face changed.
Mercer had always claimed he first met Sebastian at the hospital days after the bombing.
Anthony shook his head.
“That was a lie.”
He looked directly at Sebastian.
“Mercer helped choose the restaurant.”
Before anyone could react, the lights went out.
Total darkness.
A gunshot cracked somewhere upstairs.
Then another.
Gabriel shouted.
Backup lights flashed red.
And through the mansion speakers, Carlo Lombardi’s voice suddenly echoed.
“Sebastian.”
May you like
Every man in the room froze.
“It’s time we finally talk about why your father had to die.”
