Chapter 3 - The Secret Buried With Her Mother
For several seconds, Nina couldn't speak.
Victor stood close enough to hear the faint electronic silence after the call disconnected.
"Your brother?"
"Alive, I think."
"You think?"
"They found the book."
Gregor was already issuing instructions.
Anton contacted men in New Jersey.
Victor remained focused on Nina.
"What page?"
Nina told him.
After her mother's funeral, she had been terrified someone from Meridian Park would discover what she'd printed.
She didn't trust her apartment.
Didn't trust cloud storage.
Didn't trust herself not to destroy it.
At the funeral home, she slipped the folded audit sheet into the small pocket of the blue cardigan her mother was buried wearing.
It was irrational.
Emotional.
But Nina had thought nobody could ever get it there.
Victor said nothing.
Gregor did.
"We exhume her."
"No."
"Nina—"
"No."
Victor lifted a hand.
Gregor stopped.
Victor faced Nina.
"Your decision."
She looked at him.
That surprised her.
This was a man everyone described without actually describing him.
A man whose name changed rooms.
Yet he wouldn't cross that boundary without permission.
Nina whispered, "If my brother is in danger..."
"He won't remain in danger long."
Victor turned.
"Anton."
The response was immediate.
Within an hour, Victor's people located Michael.
He had been taken from his driveway, questioned and released after the kidnappers realized he didn't know anything.
Bruised.
Terrified.
Alive.
Nina spoke to him.
He demanded to know what she had gotten involved in.
She couldn't explain.
After the call, she sat alone on the seawall behind Victor's house.
The Atlantic stretched dark beneath the November sky.
Victor found her without assistance.
Or perhaps he had memorized every inch of the property.
He sat beside her.
"Michael is angry."
"He should be."
"He's alive."
"Because of something I did."
Victor was silent.
Nina laughed bitterly.
"There it is again."
"What?"
"Everyone gets hurt, and somehow I make myself responsible."
Victor turned toward the ocean.
"You believe responsibility and guilt are the same thing."
"Aren't they?"
"No."
He paused.
"Responsibility asks what you do next. Guilt convinces you suffering is useful."
Nina looked at him.
"How did you learn that?"
Victor smiled faintly.
"The expensive way."
The next morning Nina authorized the exhumation.
It was done privately.
Legally.
Quietly.
Nina refused to attend.
Gregor retrieved the page.
The paper was damaged but readable.
Three credentials had accessed Evelyn Cross's chart after her death.
Dr. Adrian Keller.
Hospital executive Marcus Vale.
And A. Danalov.
Nina stared at the final name.
Victor didn't move.
Gregor did.
He stepped backward.
"Alexei."
Victor's younger brother.
The room became silent.
Nina looked at Victor.
"Maybe someone used his credentials."
Victor said nothing.
Gregor's voice hardened.
"Stop giving people exits."
"We need proof."
"We have his name."
"We have a login."
Victor finally spoke.
"Nina is right."
Gregor looked furious.
But he obeyed.
They reconstructed the timeline.
Fourteen months earlier, Victor's sight began failing.
Alexei arranged Keller.
Keller declared the condition irreversible.
Victor withdrew from daily operational control.
Alexei gained broader authority.
Several businesses were sold.
Contracts shifted.
Accounts moved.
Victor had assumed Gregor was supervising.
Gregor had assumed Victor approved the changes.
Each had been receiving information through Alexei.
It was elegant.
Not a coup.
Not obviously.
Just a gradual transfer of power disguised as helping a blind man.
Nina looked at Victor.
"They didn't need you dead."
"No."
"They needed you dependent."
Victor's expression became cold.
"And invisible."
Then Gregor discovered something worse.
A series of payments from a shell corporation connected to Alexei had gone to Keller.
The first payment occurred three weeks before Victor's original examination.
Nina felt her stomach turn.
Keller hadn't missed the tumor.
He had been paid not to find it.
But why Evelyn Cross?
Nina returned to Evelyn's records.
The answer emerged slowly.
Evelyn had worked in compliance for a maritime insurance company.
One that insured several Danalov-controlled warehouses.
Weeks before her death, she requested documents involving unusual claims.
Claims connected to businesses Alexei had quietly moved.
Evelyn discovered something.
Then she became ill.
Nina remembered her final night.
Confusion.
Severe headache.
Sudden collapse.
Keller altered the chart afterward.
"This is bigger than Victor's eyes," Nina whispered.
Gregor nodded.
Victor asked, "What happened to Evelyn?"
Nina hesitated.
"I don't know."
But she intended to find out.
Meanwhile Victor's surgery was scheduled.
A specialist in Manhattan reviewed the new scans.
The tumor appeared operable.
The surgeon was cautious about recovery.
Pressure had existed for fourteen months.
Some optic damage might be permanent.
Nina attended every appointment.
Victor never asked her to.
She simply did.
The evening before surgery, she found him alone in the study.
No documents.
No phone.
No Gregor.
"You scared?"
Victor smiled.
"Would it disappoint you if I said yes?"
"No."
"Then yes."
Nina sat opposite him.
"What scares you?"
He considered the question.
"Seeing nothing."
"But that's what you see now."
"No."
He turned toward her voice.
"Now I know I'm blind."
She waited.
"Tomorrow I might discover I could have seen all this time if someone I loved hadn't chosen otherwise."
Nina understood.
This wasn't about vision anymore.
It was betrayal.
"Alexei isn't here."
"No."
"Gregor is."
Victor said nothing.
"Helena is."
Nothing.
"Anton."
Victor smiled slightly.
"And I'm here."
His expression changed.
Nina immediately regretted saying it.
Not because it was wrong.
Because it was true.
Victor extended his hand across the table.
Nina looked at it.
Then placed hers in his.
No romance.
Not yet.
Just two people who had lost different things sitting in darkness together.
The next morning, Victor underwent surgery.
Nina waited with Gregor and Anton.
Six hours.
Then seven.
Finally the surgeon appeared.
The tumor had been removed successfully.
Pressure on the optic pathways had been relieved.
But they wouldn't know about vision immediately.
Victor woke in recovery.
Bandages covered his eyes.
Nina entered.
His voice was rough.
"Still employed?"
"Unfortunately."
"Good."
She smiled.
Two days later, the dressings were removed.
The surgeon asked Victor to open his eyes.
He did.
Nothing.
Nina's heart sank.
Then Victor blinked.
Again.
His pupils reacted.
"Light," he whispered.
Nina stopped breathing.
"What?"
"I see light."
The surgeon smiled.
Victor turned toward Nina's voice.
A vague shape.
Shadow.
Movement.
Not sight.
Not yet.
But something.
Over the next week, shapes sharpened.
Contrast returned.
Then colors.
Victor saw Nina for the first time on the ninth morning.
She entered carrying coffee.
He was standing by the window.
She stopped.
Victor stared.
Actually stared.
His eyes tracked her.
Nina's throat tightened.
"What?"
Victor smiled.
"Your hair."
She touched the messy bun.
"What about it?"
"You've spent nine days telling me you look professional."
Nina laughed.
For the first time in months, the sound came easily.
Victor looked at her as though memorizing something.
Then Anton entered.
His expression destroyed the moment.
"We found Keller."
Victor turned.
"Where?"
"Airport."
"Leaving?"
"Trying."
Anton placed a folder on the table.
"And he had this."
Inside were financial records.
Payments.
Names.
Dates.
Enough to implicate Alexei.
But one document was different.
A signed medical authorization from fourteen months earlier.
Victor recognized the signature immediately.
It authorized Keller to manage Victor's treatment confidentially.
The signature wasn't Alexei's.
It belonged to Gregor Soalov.
Nina looked toward the doorway.
Gregor was standing there.
May you like
And for the first time since she met him, the warm, easygoing man who had asked whether she'd eaten looked terrified.
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