Chapter 4 - The Night at Lake Forest
Six weeks before the contract, St. Brendan Hospital held its largest fundraiser of the year.
Adeline never attended the ballroom.
She was upstairs, replacing an IV line in Room 814 when someone shouted from the corridor.
A man had collapsed downstairs.
Adeline ran.
By the time she reached the lobby, three men in dark suits had formed a circle around a stranger lying unconscious on polished stone.
Another nurse was calling emergency services.
One of the men took the phone.
“No ambulance.”
Adeline stared.
“He needs an emergency room.”
“We have a doctor.”
“Then where is he?”
No answer.
Adeline knelt.
Weak pulse.
Abnormal breathing.
Cold skin.
Whatever had happened, delay was dangerous.
“We move him now.”
A man crouched beside her.
Ezra Cain.
She did not know his name then.
“You’re coming.”
“No.”
Something hard touched her back.
Adeline understood.
Twenty minutes later, she was inside a black car.
Cassian lay across the seat opposite her.
She kept two fingers against his carotid pulse.
“Your friend could die.”
Ezra looked at her.
“He won’t.”
“That confidence is medically useless.”
His eyes almost softened.
“You’re direct.”
“I’m tired.”
They reached Lake Forest.
Adeline worked for hours.
No hospital monitor.
Limited equipment.
She improvised.
When Cassian stopped breathing, she performed compressions until his chest moved again.
Afterward, she sat on the floor.
Someone gave her water.
She drank.
The taste was wrong.
Metallic.
She remembered looking toward Ezra.
But the figure standing in the doorway was blurred.
A black ring caught yellow lamplight.
Then darkness.
When Adeline awoke, Cassian remained unconscious.
She was in another room.
Her shoes had been placed neatly beside the bed.
Her medical bag sat closed on a chair.
Nothing obvious had happened to her.
But almost five hours were missing.
Panic arrived anyway.
She checked herself clinically.
No injuries.
No torn clothing.
No physical indication anyone had touched her inappropriately.
That mattered.
But it did not answer why she had been drugged.
She left.
Someone drove her back to Chicago.
For weeks, she believed it had been Ezra.
Now Cassian insisted it was not.
Three months after the marriage began, he brought her back to Lake Forest.
The house had remained empty since that night.
Adeline stood in the doorway.
Memory arrived in fragments.
Lamp.
Dining table.
Water pitcher.
Her handwritten notes.
Blood vial.
Cassian entered behind her.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do.”
They moved slowly through the house.
Adeline touched nothing.
In the bedroom, she stopped.
“Curtains were closed.”
Cassian looked.
“They were.”
“The morning light came through there.”
She pointed.
“And your bed was there.”
“Yes.”
“My shoes were here.”
Cassian nodded.
Adeline looked around.
“Someone moved me.”
“Yes.”
“Who found us?”
“Ezra.”
She turned.
“You said he was with you when you woke.”
“He entered approximately ten minutes before I became conscious.”
“So he could have moved me.”
“Yes.”
Cassian hated saying it.
Adeline could tell.
“Why do you trust him?”
Cassian walked toward the window.
“When I was seventeen, my father was killed.”
Adeline remained silent.
“My mother died two years later. Ezra was already working for the family. He stayed when others left.”
“People can stay for reasons other than loyalty.”
“I know.”
“But you don’t want that to be true.”
Cassian looked at her.
Adeline continued.
“Because then you’d have to admit the person standing beside you might be the most dangerous person in the room.”
The phrase hit him.
The man beside him.
Maryanne’s warning.
They returned downstairs.
In the dining room, Adeline reconstructed the night.
She found the spot where she remembered writing medical notes.
Cassian opened a drawer.
Empty.
Another.
Nothing.
Adeline crouched.
A scratch on the wooden floor caught her attention.
She ran a finger along it.
“Something heavy was moved.”
Cassian joined her.
A cabinet stood nearby.
Together they pushed it.
Behind the cabinet was a wall panel.
A small metal compartment had been cut into the wood.
Inside sat an old flash drive.
Cassian stared.
“This isn’t mine.”
Adeline picked it up using a handkerchief.
“Then maybe it belongs to whoever wanted us to find it.”
Back in Chicago, Cassian refused to connect it to the mansion network.
They used an isolated computer.
The drive contained three folders.
The first was labeled R-6.
Six scanned medical reports.
Cassian’s infertility documents.
The second was labeled WHITMORE.
Henry Whitmore’s financial files.
The third contained one audio recording.
Cassian pressed play.
A man’s voice filled the room.
Henry Whitmore.
Adeline stopped breathing.
“If you are hearing this, I probably failed.”
Her hand flew to her mouth.
Cassian looked at her.
Henry continued.
“I found payments to doctors. Six of them. The payments came through shell companies connected to the Raldi network, but I don’t believe Cassian Raldi authorized them.”
Cassian became motionless.
“The objective appears to be falsifying a medical diagnosis involving the Raldi heir.”
Adeline looked at Cassian.
His face went white.
Henry’s voice continued.
“Someone wants Cassian to believe he can never have children.”
The recording crackled.
“I don’t yet know why.”
Another pause.
“But I know who authorized the first transfer.”
Adeline leaned closer.
A burst of static.
Then Henry said:
“Ezra—”
The recording ended.
Cassian stared at the screen.
Adeline whispered, “It could be incomplete.”
Cassian did not answer.
The computer suddenly went black.
Both looked at it.
A second later, every light in the Lake Forest house went out.
Adeline froze.
Cassian stood.
Outside, tires moved across gravel.
A vehicle had entered the property.
Cassian reached for his phone.
No signal.
Adeline whispered, “Did anyone know we were coming?”
Cassian looked toward the dark hallway.
“Two people.”
“Who?”
“Odette.”
He paused.
“And Ezra.”
Headlights swept across the room.
Cassian pulled Adeline behind the stone wall beside the fireplace.
A car door opened outside.
Then another.
Footsteps approached.
Adeline’s fingers tightened around Cassian’s sleeve.
He looked down at her.
She whispered, “If we survive this, you’re going to stop saying you trust him with your life.”
Cassian’s eyes remained on the door.
“No.”
“No?”
“I’m going to find out what he did with it.”
The front lock turned.
May you like
And someone who possessed a key entered the house.
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