“Please,” he said.
The nurse hesitated, then placed a clipboard near Brin’s hand and guided a pen between her fingers.
Brin’s grip was almost useless. The pen dragged across the paper in broken lines. Once. Twice. She gasped around the tube, eyes watering with effort.
Cormack bent over the page.
Three words.
Not Luca alone.
His blood turned cold.
Brin’s hand slipped.
The alarms began screaming.
The nurse shoved him back. “Get out. Now.”
Doctors rushed in. The room filled instantly, swallowing Brin beneath bodies and commands.
Cormack was pushed into the hallway as the door shut in his face.
Not Luca alone.
He stared at the words now imprinted in his mind.
Not Luca alone.
Royce appeared at the end of the hall, moving fast. His usually controlled face was tight.
Cormack met him halfway. “Tell me.”
Royce looked once toward the nurses nearby, then lowered his voice. “We pulled the records we could access cleanly. Brin called your private line twice. Both calls were answered from Luca’s device transfer. The next day, fifty thousand dollars was wired to an account in her name from a shell company.”
“I know that.”
“There’s more.” Royce swallowed. “That shell company wasn’t Luca’s.”
Cormack stared.
“It belongs to a Salcedo trust.”
For a moment, the hospital sounds faded.
Every machine. Every footstep. Every distant voice.
All gone.
Only Aurelio’s words remained.
A child changes inheritance.
Cormack turned slowly toward the corridor where Aurelio and Yara had disappeared hours earlier.
Royce continued, “Boss, there’s something else. One of our men at Vesper Row checked old exterior footage from that week. Luca met someone behind the club the morning after Brin called.”
“Who?”
Royce’s jaw tightened. “Yara.”
Cormack said nothing.
The thing inside him went quiet.
That was always when men died.
His phone buzzed in Royce’s hand. Royce had retrieved it from the lounge earlier. He glanced down at the screen and went pale.
“What?” Cormack asked.
Royce handed it to him.
A message waited from an unknown encrypted number.
No greeting.
No threat.
Just a video.
Cormack pressed play.
The footage was grainy, shot from inside a parked car. Brin stood on a sidewalk nine months earlier, one hand pressed to her flat stomach, her face pale with shock. Luca stood in front of her. Beside him, Yara leaned close and said something the camera did not catch.
Then Luca handed Brin an envelope.
Brin threw it at his chest.
The video ended.
A second message arrived.
This one contained a single line.
Ask Brin who really owns Luca.
Cormack stared at the screen.
Then, from somewhere down the hall, a nurse shouted his name.
He turned.
Dr. Roth was running toward him.
“Mr. Hale,” the doctor said, breathless. “Ms. Holloway is crashing again.”
Cormack’s fingers closed around the phone.
Behind him, Royce whispered, “Boss, Luca just vanished.”
