Chapter 3 - THE SECOND ATTACK AT LAKEVIEW MERCY
Daniel’s heart returned to a normal rhythm after thirty-eight seconds that felt like thirty-eight years.
By sunrise, he was stable again.
Evelyn stood beside the ICU window watching Chicago turn gray beneath an October sky.
She had been awake for twenty-four hours.
Dominic had been there for nine.
Neither had left.
At 7:40 a.m., Evelyn found him beside Daniel’s bed.
Dominic was holding his brother’s hand.
Not dramatically.
Not like a man expecting witnesses.
He simply held it.
Evelyn stopped outside the glass.
There were two versions of Dominic Vale in her memory.
The first was the man Chicago feared.
The second was the man who had once woken at 4:00 a.m. during their brief marriage because Evelyn had been called into surgery and quietly made coffee while she dressed.
She had convinced herself the second man had been an act.
Now she wasn’t certain.
Daniel opened his eyes shortly after eight.
The ventilator tube prevented him from speaking, so Evelyn handed him a pad.
He wrote three crooked words.
YOU LOOK TERRIBLE.
Dominic read them.
“Nearly dying hasn’t improved your personality.”
Daniel attempted to laugh and immediately regretted it.
Evelyn pushed Dominic aside.
“Don’t make my patient laugh with a chest tube.”
Daniel scribbled again.
MY SURGEON BOSSY.
“She always was,” Dominic said.
Evelyn looked at him.
Daniel’s eyes widened.
Then he looked from Dominic to Evelyn.
Slowly, recognition appeared.
He wrote one word.
EVIE?
“Unfortunately,” Evelyn said.
Daniel stared at her for several seconds.
Then he began writing so quickly she worried about his heart rate.
YOU CAME BACK.
“I didn’t.”
He looked at Dominic.
Dominic said, “She was already here.”
Daniel thought about that.
Then wrote:
THAT IS WORSE.
Evelyn almost smiled.
Daniel tapped the page and wrote another sentence.
HE LOOKED FOR YOU.
Dominic’s expression hardened.
“Daniel.”
Daniel ignored him.
Evelyn looked down.
HOW LONG?
Daniel raised two fingers.
“Two years?”
He nodded.
Evelyn turned toward Dominic.
“You told me you found me four months ago.”
“I did.”
“You were searching before that?”
“I was reading.”
“Reading what?”
“Medical journals.”
Silence.
Evelyn stared at him.
“You read cardiothoracic journals?”
“Not competently.”
Daniel’s shoulders moved with a silent laugh.
Evelyn put a hand against her forehead.
For reasons she could not explain, that ridiculous detail hurt more than anything else.
Dominic Vale, a man feared in boardrooms and back rooms across Chicago, had apparently spent years reading medical journals he barely understood because one day her name might appear.
“Why?”
Dominic looked at Daniel.
“Rest.”
Then he walked out.
Evelyn followed.
They stopped at the end of the corridor.
“You don’t get to escape your own conversation by ordering your brother to rest.”
“I wasn’t escaping.”
“Then answer.”
Dominic looked toward the windows.
“After you disappeared, I used investigators.”
“I assumed.”
“They found your car abandoned outside Milwaukee.”
Evelyn remembered.
She had left it deliberately.
“For six weeks,” Dominic continued, “I believed someone had taken you.”
The words changed everything for one horrible second.
“I didn’t know.”
“No.”
“I left a note.”
“You left it in my office. I didn’t go home for almost eighteen hours.”
Evelyn closed her eyes.
She had never considered that.
“I searched everywhere,” he said. “Airports. Hospitals. Border crossings. Every place an enemy might take someone.”
“I wasn’t your hostage.”
“I know that now.”
“When did you realize?”
“When I found the cash withdrawal from an account your father didn’t know existed.”
She smiled faintly.
“My mother created that account.”
“I eventually guessed.”
“She told me never to let a man know every door I could leave through.”
Dominic absorbed that without reacting.
“She was right.”
Evelyn looked at him sharply.
The Dominic she remembered would have hated that statement.
This Dominic only looked tired.
“Why stop the investigators?”
“Because once I knew you had left by choice, finding you became a different act.”
She waited.
“I could search for a kidnapped wife,” he said. “I had no right to hunt a woman who had decided she didn’t want to be found.”
Evelyn’s throat tightened.
“So you read journals.”
“Yes.”
“That is insane.”
“I have been told.”
“By whom?”
“Daniel. Repeatedly.”
Despite herself, she laughed.
It was small.
The first genuine laugh Dominic had heard from her in three years.
He looked almost startled.
Then both their phones rang.
Evelyn answered hers first.
“Mercer.”
A nurse from Daniel’s unit spoke rapidly.
Evelyn’s face changed.
She looked at Dominic.
“His security guard collapsed.”
Dominic’s eyes sharpened.
They ran.
The man lay unconscious near the service elevator.
No gunshot.
No obvious injury.
One of the nurses held a plastic coffee cup with a gloved hand.
“He drank from this twenty minutes ago.”
Dominic immediately understood.
“Poison?”
“Possibly,” Evelyn said.
Dominic grabbed his phone.
“Lock Daniel’s floor.”
“This is a hospital, not your headquarters.”
“Someone just poisoned the man outside my brother’s room.”
“That doesn’t give you control of my hospital.”
“It gives me reason to keep him alive.”
“So do I.”
They stood inches apart.
For one second, three years of conflict collided with immediate danger.
Then Dominic nodded.
“What do you need?”
The question surprised her.
“Hospital security controls access. Your men stay where they are. No weapons inside patient rooms. Nobody touches staff. Nobody searches anyone.”
“Done.”
“And you tell me everything that could explain this.”
A pause.
“Done.”
They moved Daniel to a secured private ICU room.
The guard survived.
Testing later confirmed a heavy sedative in his coffee.
May you like
Someone had tried to create an opening.
The question was why.
