Chapter 2
The tiny red light blinked again.
Once.
Twice.
Then the black object twisted against the bottom of the porcelain bowl.
I nearly dropped the flashlight.
Vincent saw my expression and reached for the bowl, but I pulled it away before he could touch it.
“No.”
The word escaped me automatically, though I knew he couldn’t hear it.
I grabbed my phone and typed.
Don’t touch it.
He read the message.
His face had gone pale.
For the first time since I’d entered the Moretti mansion, Vincent didn’t look powerful.
He looked afraid.
Not startled.
Not confused.
Afraid.
He typed with shaking fingers.
Put it under a glass.
I stared at him.
Why?
His jaw tightened.
Then:
Because I have seen one before.
A cold sensation moved through me.
Before I could ask anything else, Vincent stood too quickly and nearly lost his balance.
I caught his arm.
His entire body was rigid with pain.
Blood still traced a thin line from his ear toward his jaw.
Whatever questions I had could wait.
He needed a doctor.
I reached for my phone.
Vincent stopped me.
I expected resistance.
Instead, he typed a name.
Dr. Elena Romano. Call only her.
Below it, he added a number.
I hesitated.
I didn’t like the secrecy.
I liked even less the way he kept looking at the black object as if it belonged to a memory rather than the present.
Still, I called.
A woman answered on the second ring.
“Vincent?”
“No. My name is Anna.”
There was a pause.
“Anna?”
“Vincent’s wife.”
Another pause.
Not disbelief.
Recognition.
“You’re at the house?”
“Yes.”
“Is he conscious?”
“Yes.”
“Any severe bleeding?”
“Not severe. But something came out of his ear.”
The woman became completely silent.
“What kind of something?”
I looked at the bowl.
“Black. About two inches long. Metallic, maybe. It has a red light.”
The silence on the other end lasted just long enough to frighten me.
“Do not throw it away,” she said.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Put something over it.”
“I did.”
“Good. Keep Vincent sitting upright. No alcohol. No medication unless I approve it. I’m twenty minutes away.”
She hung up.
Twenty minutes later, the mansion’s front doors opened before I even reached them.
Two guards stepped aside for a woman in a navy coat carrying a medical bag.
She was in her late fifties, with silver streaks in dark hair and the kind of calm face that made panic seem embarrassing.
She looked at me once.
Then at Vincent.
Then at the overturned glass covering the black object.
Her expression hardened.
“Not again.”
I stared at her.
Vincent read her lips.
His face changed.
He typed something into his phone and held it toward her.
You said the old one was removed completely.
Dr. Romano read the screen.
Her eyes closed briefly.
“I believed it was.”
My stomach dropped.
“What is that thing?”
She looked at me.
“I don’t know yet.”
“You just said not again.”
“I said I’ve seen something similar.”
“Inside his ear?”
“Yes.”
Vincent’s fingers tightened around his phone.
I looked from one to the other.
“Someone needs to tell me what’s happening.”
Dr. Romano hesitated.
Vincent typed.
She deserves to know.
The doctor glanced at him.
“You’re sure?”
He nodded.
Something passed silently between them.
Not authority.
History.
Dr. Romano removed her coat.
“First I examine him.”
The next hour felt longer than the previous eight days combined.
Vincent sat in a leather chair in the library while Dr. Romano used instruments from a portable kit to inspect his ear.
I stood nearby holding gauze.
The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and burning wood.
Eventually the doctor stepped back.
“The swelling is significant, but I don’t see evidence of perforation tonight.”
I let out a breath.
Vincent read her lips closely.
She wrote on a notepad for him.
You need imaging tomorrow. Full scan. No argument.
He took the pen.
What was it?
Elena glanced toward the covered bowl.
“I want a specialist to confirm.”
Vincent wrote again.
Elena.
She sighed.
Then she looked at me.
“Sixteen years ago, Vincent suffered severe injuries in an accident.”
“I know.”
“No,” she said gently. “You know what people were told.”
Vincent’s gaze dropped.
I went very still.
“What actually happened?”
Dr. Romano folded her hands.
“His hearing loss wasn’t caused by one simple accident.”
Vincent turned his head sharply toward her.
She continued anyway.
“He was twenty-two. There was an explosion at a warehouse owned by his father’s company.”
My stomach tightened.
“Was anyone killed?”
“No.”
Relief came immediately.
“Several people were injured. Vincent worst of all.”
She looked at him.
“His right ear sustained major damage. His left was affected too. He spent weeks in the hospital.”
I looked at Vincent.
He stared toward the fire.
“Where does that thing fit?”
Dr. Romano chose her words carefully.
“At the time, an experimental implant was being tested privately by a surgeon associated with the Moretti family.”
“An implant?”
“To stimulate damaged auditory pathways.”
I stared at the glass bowl.
“That?”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“The original device was much smaller. Internal. It was supposed to help recover partial hearing.”
“Did it?”
“For a while.”
Vincent reached for his phone.
Three months.
Elena nodded.
“He regained limited hearing in one ear. Then the pain began.”
I sat beside him.
“What happened?”
Dr. Romano’s face hardened.
“The surgeon disappeared.”
That sounded absurd enough that I almost laughed.
I didn’t.
“Disappeared?”
“Left the country. Closed his clinic. The research program vanished with him.”
Vincent typed.
My father paid everyone to stay quiet.
I read the words twice.
“Why?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
Then:
Because the procedure was never legally approved.
I felt my stomach turn.
Dr. Romano continued.
“Another surgeon removed what we believed was the entire device.”
“And you think some of it was left behind?”
“That would be the simplest explanation.”
“The simplest?”
She glanced at the bowl.
“The red light isn’t.”
I looked at Vincent.
His face was unreadable again.
But now I understood the fear.
For sixteen years, he’d believed whatever had been placed inside him was gone.
Tonight, part of it had moved.
And blinked.
Dr. Romano secured the object in a small medical container.
“I’ll take this to a biomedical specialist.”
Vincent immediately shook his head.
She frowned.
“Vincent.”
He typed.
No hospital record yet.
“Why?”
He looked at me.
Then back at her.
Because someone knew it was still there.
I froze.
Elena stared at him.
“What makes you think that?”
He typed more slowly this time.
The pain became worse six months ago.
“So?”
Six months ago, I began receiving messages.
My heart beat faster.
“What messages?”
Vincent turned the phone toward me.
Anonymous.
Dr. Romano crossed her arms.
“Why did you never tell me?”
Vincent didn’t answer.
Her eyes narrowed.
“You thought you could handle it yourself.”
Nothing.
“Of course you did.”
I would have found the exchange almost funny if I weren’t frightened.
“What did the messages say?”
Vincent opened a locked folder on his phone.
There were screenshots.
The first contained only one sentence.
Some things buried in the body remember who put them there.
The second arrived two weeks later.
How is your right ear?
The third:
You should have listened when you still could.
I felt cold.
“When did these start?”
Vincent typed.
April.
“Did anyone else know about the implant?”
He listed four names.
His father.
Dr. Romano.
The original surgeon.
And his father’s attorney.
“Your father is dead,” Elena said.
Vincent nodded.
“The surgeon?”
Unknown.
“The attorney?”
His hands stopped.
Then:
Alive.
“What is his name?”
Vincent looked at me for a long moment before typing.
Samuel Price.
I knew the name.
Not personally.
Everyone in Chicago knew it.
Price & Weller handled real estate, shipping disputes, major estates, and wealthy families who preferred problems to disappear quietly.
“Could he have done this?”
Vincent’s expression hardened.
Dr. Romano spoke first.
“We don’t know anyone did anything.”
“But the messages—”
“Could be intimidation. Could be coincidence. Could be someone who learned fragments of old information.”
She pointed at the medical container.
“And until someone examines this properly, we don’t know whether that light is active electronics or simply stored power.”
Her calm helped.
A little.
I sat beside Vincent again.
He looked exhausted.
Not physically.
Some older exhaustion had surfaced.
The exhaustion of carrying a truth too long.
I typed into my phone.
Why didn’t you tell me?
He read it.
His answer came quickly.
You already had enough reasons to fear me.
I stared at him.
A strange ache formed behind my ribs.
During those first days, I had feared everything about him.
The guards.
The mansion.
His name.
The marriage.
But never once had Vincent used that fear against me.
He had slept downstairs.
Given me a locked room.
Asked whether I was comfortable.
And now, even while bleeding and in pain, his concern was that I might be afraid.
I typed:
I’m not afraid of you.
Vincent read the words.
His face changed so slightly anyone else might have missed it.
I didn’t.
He lowered his eyes.
Dr. Romano packed her bag.
“He needs rest.”
“I’ll make sure.”
Vincent looked at me.
I added:
“And tomorrow he’s getting the scan.”
His eyebrow lifted.
I typed:
No argument.
For the first time that night, the corner of his mouth moved.
Not quite a smile.
But close.
The next morning, Vincent had the mansion’s driver take us to a private medical center on the north side.
No entourage.
No armed men beside us.
Only one driver waiting outside.
I expected Vincent to receive special treatment because of his name.
Instead, he filled out forms.
Waited in a quiet room.
Answered questions through a tablet.
The ordinariness surprised me.
So did the number of people who seemed to know Dr. Romano rather than Vincent.
The scan took nearly an hour.
Afterward, Elena met us in a consultation room with an otologist named Dr. Malik.
He displayed Vincent’s images on a screen.
“There is good news.”
Vincent read his lips.
“What?” I asked.
“The object removed last night appears to have been sitting near the outer portion of the damaged canal. There is no second foreign body deeper inside.”
My shoulders relaxed.
“And the bad news?”
Dr. Malik leaned forward.
“There is old scar tissue and chronic inflammation. That likely explains much of the pain.”
Vincent typed.
The object?
The doctor nodded.
“Our biomedical lab examined it.”
He placed a photograph on the table.
Magnified, the thing looked less terrifying.
Thin composite casing.
Miniature wiring.
A tiny diode.
“This isn’t alive,” he said.
I almost laughed from relief.
“What made it move?”
“Moisture, heat, muscle movement, and the flexible casing. The shifting you saw was mechanical.”
“And the light?”
“A degraded power cell.”
Vincent’s expression did not ease.
Dr. Malik understood why.
“But,” he added, “this object was manufactured no more than seven years ago.”
Silence.
Vincent had received his experimental implant sixteen years earlier.
I stared at the doctor.
“So it wasn’t part of the original device.”
“No.”
“How long was it in his ear?”
“Impossible to know exactly.”
Vincent’s fingers went still.
Dr. Romano looked furious.
“Could someone place something like that without him realizing?”
Dr. Malik nodded slowly.
“Possibly during a medical procedure, especially with heavy sedation.”
“When was your last procedure?” I asked.
Vincent typed.
Two years ago.
Dr. Romano frowned.
“What procedure?”
He looked at her.
She clearly didn’t know.
Routine scar-tissue revision.
“Where?”
He typed the name of a private clinic.
Elena’s expression changed.
“Who recommended them?”
Vincent didn’t need to type.
He looked at her.
She understood.
“Samuel Price.”
The room went quiet.
That afternoon, we returned home with more questions than answers.
Vincent spent two hours in his study.
I didn’t disturb him.
Instead, I made soup.
Cooking calmed me.
It always had.
When I was twelve and my mother worked late, I cooked for Tyler and my father.
When Dad lost his job, I stretched three meals into five.
When Tyler began gambling with him, I learned which grocery stores discounted bread after seven.
Food had always been the closest thing our family had to stability.
Around six, Vincent appeared in the kitchen doorway.
I glanced up.
“You should be resting.”
He couldn’t hear me, but he knew the expression.
He lifted his phone.
Elena said the same thing.
I typed:
She’s a doctor.
You’re holding a wooden spoon. Somehow more frightening.
I stared at the message.
Then at him.
“Was that a joke?”
He couldn’t hear my question.
But he saw me smiling.
He smiled too.
It changed everything.
I had never seen him fully smile before.
Not once.
It made him look younger than thirty-eight.
Almost boyish.
Then his expression faded.
He typed:
I found the clinic records.
I turned off the stove.
We sat at the kitchen table.
He showed me documents.
Bills.
Medical reports.
Consent forms.
Everything appeared ordinary until he opened one page.
A payment authorization.
The procedure had cost nearly sixty thousand dollars.
But the payment hadn’t come from Vincent.
It came from a trust.
Moretti Family Settlement Trust.
“That could still be normal.”
Vincent shook his head.
He typed:
The trust was dissolved ten years ago.
I stared.
“Then how—”
He opened another document.
The trustee’s signature appeared at the bottom.
Samuel Price.
A second signature appeared beside it.
Vincent pointed.
My father.
“But your father died twelve years ago.”
Vincent nodded.
The document was dated two years earlier.
Someone had forged a dead man’s signature.
I leaned back.
“This isn’t about your hearing.”
Vincent watched me.
I continued.
“Or maybe it is, but not entirely.”
He typed:
What do you mean?
“Why spend sixty thousand dollars to place some object in your ear?”
He frowned.
“It wasn’t powerful enough to hurt you seriously.”
He nodded.
“It was hidden.”
Another nod.
“And someone sent messages afterward.”
His eyes sharpened.
I stood and began pacing.
“Maybe the point wasn’t the device.”
Vincent followed me with his eyes.
“Maybe the point was making you think someone could still reach you.”
The thought made my skin crawl.
Not a weapon.
A message.
Someone wanted Vincent to feel watched.
Vulnerable.
Controlled.
He typed:
That was my conclusion.
“Then why didn’t you tell anyone?”
His answer took longer.
Because in my family, fear was considered useful information. You never gave useful information to someone you did not trust.
I sat down again.
“That sounds exhausting.”
He looked at the screen.
Then typed:
It is.
Something in those two words stayed with me.
For all the stories I’d heard about Vincent Moretti, nobody had ever described him as tired.
Dangerous.
Cold.
Untouchable.
Never tired.
That night, dinner was quiet.
Not uncomfortable.
Just thoughtful.
Afterward, I found myself standing in the library while Vincent read documents.
“Can I ask you something?”
He looked up.
I typed instead.
Why did you marry me?
His face became completely still.
For eight days, I hadn’t asked.
Perhaps because I was afraid of the answer.
Perhaps because some part of me assumed the answer was obvious.
My father owed money.
Vincent accepted me instead.
An arrangement.
A purchase.
A transaction.
His hands moved slowly across the phone.
Your father lied to you.
The floor seemed to tilt.
I sat.
About what?
Vincent typed.
Everything.
My throat tightened.
He opened a file.
A debt agreement.
My father’s name appeared at the top.
The total debt wasn’t fifty dollars.
It was forty-eight thousand.
I stared.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
Vincent typed.
The fifty dollars was symbolic.
I remembered Dad pressing the folded bill into Vincent’s hand while Tyler laughed.
My stomach turned.
Why?
Vincent looked ashamed.
Then typed:
Your father insisted. He wanted you to believe I bought you.
I read the sentence again.
Why would he do that?
Vincent stared down at his hands.
Then:
Because I refused to take you as payment.
I stopped breathing.
He continued.
When he first offered you, I told him no.
My eyes burned.
He offered me?
Vincent’s jaw tightened.
Yes.
I looked away.
I shouldn’t have been surprised.
And yet some small part of me had apparently preserved the fantasy that my father had been desperate rather than willing.
Vincent typed again.
I told him his debt was his own.
“Then why are we married?”
He held my gaze.
Because two days later, you came to my office.
I stared at him.
“No.”
He nodded.
I shook my head.
“I’ve never been to your office.”
Vincent looked confused.
Then understanding flashed across his face.
He opened another file.
Security footage.
The date was five months earlier.
A woman entered Vincent’s office building.
Brown hair.
My height.
My coat.
My name appeared on the visitor log.
Anna Parker.
I leaned closer.
My blood turned cold.
“That isn’t me.”
Vincent stared at the screen.
The woman turned slightly toward the camera.
Her face wasn’t visible.
But I knew that coat.
I’d given it to someone.
“Tyler’s girlfriend.”
Vincent frowned.
“Her name is Melissa.”
I had lent Melissa my coat months ago when hers was stolen from a bar.
She never returned it.
Vincent typed rapidly.
She said she was you.
“What did she say?”
His response came in pieces.
That your father had taken money from you.
That you wanted out of his house.
That you knew he would never leave you alone while he had access to your income.
My stomach twisted because every statement was true.
But I had never told Vincent any of it.
He continued.
She asked whether marriage would legally separate your finances and residence from your father.
I stared.
“Why would Melissa do that?”
Vincent shook his head.
Then typed:
She also gave me letters.
He went upstairs.
When he returned, he carried an envelope.
Inside were three handwritten pages.
My name signed beneath each.
I recognized my father’s handwriting immediately.
He had tried to imitate mine.
Badly.
But Vincent had never seen my handwriting.
The letters made it appear that I wanted the marriage.
That I was frightened of confronting my father directly.
That I wanted a legal arrangement with separate bedrooms and an eventual annulment once the debt situation was resolved.
I sat in stunned silence.
Vincent’s face was rigid.
I believed you had chosen this.
My vision blurred.
Suddenly his behavior made sense.
The separate room.
The key.
The careful distance.
His questions about whether I was comfortable.
He had believed he was respecting conditions I had requested.
“You thought I knew?”
He nodded.
“You thought I agreed?”
Another nod.
The room felt unbearably still.
I had spent eight days believing I had been sold.
Vincent had spent eight days believing he had entered a strange but voluntary arrangement with a desperate woman trying to escape her family.
Neither of us had possessed the truth.
My father had given each of us a different story.
I stood abruptly.
Vincent stood too.
He did not approach me.
I appreciated that more than I could explain.
I typed with shaking hands.
I need some air.
He nodded.
Then:
You can leave tonight if you want.
I looked at him.
The marriage can be annulled. Your father’s debt is not yours.
My throat tightened.
He added:
You owe me nothing.
For twenty-three years, almost every person in my life had told me what I owed.
Rent.
Groceries.
Loyalty.
Patience.
Forgiveness.
Work.
Sacrifice.
Vincent Moretti—the man everyone had warned me would own me—was the first person to tell me plainly that I owed him nothing.
I walked into the conservatory instead of outside.
Snow pressed against the glass roof.
Orange trees grew in enormous ceramic pots.
I sat on a bench beneath one of them.
Five minutes later, Vincent appeared in the doorway.
He didn’t enter.
He simply stood there.
Waiting.
I finally waved him closer.
He sat at the opposite end of the bench.
For a while, we watched snow collect on the glass.
I typed:
I don’t know what I want.
He read it.
Then:
You don’t need to.
I looked at him.
What do you want?
His expression changed.
He thought for nearly a minute.
Then typed:
For the first time in years?
I nodded.
His next answer surprised me.
A quiet house.
I almost laughed.
He continued.
Dinner that isn’t a meeting.
Someone who doesn’t want something from my name.
Then he stopped.
Deleted something.
Typed again.
And perhaps someday to hear rain again.
My eyes filled.
I didn’t know why that line hurt more than everything else.
Maybe because beneath all the fear surrounding Vincent Moretti was a man who missed rain.
I reached across the space between us.
Slowly.
Giving him time to move away.
Then I placed my hand over his.
He looked at our hands.
Then at me.
Neither of us pretended it meant more than it did.
But neither of us pretended it meant nothing.
The following morning brought another surprise.
Dr. Romano arrived carrying a folder.
“The device contained data storage.”
Vincent and I exchanged a look.
“What kind of data?”
“Minimal. Mostly identifiers.”
She placed printed information on the dining table.
Serial numbers.
Manufacturing codes.
A clinic ID.
Then one name.
PARKER, ANNA
I stared.
“My name.”
Elena nodded.
Vincent’s expression hardened.
“But it wasn’t inside me two years ago because of her,” he typed.
“Probably not.”
“Then why her name?”
Dr. Romano pointed at the date embedded in the device.
It had been programmed five months ago.
The same month the fake Anna visited Vincent’s office.
My pulse quickened.
“Melissa.”
Vincent’s eyes met mine.
Dr. Romano frowned.
“Who?”
I explained.
The coat.
The fake visit.
The forged letters.
By the end, Elena looked less like a doctor and more like a very angry aunt.
“So somebody used Anna’s identity in Vincent’s office, then months later programmed her name into a device already hidden in his ear.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Nobody knew.
Vincent opened his laptop.
He searched through archived business correspondence.
Twenty minutes later, he froze.
I moved closer.
An email from Samuel Price.
Sent five months earlier.
The subject line:
Settlement Option — Parker Account
Vincent opened it.
The email was brief.
Samuel claimed he’d reached an agreement with my father.
He recommended wiping the debt entirely in exchange for “personal consideration already discussed.”
My stomach turned.
Vincent typed:
I rejected this.
A reply appeared beneath it.
From Vincent.
No person is consideration. Collect only what Parker can legally repay.
I read it twice.
Vincent hadn’t accepted me.
He had explicitly refused.
Below that was Samuel’s response.
Understood. I’ll handle the family personally.
Vincent’s face changed.
I knew before he typed.
Samuel arranged everything after that.
My father.
Melissa.
The forged letters.
The ceremony.
“Why would your attorney want us married?”
Vincent didn’t answer.
Elena did.
“Maybe he didn’t.”
We looked at her.
She pointed at the device records.
“Maybe he wanted Vincent distracted by an unusual marriage while something else happened.”
The thought settled heavily in the room.
Vincent searched again.
Then stopped.
His eyes narrowed.
He opened a corporate filing.
A transfer of voting rights had occurred four days before our wedding.
Price & Weller had gained temporary authority over several Moretti properties while Vincent was supposedly “medically compromised.”
Vincent stared at the screen.
“I never signed this,” he typed.
My pulse jumped.
Samuel Price wasn’t trying to control a marriage.
He was trying to prove Vincent incapable of controlling his own affairs.
And the hidden device?
The pain?
The messages?
All of it could make Vincent appear unstable.
Unwell.
Confused.
A man whose hearing condition was deteriorating.
A man whose judgment could be questioned.
Dr. Romano understood at the same moment.
“He was building a record.”
Vincent typed:
To remove me from the family trust.
I looked at him.
“And the marriage?”
His face darkened.
He searched through another file.
Then found it.
A clause in the Moretti family trust.
Marriage without a verified prenuptial agreement triggered an automatic ninety-day review of Vincent’s controlling interest.
Samuel had prepared the paperwork.
He had engineered the conditions.
The fake letters.
My father’s debt.
The rushed wedding.
All without either Vincent or me understanding the whole truth.
I stared at the screen.
“So this entire marriage was never about fifty dollars.”
Vincent shook his head.
It was about signatures.
Timing.
Control.
And two people who had been deliberately kept from comparing what they’d been told.
For the first time since arriving at the mansion, I felt angry.
Not frightened.
Not ashamed.
Angry.
But not with Vincent.
At everyone who had assumed that silence between two people made them easy to manipulate.
I looked at him.
He looked at me.
Then I typed:
We need to talk to Samuel.
Vincent shook his head immediately.
Not yet.
I frowned.
Why?
His answer came quickly.
Because now we know something he doesn’t.
What?
Vincent’s eyes settled on mine.
Then he typed:
We trust each other.
And somehow, that felt more important than any weapon in the house.
That evening, a courier arrived.
No return address.
One envelope.
Addressed to Vincent.
Inside was a photocopy of our marriage certificate.
Across it, someone had written:
Nine days left.
I stared at the message.
Vincent turned the paper over.
Nothing.
“What happens in nine days?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
Then he opened the trust agreement again.
The automatic review hearing was scheduled in nine days.
If the marriage was deemed financially coercive, unstable, or improperly executed, Samuel Price could petition to place Vincent’s companies under temporary trusteeship.
I stared at the document.
“So he wants our marriage to look fake.”
Vincent nodded.
“Or forced.”
Another nod.
I thought of the truth.
In a way, it had been both.
Just not in the way Samuel expected.
I looked at Vincent.
He had offered to annul it.
He had told me I owed him nothing.
I could leave.
Legally.
Morally.
Emotionally.
I could walk out the front gate and never see the Moretti mansion again.
Part of me wanted to.
Not because I feared Vincent.
Because choosing anything freely still felt unfamiliar.
Then I remembered his words.
A quiet house.
Dinner that isn’t a meeting.
To hear rain again.
I picked up my phone.
Vincent watched me type.
I’m not staying because my father told me to.
He read.
Good.
I’m not staying because of the debt.
Good.
And I’m not staying because Samuel Price needs us to look married.
Vincent’s mouth almost curved.
Very good.
I took a breath.
Then typed the hardest sentence.
I’m staying for nine more days because I want to know the truth. After that, I decide for myself.
Vincent read it carefully.
Then he nodded.
His response contained only four words.
That’s all I ever wanted.
But just before midnight, Dr. Romano called.
She had discovered one final piece of information inside the device.
A recorded identification number linked to the clinic where Vincent had undergone his procedure two years earlier.
The physician listed on the original surgical authorization was not the doctor Vincent remembered.
It was someone else.
A doctor Vincent had believed dead for more than a decade.
The man who had implanted the first experimental device sixteen years earlier.
May you like
Dr. Julian Vale.
And according to the clinic’s records, Julian Vale had personally requested access to Vincent Moretti’s operating room.
