Chapter 3 - THE NURSE WHO NEVER LEFT
Elena Ward was found in a boardinghouse outside Annapolis.
She was alive.
But she had spent six months hiding under another name.
When Damian’s men brought her to Grayhaven, she refused to enter until Mara and Lila stood in the foyer.
“The child stays,” Elena said.
Damian’s guards looked toward him.
He nodded.
They met in the library.
Elena had once been a trauma nurse at one of Baltimore’s largest hospitals. Damian hired her after the first poisoning because she had treated victims exposed to rare toxins.
She lasted twelve days.
Officially, she resigned after Damian threatened her.
The truth was different.
“I discovered the medication records were being altered,” Elena said. “Every time I reduced the sedative, someone increased it again.”
“Who?” Damian asked.
“I didn’t know.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried.”
Damian stared at her.
Elena opened her bag and removed an old phone.
“I recorded myself entering your room the night I planned to explain everything.”
She played the file.
The recording began with Elena walking through the east corridor.
Then Viktor’s voice entered.
“You have misunderstood the charts.”
“I understand them perfectly,” Elena replied. “Someone is suppressing his breathing.”
“You should leave.”
“I am calling the police.”
A door slammed.
There was a struggle.
Then another voice spoke.
Dr. Kessler.
“You should have accepted the money.”
The recording ended.
Elena explained that Viktor threatened her younger brother. She fled the city and had not contacted authorities because she believed the police officers nearest Grayhaven belonged to the Volkov organization.
Damian did not deny it.
“What did they want?” Mara asked.
Everyone looked at her.
Elena turned toward Damian.
“To keep him alive long enough to transfer control.”
Damian’s face became unreadable.
Elena removed several copied documents.
Viktor had persuaded Damian to sign emergency business papers while heavily sedated.
The documents temporarily transferred voting authority over the Volkov companies to Viktor if Damian became medically incapacitated.
But temporary control was not enough.
Under their late father’s will, if Damian died without a legal heir, Viktor inherited everything.
Mara glanced at Lila.
Damian noticed.
“I have no children,” he said.
Elena looked down.
“That may not be true.”
The room fell silent.
She placed a birth record on the table.
The document named Damian as the father of a baby girl born five years earlier.
The mother was Ana Petrov, a singer who had disappeared shortly after the birth.
Damian stared at the page.
“Ana was never pregnant.”
“She was,” Elena said. “She concealed it.”
“Why?”
“Because Viktor threatened her.”
Damian rose too quickly.
Pain crossed his face, but he remained standing.
“Where is the child?”
“No one knows.”
Viktor had discovered the pregnancy first.
If Damian had an heir, Viktor would lose his claim to the family holdings.
Ana attempted to flee.
Her car was later found burned outside Philadelphia.
No body was recovered.
The infant disappeared.
Damian looked toward the window, his hands gripping the back of the chair.
For years, he had believed Ana abandoned him.
Then he believed she died because of his enemies.
Now he learned that the danger had come from inside his own house.
Lila walked toward him.
Mara whispered her name, but the child continued.
She took Damian’s hand.
His fingers closed around hers.
“Did he take your baby?” Lila asked.
Damian’s jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
“Will you find her?”
“I will.”
Lila looked up at him.
“You have to get better first.”
For the first time since Mara entered Grayhaven, Damian smiled.
It was small.
Painful.
But real.
“You sound like a nurse.”
Lila shook her head.
“Nurses are scared of you.”
Elena laughed before she could stop herself.
May you like
Even Damian allowed the smile to remain.
Then a gunshot shattered the library window.
