Chapter 4 - THE ROAD WHERE TERESA DIED
Priscilla was brought into the Santoro estate through the underground garage.
Raphael waited in the security room.
Nadia remained upstairs with Marisol and six armed guards, but she could watch the interview through a protected video link if she chose.
Raphael did not force her.
He no longer intended to make decisions about her truth while keeping her outside the room.
Priscilla sat beneath a hard white light, wrapped in a wool blanket. Her lip was swollen from Arthur’s strike.
Raphael noticed the injury.
It did not soften him.
“Did your father hit you?” he asked.
Priscilla gave a humorless laugh.
“Does it matter?”
“It explains the blood. It does not erase what you did to Nadia.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Raphael placed the Ashwood Grove payment record on the table.
“You purchased a locked room for my sister.”
“I thought she needed treatment.”
“You wrote that her calls should be restricted.”
“Sloan said separation would help.”
“You ordered him to exclude Marisol.”
“She was encouraging Nadia’s dependence.”
“You mean Nadia trusted her.”
Priscilla looked down.
Raphael leaned closer.
“You have one opportunity to tell the truth. If you use it to protect Arthur, I will treat every word after it as an attack.”
“My father ordered your assassination three years ago.”
Even prepared for the possibility, Raphael felt the statement like a blade entering beneath his ribs.
Priscilla continued.
“The bomb was intended for you. Teresa and Nadia took the car before the scheduled dock meeting.”
“Who placed it?”
“Charles Voss arranged the device. He was on the coastal road with the remote trigger.”
“Why?”
“Your father discovered Hail Atlantic was laundering money through Santoro port contracts. After his death, Arthur believed you would expose the accounts.”
“My father died of a stroke.”
“Arthur knew his health was failing. He delayed action until you took control.”
Raphael’s hands curled into fists beneath the table.
“Why leave Nadia alive?”
“They thought her trauma erased the memory. Dr. Evelyn Crowe examined her at the hospital under a false nursing credential. She told Arthur Nadia might never speak again.”
“And when Nadia began improving?”
“My father ordered me to get close to you.”
Priscilla finally met his eyes.
“I knew about the plan to place her at Ashwood Grove. I helped Dr. Sloan create reports describing her as unstable. I told myself it was better than my father killing her.”
“You told yourself imprisoning her was mercy.”
“Yes.”
The answer was almost inaudible.
Raphael wanted to hate her without qualification.
Instead, he saw a woman who had been raised inside Arthur Hail’s system of fear and had chosen to preserve herself by feeding someone more vulnerable into it.
Victimhood explained her.
It did not absolve her.
“Where is Arthur now?”
“He ordered me to lead your men toward Rockport. He’s moving the records.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Voss mentioned North Point.”
Luciano entered.
“North Point belongs to a shell company controlled by Hail Atlantic. We’re moving on it.”
Raphael stood.
“I’m coming.”
Priscilla caught his sleeve.
“Voss wants you on the road.”
Raphael looked at her hand until she released him.
“He knows Nadia remembered the compass,” she said. “He’ll attack wherever he believes she’s being moved.”
“She isn’t leaving the estate.”
“That may not matter. Arthur has someone inside.”
Raphael turned toward Luciano.
“Lock every internal credential. Rescreen the staff.”
Luciano nodded.
Before Raphael left the room, Priscilla spoke again.
“Dr. Crowe knows what Nadia saw. She also knows what happened to Marisol’s brother.”
Raphael stopped.
“Where is Crowe?”
“Ashwood Grove.”
Upstairs, Marisol sat beside Nadia.
The message from her former clinic remained on her phone.
Mateo Vega had been twenty-three when he accepted a temporary position at Ashwood Grove. He called Marisol after his first week and said the facility was falsifying patient records.
Two days later, he disappeared.
A letter arrived claiming he had moved to California.
Marisol recognized none of the language as his.
Their mother died believing her son had abandoned the family.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Nadia asked.
“I didn’t know Ashwood Grove was connected to the Santoros.”
“You knew when I said the name.”
“I recognized the facility. I didn’t know Priscilla planned to send you there.”
Nadia closed her sketchpad.
“Did you take this job because of Mateo?”
“No. I took it because your clinic needed a trauma nurse and I needed work.”
“But you stayed because you thought I might know something.”
Marisol considered lying.
Then she remembered how many adults had protected Nadia by deciding she could not handle the truth.
“Partly,” she admitted. “After you drew Dr. Crowe’s face during our second month together, I wondered whether our stories were connected.”
“You didn’t ask me.”
“You were barely speaking. I didn’t want my questions to become another demand.”
Nadia looked toward the dark ocean.
“Are you going to leave?”
“No.”
“Even if Raphael fires you?”
“Especially then.”
The lights flickered.
A guard opened the bedroom door.
“Power instability. The backup system is activating.”
Marisol’s instincts sharpened.
The Santoro estate had three independent generators.
All of them could not fail accidentally.
“Take Nadia to the safe room.”
The guard reached for Nadia.
Marisol saw the ash-gray tattoo beneath his cuff.
The same stylized tree used in Ashwood Grove’s emblem.
She stepped between them.
“What is your security code?”
The man’s expression changed.
He reached beneath his jacket.
Marisol threw Nadia behind the bed as the first shot struck the wall.
Another guard fired from the corridor.
The infiltrator fell.
Alarms erupted.
Raphael’s voice came through Marisol’s phone.
“Where is Nadia?”
“With me. We’re safe.”
“I’m coming upstairs.”
“No. Secure the house first.”
“I’m not leaving you unprotected.”
“You have a leak. Find it.”
Raphael heard the command in her voice and obeyed.
Security discovered that the infiltrator had entered the estate six months earlier using credentials approved by Priscilla.
She denied knowingly hiring him.
His phone contained the route for a medical transport scheduled the following morning under Nadia’s name.
The vehicle was supposed to depart for a private neurological scan in Boston.
Neither Raphael nor Marisol had ordered one.
Voss planned to seize Nadia on the road.
Instead of canceling the appointment, Raphael made a decision.
“We use the convoy,” he told Luciano. “Let Voss believe she’s inside.”
Marisol objected.
“It’s too dangerous.”
“Nadia will remain here.”
“You’re making yourself the target again.”
“That is the idea.”
At eight the following morning, a medical SUV left the Santoro estate surrounded by two armored vehicles.
Raphael rode in the rear seat wearing a protective vest.
Luciano drove.
Three miles down the coastal road, at almost the exact location where Teresa died, a delivery truck blocked the highway.
Gunmen emerged from the trees.
Luciano accelerated through the first barrier.
A second vehicle struck the SUV from the side.
Raphael’s world turned over.
Glass exploded.
Metal screamed against pavement.
The SUV came to rest upside down beside the frozen shoreline.
Raphael hung from his seat belt, blood running into one eye.
Footsteps approached.
A man crouched beside the shattered window.
Charles Voss’s silver compass cuff link caught the winter light.
“You should have died in this car three years ago,” Voss said.
May you like
Raphael reached for the weapon beneath his coat.
Before he could draw it, Voss pressed a gun against his forehead.
