Chapter 4 - “Room M-17?”
He nodded faintly.
“It wasn’t an operating room. It was a storage room behind the surgical suite. There were locked cabinets. Medical supplies. Evidence bags.”
“Evidence?”
“Vale called them samples.”
“Samples of what?”
“I don’t know.”
The elevator doors opened and Dr. Reed returned with a consent form.
“We’re taking him upstairs now,” she said. “The abscess needs to be drained, and we’ll remove the capsule if it’s safe to do so.”
Gabriel looked at the form.
“Who has access to the operating floor?”
“Hospital staff and authorized family,” Dr. Reed said.
“No family.”
Vincent appeared in the doorway behind her.
Gabriel’s face tightened.
“Not him.”
Vincent stopped.
“I’m not asking to come in.”
“Then why are you here?”
“To tell you the truth before someone else tells you a version designed to turn you against me.”
Gabriel’s breathing became strained. I adjusted the oxygen mask.
“Make it brief,” he said.
Vincent entered the room but kept several feet away.
“The device was implanted three months ago,” he said.
Gabriel stared at him.
“By whom?”
“I don’t know.”
“You arranged the surgery.”
“I arranged the removal.”
“After someone implanted it.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“That’s what I was trying to discover.”
Gabriel’s hand tightened around mine.
Vincent continued, “The first time I found evidence of the device, it was in the scar tissue near your shoulder. Dr. Vale said it had been placed there during the shooting.”
“Why would anyone put a tracker in a bullet wound?”
“To make it look accidental.”
“Then why was another one in my back?”
Vincent’s face went pale.
“That is what frightened me.”
“Frightened you enough to cut me open?”
“I thought someone had placed a second device after the shooting. I didn’t know the first operation had been done by Vale.”
Gabriel’s eyes hardened.
“You’re saying Vale implanted them.”
“I’m saying Vale had access to you, and he lied about what he found.”
“Why would he do that?”
Vincent looked at me, then back at Gabriel.
“Because the capsules aren’t just trackers.”
No one spoke.
Dr. Reed glanced at the clock.
“We need to go.”
“What are they?” Gabriel asked.
Vincent took a breath.
“Storage units.”
“For what?”
“Recordings. Financial data. Names. Instructions.”
“That’s impossible,” I said. “A capsule that size couldn’t hold much.”
“Not much,” Vincent agreed. “But enough to identify a network.”
Gabriel stared at him.
“Whose network?”
Vincent looked toward the corridor.
“Your father’s.”
The room seemed to lose its air.
Gabriel’s expression did not change, but his fingers went cold around mine.
“My father died twelve years ago.”
“His business did not.”
“What are you talking about?”
Vincent moved closer, his voice low.
“After your father died, I found references to a private ledger. Not money. People. Names of officials, judges, contractors, doctors. Everyone who had been paid, threatened, or protected by the organization.”
“And the capsules held copies?”
“One held a key. The other held a list.”
“Why would my father put that information inside me?”
“He didn’t.”
Vincent glanced at the surgical scar.
“Vale did.”
Gabriel’s breathing quickened.
“You’re lying.”
“I wish I were.”
“You expect me to believe that a doctor implanted evidence in my body and waited twelve years for someone to find it?”
“No. I think Vale implanted it recently because he believed you were close to discovering what happened to the original ledger.”
“What happened to it?”
Vincent looked at me.
“The ledger disappeared the week before Gabriel was shot.”
Gabriel’s face had become unreadable.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried.”
“When?”
“Several times. You wouldn’t listen.”
“Because you were always accusing someone.”
“Because someone was always lying.”
“You included.”
“Yes.”
The admission landed harder than any denial.
Vincent lowered his eyes.
“I moved money from three accounts without telling you. I contacted people you had ordered me to avoid. I met with Vale. I lied about where I was the night of the shooting.”
Gabriel’s voice became quieter.
“Why?”
“Because I thought you would kill the investigation before it reached the people responsible.”
“I would never—”
“You would,” Vincent interrupted, not angrily. “You would decide that protecting the family mattered more than knowing what the family had done.”
Gabriel looked away.
Vincent continued, “The message you received before the shooting came from me.”
The silence that followed was absolute.
Gabriel’s eyes returned to him.
“You sent it.”
“Yes.”
“It said the person closest to me had chosen a side.”
“I was trying to warn you.”
“You used Luca’s number.”
“I had no way to reach you without the message being intercepted.”
“You could have come to me.”
“I did. You refused to see me.”
“Because you had been taking money.”
“To find the ledger.”
“You should have told me.”
“I should have done many things.”
A nurse appeared at the door.
“We need to move him now.”
Gabriel stared at Vincent.
“Did you shoot me?”
Vincent’s expression broke.
“No.”
“Did you arrange it?”
“No.”
“Did you know it would happen?”
“I knew someone was planning to scare you. I didn’t know they would use a real weapon.”
“Who?”
Vincent shook his head.
“I still don’t know.”
“Then why should I trust anything you say?”
“You shouldn’t.”
The answer was so direct that Gabriel fell silent.
Vincent stepped back.
“But you should trust the scan. You should trust the wound. You should trust the fact that Vale disappeared from the clinic two hours ago.”
Luca entered behind him, holding a second phone.
“Vale’s office was cleared,” he said. “His home too.”
Gabriel looked from one cousin to the other.
“Find him.”
Luca’s expression hardened.
“I’m already trying.”
“No,” Gabriel said. “Find him without bringing him to me.”
Luca paused.
It was the first time Gabriel had issued an order that sounded less like revenge and more like responsibility.
“Understood.”
The nurses began wheeling Gabriel toward the operating suite.
He still held my hand.
When the doors opened, he looked at me.
“If I don’t remember everything afterward—”
“You probably won’t. Anesthesia does that.”
“If I forget who I can trust?”
“Then start with what people do, not what they say.”
His eyes held mine.
“Will you be here?”
“I’ll be here when you wake up.”
“Why?”
I glanced at the scar hidden beneath the blankets.
“Because you’re my patient.”
“That’s all?”
“For tonight.”
He seemed to accept the answer.
The doors closed behind him.
Vincent stood in the corridor, staring at the place where Gabriel had disappeared.
“You care about him,” I said.
“I’ve always cared about him.”
“That isn’t the same as knowing how to protect him.”
“No.”
“Why did you really remove the first capsule?”
He rubbed his hands over his face.
“Because it contained a recording.”
“Of what?”
“Gabriel’s father.”
“Doing what?”
Vincent looked toward the operating doors.
“Admitting that he had ordered the shooting of his own business partner.”
I stared at him.
“Why would that matter now?”
“Because the business partner was Dr. Adrian Vale’s father.”
The hospital corridor seemed to tilt.
“Vale has spent twelve years waiting for Gabriel’s family to pay for something Gabriel didn’t do.”
Vincent reached into his coat and removed a small evidence envelope.
Inside was a thin, damaged memory card.
“The first capsule was empty when I opened it,” he said. “The recording had already been transferred.”
“Transferred where?”
His eyes met mine.
“Into the second capsule.”
Behind the operating-room doors, an alarm sounded.
Luca turned sharply toward the sound.
Vincent closed his hand around the envelope.
“We have to assume Vale knows Gabriel is here.”
I looked at the doors, then at the memory card.
“If the second capsule is inside him, what was the first one doing on his shirt?”
Vincent’s face went still.
A nurse hurried out of the operating area, carrying a sealed surgical tray.
On top of it lay a tiny silver capsule.
She stopped when she saw Vincent.
“Dr. Reed asked me to find you,” she said. “She said the device was not inside Mr. Moretti.”
My pulse slowed.
“What?”
The nurse checked the label.
“It was embedded in the old surgical scar, but it wasn’t attached to his tissue. It had been placed there temporarily.”
“Then where is the second one?” Luca asked.
The nurse looked uneasy.
“Dr. Reed found another object on the imaging.”
“Where?”
“Inside the original bullet tract.”
Vincent’s face lost all color.
The nurse continued, “It’s much closer to the shoulder than the lumbar wound.”
I looked at the sealed tray.
The capsule from the first procedure had been a decoy.
The second one was still lodged near the place where Gabriel had been shot.
And if it contained a recording of his father, then someone had spent twelve years making sure it would never be found.
From inside the operating suite came Dr. Reed’s voice, calm but urgent.
“Get the evidence team. We may have a second foreign object.”
Luca stepped toward the doors.
Vincent caught his arm.
“Wait.”
“Let go.”
“Not yet.”
For the first time, Luca looked ready to ignore him completely.
Vincent pointed to the capsule on the tray.
“That one was removed from the wrong side.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Vincent’s eyes fixed on the tiny silver container.
“It means someone wanted us to think the evidence was in Gabriel.”
He looked toward the operating room.
“But the real recording may have been placed in the bullet fragment that was removed three weeks ago.”
A hospital phone began ringing at the nurses’ station.
No one answered.
Then Gabriel’s private phone, sealed in a belongings bag on the counter, lit up from inside the plastic.
May you like
The screen showed a new message from an unknown number.
Ask Vincent who received the bullet.
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