Chapter 7: What Victor Said
The guard took the phone before Renata's thumb reached the screen.
She didn't fight it.
She was too intelligent for that.
She simply stood in the corridor with her coat over her arm and her empty hand at her side, and she looked at Damien with an expression that had finally stopped pretending to be anything other than what it was.
"You'll want a lawyer," she said.
"You'll need one," Damien replied.
They took her to a separate room from Victor.
Damien's people were thorough about that.
He came back to the kitchen and stood across from me at the prep counter.
The dinner service had long since ended.
The kitchen was empty except for us and one guard at the door.
"Victor talked," Damien said.
"Already?"
"He's been waiting eleven years for someone to give him a reason to talk about Renata." He set a folded paper on the counter.
"She recruited him two years ago.
After Elena's death.
She approached him through one of the holding companies — a meeting that looked routine on paper.
She knew about the Verathen trial.
She knew he had access to the compound through a private contact.
She offered him a percentage of the estate restructuring if the custody petition succeeded."
I looked at the paper.
"He wrote this down?"
"He asked for it in writing.
He said he wanted protection." Damien's expression was unreadable.
"He also said that Renata was the one who decided on the dosage.
She had the boys' medical records.
She knew their weights, their histories, their pediatrician's pattern of diagnoses."
"She used her access as family," I said.
"Elena trusted her completely," he said.
"She was the one person Elena would have wanted near the boys if anything happened."
The cruelty of it was very specific.
The kind that requires intimacy to build.
"Victor also confirmed the first two episodes," Damien said.
"He administered both.
He had access to the household through his advisory role.
He knew the staff rotation.
He knew which evenings the primary nanny had off."
"He's going to testify to all of this?"
"He's going to do whatever keeps him out of a situation worse than a courtroom," Damien said.
"Which means yes."
I looked at the prep counter.
At the folded paper.
At the quiet kitchen that an hour ago had been full of noise and silver trays and a room full of people who had no idea what was happening at the corner table.
"What happens now?" I asked.
"My attorney is already here," Damien said.
"The police will be called in the morning, after I've had time to manage the sequence.
The laboratory results will take forty-eight hours but the documentation Victor provided is sufficient to begin." He paused.
"Renata will be arrested.
Victor will cooperate in exchange for reduced charges.
The estate documents will be reviewed and the secondary clause removed."
He said it all very evenly.
The way a man speaks when he has already moved past the shock and is operating on something colder and more functional.
"And the boys?" I asked.
Something shifted in his face.
Not much.
Enough.
"The boys are upstairs," he said.
"Sleeping.
The doctor says they'll be fully recovered by morning." He looked at the counter.
"This is the last time anyone gets close enough to harm them."
I believed him.
He looked up.
"You should have been compensated for your work tonight.
Instead you've been sitting in my kitchen for three hours giving statements."
"I wasn't keeping track," I said.
"I was." He reached into his jacket and placed a card on the counter.
Plain white.
Just a phone number.
"I'd like you to come back tomorrow.
There are things I want to discuss with you."
I looked at the card.
"What kind of things?"
"The kind that don't belong in a kitchen at midnight," he said.
"But they involve your degree.
Your situation.
And the fact that you saw what three doctors missed."
I picked up the card.
"I'll think about it," I said.
He almost smiled again.
Still not quite.
"The car outside will take you wherever you need to go," he said.
"Tonight you don't walk home."
I thought about the eviction notice in my purse.
The empty apartment.
The $47,000 that had been following me like a shadow for three years.
I thought about Victor's face in that hospital corridor.
The smile.
The prepared report with someone else's signature.
Then I thought about the twins' eyes locking onto my hand.
The shaking organizing itself into something manageable.
The color coming back.
May you like
I picked up my bag.
"Thank you for the coffee," I said.
