Chương 6
“I don’t want them clean.”
“You want a villain.”
“I want to know why I swallowed a drug that wasn’t on my chart.”
“So do I.”
“You brought it to me every night.”
“Because Hale told me to.”
“And you never asked what was in it?”
“I asked what it was for.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No.”
He waited.
She looked down at her wedding ring.
“No,” she said again. “I didn’t ask what was in it.”
“Why?”
“Because I was tired.”
The answer irritated him so much he almost dismissed it.
Then he saw her face.
Not defensive now.
Ashamed.
“I was tired of managing everything,” she said. “Your doctors. Your staff. The company. Your mother calling me at two in the morning because she thought you were going to die. The lawyers. The nurses quitting. You refusing to let anyone bathe you except me and then telling me not to touch you.”
Dante’s throat tightened.
He remembered that.
He wished he did not.
Isabella continued.
“When Hale said something would make the nights easier, I said yes.”
“For me or for you?”
She looked at him.
“Both.”
The honesty hurt.
He turned toward the window.
For a long time, neither spoke.
Then Dante said, “Did you sign company documents as me?”
Isabella went very still.
There it was.
Not the pill.
Not the leg.
The thing she had feared he would reach.
He turned back.
“Answer.”
“I authorized documents through your account.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“You had given me access.”
“For emergencies.”
“You were incapacitated.”
“My signature is not your signature.”
“You weren’t reading anything.”
“So you forged it.”
“I kept the company functioning.”
“By removing my brother?”
“Your brother was drunk at two committee meetings and leaked acquisition numbers to his girlfriend.”
That sounded like his brother.
Dante hated that too.
“Arthur Belden?”
“He was competent.”
“He was yours.”
“He was neutral.”
“There is no such thing.”
“That sentence is why half your executives were afraid to talk to you before the accident.”
The old Dante surfaced so quickly he barely caught him.
His hand seized the water glass from the table.
For one bright second, he wanted to throw it.
Isabella saw.
She flinched.
Dante stopped.
The glass remained in his hand.
He looked at her flinch.
Then at the glass.
Slowly, he put it back.
Something in Isabella’s face changed.
Not relief.
Grief, perhaps.
Or memory.
“You see?” she whispered.
Dante’s voice became quiet.
“That does not make what you did legal.”
“No.”
“Did you move money?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
She hesitated.
“Isabella.”
“Eight million.”
He stared at her.
“Where?”
“To a reserve account.”
“Whose?”
“A holding company.”
“Whose?”
“Mine.”
The room seemed to lose sound.
Dante looked at her for a long time.
“Get out.”
“It wasn’t theft.”
“Get out.”
“The company owed me—”
“Get out.”
She stood.
Her hands shook once when she picked up her purse.
Dante watched.
At the door she stopped.
“I didn’t cause the accident.”
He said nothing.
“I know you’re thinking it.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were.”
Now he was.
Isabella swallowed.
“I didn’t touch your car. I didn’t plan any of this. Whatever else you find, don’t rewrite that night because it makes hating me easier.”
She left.
The door closed softly.
Dante stared at it.
Then he reached for the glass again.
This time he threw it.
It broke against the wall.
Marcus came through the door immediately.
He looked at the glass.
Then at Dante.
“Feel better?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Dante almost told him to get out.
Instead he looked at the broken pieces.
“Have someone clean that.”
Marcus pressed the call button.
Neither man mentioned the fact that Dante had missed the wall by nearly two feet.
The next weeks moved at a pace Dante considered offensive.
Medicine did not care about his impatience.
Neither did law.
Dr. Shah ordered new imaging and nerve studies. The results supported an incomplete spinal cord injury rather than the complete injury Dante had been told he had.
That did not mean he had spent three years secretly capable of walking.
The distinction mattered, Elena told him repeatedly.
Initial swelling and damage had been severe. Recovery could have been limited. Some preserved function might have returned gradually. Without appropriate rehabilitation, muscle loss and deconditioning would have reduced what he could use. Excessive medication could have made the problem worse.
No one could reconstruct exactly how much ability he might have had at any particular point.
Dante wanted someone to give him a date.
The day he could have moved.
The week he might have stood.
The month someone should have noticed.
There was no such date.
That became one of the cruelest facts.
Blame wanted calendars.
Bodies did not.
Bellweather Compounding turned over its records after Rebecca obtained authorization from Dante and threatened litigation over incomplete medical documentation.
The pharmacy records created another problem.
According to Bellweather, the medication had been compounded exactly as prescribed.
The prescribing physician was Dr. Lawrence Hale.
The dose increases were real.
So were the additions.
Some orders had been transmitted electronically through Hale’s office.
Others had been handwritten and delivered by courier.
Dante’s chart at home contained none of those changes.
Hale’s office refused to send its full file without a formal records request, then sent an incomplete one.
Rebecca smiled when she heard that.
Dante had learned to distrust Rebecca’s smiles.
“What?”
“People make interesting decisions when they’re scared.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning don’t call Hale.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were.”
“I was going to invite him to dinner.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I’m injured, Rebecca. Not stupid.”
“Your definitions have always been flexible.”
He looked at her.
She kept typing.
The nerve study left his legs aching for hours afterward.
That evening, Dante sat by the penthouse windows with a blanket over his knees and watched taxis crawl along the avenue.
The room felt different without Isabella.
Nothing had moved.
May you like
Her perfume still sat in the bathroom.
Her books remained stacked beside the bed.
