Chapter 4 - The Children’s Chamber
The heavy oak doors of the east wing medical suite swung open with a soft, pneumatic hiss.
Aveline Ross—the name she had given him on the ride up from the gate—walked through the threshold without hesitation. She had stripped off her soaked coat in the foyer, revealing a simple black turtleneck and trousers that had seen better days. Her duffel bag rested heavily against her shoulder.
Lawson followed her step-for-step, his hand never leaving the grip of his gun inside his coat pocket, his eyes narrowed into slits of suspicion. Every instinct he possessed screamed that she was a trap—a psychological weapon forged by Crosby Vane or a ghost from Genevieve’s past come back to finish the destruction of the Mercer bloodline.
And yet, he hadn't thrown her out. The moment she mentioned Genevieve’s real surname—a name Lawson had spent a fortune scrubbing from every public record in Illinois—something in his armor had fractured.
Inside the sterile, glass-walled room, the two small beds sat side by side under the hum of the monitors.
Jonah and Blythe were asleep, their breathing shallow and uneven, faint blue shadows bruised beneath their closed eyelids.
Aveline stopped at the glass partition. For a long, silent moment, her composure cracked. A sharp, ragged breath caught in her throat, and her hand reached out to touch the cold glass, her fingers trembling slightly against the surface where Jonah’s small hand was resting outside the blanket.
“They look like her,” Aveline whispered, her voice barely audible over the electronic beep of the heart monitors. “Especially Blythe. The curve of the jaw... it’s like looking at a photograph from our porch in Maine.”
“Who are you?” Lawson demanded, stepping up behind her, close enough that she could feel the radiating heat of his fury. “Genevieve never mentioned a sister. She told me her family was gone—wiped out in a fire when she was twelve.”
Aveline turned her head slowly, looking up at him with those unreadable amber eyes. “Genevieve lied to you about a lot of things, Lawson. Survival makes liars out of the best of us. When you pull a girl out of a coastal village and lock her in a marble cage with a kingpin who has a dozen syndicates trying to put a bullet through his window, you tend to cut ties with the past. She wanted to protect us. Or perhaps she just wanted to forget.”
She didn't wait for his answer. She reached for the latch of the glass door.
“Don't,” Lawson warned, his hand shooting out to grip her wrist.
Her skin was ice cold, but she didn't flinch away from his punishing grip. She simply looked down at his large, calloused hand clamped around her arm, then back up into his dark, threatening eyes.
“If you break my wrist, Lawson, there won't be anyone left who knows how to reverse the chemical imbalance in your son’s blood,” she said with terrifying calm. “Dr. Yates is a good man, but he’s treating leukemia like a standard textbook case. That’s why they have ten days. Because he’s treating the symptoms while the real poison is still sitting in their marrow.”
Lawson’s breath hitched. He stared down at her, searching her face for any sign of a lie, any tremor of deceit. There was nothing. Just an absolute, bone-deep certainty that terrified him more than any gun barrel ever had.
May you like
Slowly, his fingers loosened. He let go of her wrist.
Aveline opened the glass door and stepped into the children’s room.
