Chapter 5 - Unraveling the Dossier
I bypassed the elevators and took the concrete stairs three at a time until I reached the hospital parking garage.
The afternoon sun hit the black hood of my Bentley, reflecting the cold glass towers of the financial district.
I climbed into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and dialed Marcus Vance, my private security director.
Marcus had worked for my family for a decade, but his loyalties had always leaned toward my late mother.
"Sebastian," Marcus answered on the second ring.
"Your father just paged me looking for you."
"He claims you walked out of the Whitlow suite."
"Forget my father, Marcus," I said, my chest heaving against the steering wheel.
"I need the complete file on Dr. David Matthews and Rowan Pierce from last autumn."
There was a heavy pause on the other end of the line.
"Sebastian, your father handled that investigation through an outside agency," Marcus said cautiously.
"I know he did," I replied, my voice dangerously steady.
"And I know you keep backup copies of every private dossier that enters Caldwell Therapeutics."
"Find the original timestamps on the surveillance photos."
"Find out who took them, who paid for them, and what was deleted."
"If you ever owed my mother a debt, Marcus, call me back in twenty minutes."
I ended the call and rested my forehead against the leather steering wheel.
The guilt that had been quietly eating at my conscience for eight months had finally cracked open into an abyss.
I had allowed my father to dictate the parameters of my reality because rebellion meant losing the empire.
Twenty-two minutes later, my phone vibrated with an encrypted email from Marcus.
I opened the attachment on my dashboard screen.
The file contained twelve high-resolution digital photographs taken outside a bistro near St. Mary’s.
In the cropped versions my father had presented to me, Rowan appeared to be leaning intimately across a candlelit table toward David Matthews.
In the raw, unedited originals, a third person sat at the table: Dr. Margaret Foster, the Chief of Staff.
A fourth photo showed a binder open on the tablecloth containing pediatric oncology trial data.
Beneath the images was a scanned wire transfer slip from Richard Caldwell’s personal offshore account.
The payee was a disgraced private investigator specializing in corporate espionage and domestic framing.
The memo line read: *Pierce Termination Strategy.*
A second document detailed a meeting between Richard and the chairman of the hospital board.
Richard had threatened to pull a ten-million-dollar donation to St. Mary's if Rowan wasn't pressured into resigning.
Rowan hadn't stayed silent to punish me; she had stayed silent to protect her department from my father's wrath.
She had endured pregnancy, social isolation, and professional risk entirely on her own.
And I had spent those same eight months drinking champagne in country clubs with the Whitlows.
I started the engine, shifted into reverse, and tore out of the parking space.
May you like
I wasn't running away from the hospital this time.
I was going back up to Room 218, and this time, no one was going to stand in my way.
