Chapter 4 - WHAT VINCENT SAVED
Clara stared at the cufflink.
“What do you mean?”
Liam extended his hand.
She placed it in his palm.
He turned the black stone over.
“The night at Dock Nine, Leo found one caught inside my coat.”
Clara’s skin prickled.
“Vincent’s?”
“The same design.”
“That sounds significant.”
“It sounds obvious.”
“Sometimes obvious is still true.”
Liam closed his fist around the cufflink.
“Vincent was there after the explosion.”
“You told me you think somebody in the family tried to kill you.”
“I said I think somebody in the family was responsible.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No.”
Clara sat.
“Start talking.”
He gave her a look.
She returned one.
Liam sighed.
“Dock Nine was an old freight building on the river.”
“The announcement was happening there?”
“A meeting.”
“With Vincent?”
“With everyone who mattered.”
“What exploded?”
“Part of the upper storage level caught fire. Something ruptured. Floor gave way.”
Clara frowned.
“You were on the upper level?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember the attack?”
“I remember arriving.”
His gaze drifted toward the broken watch.
“I remember arguing.”
“With whom?”
“I don’t know.”
“That seems convenient.”
“It seems like a concussion.”
Fair.
“What’s the next thing you remember?”
“Waking here.”
“Nothing from the hospital?”
“I wasn’t taken to one.”
Clara stared at him.
“What?”
“Too dangerous.”
“You had an abdominal wound, a compound leg fracture, and God knows what else.”
“There was a surgeon here.”
“You should have been in a trauma center.”
“I would have been dead before sunrise.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know my life.”
Clara stood, angry for reasons she could not entirely explain.
Maybe because his arrogance made medical stupidity sound noble.
Maybe because six nurses had been expected to clean up after choices men like Liam considered unavoidable.
Before she could answer, the doors opened again.
Vincent had returned.
He held up one bare wrist.
“I seem to have misplaced something.”
Clara looked at Liam.
Liam opened his palm.
The cufflink rested against his skin.
Vincent’s smile disappeared.
“Where did you get that?”
“Floor.”
Clara watched him carefully.
Vincent approached.
Liam did not hand it over.
Instead he said, “Leo found another one at Dock Nine.”
Vincent’s face changed.
Not fear.
Pain.
“You never told me.”
“I didn’t know until afterward.”
Vincent looked at Clara.
Then pulled the chair closer.
“Do you want the dramatic version or the truth?”
“The truth is usually dramatic enough,” Clara said.
Vincent nodded.
“When the building went up, I was in the parking lot.”
Liam’s eyes narrowed.
“You said you were on the south loading dock.”
“I was when the fire started.”
“That isn’t what you told me.”
“You were unconscious for four days.”
“I remember what you told me later.”
Vincent rubbed his forehead.
“I ran inside after the collapse.”
Clara looked at him.
“You went into a burning building?”
“My cousin was in it.”
Liam’s mouth tightened.
Vincent continued.
“I found him pinned beneath part of the catwalk.”
His voice had lost its polish.
“There was blood everywhere.”
For the first time, Clara believed she was hearing a memory Vincent did not enjoy.
“I tried to pull the metal off him.”
He touched his empty cuff.
“My sleeve tore. Cufflink disappeared.”
Clara glanced at Liam.
“That explains the one in the coat.”
“Maybe,” Liam said.
Vincent’s eyes flashed.
“You think I planted evidence on you while dragging you out?”
“I think you lie beautifully.”
“So do you.”
Silence fell.
Then Vincent turned toward Clara.
“Check his left shoulder.”
She frowned.
“Why?”
“Because I dislocated it pulling him free.”
Clara looked at Liam.
He looked annoyed.
Which meant there was probably truth in it.
She checked his shoulder.
There was fading bruising and obvious tenderness consistent with trauma.
Not proof.
But not nothing.
Vincent reclaimed the cufflink.
“You want to know what happened that night?”
“Yes,” Clara said.
Liam looked toward her.
Vincent spoke.
“Liam intended to shut down operations that employed people our family had supported for forty years.”
“Illegal operations.”
“Yes.”
Vincent did not flinch from the word.
“Men who drove trucks. Men who collected debts. Men who handled security. Men whose fathers worked for our fathers.”
“And sold narcotics?”
“Some did.”
Liam’s jaw tightened.
“More than some.”
Vincent ignored him.
“He believed we could close everything and become legitimate by Monday morning.”
“I never said Monday.”
“You may as well have.”
Vincent leaned back.
“I told him people would get desperate.”
“That sounds like a threat,” Clara said.
“It was a prediction.”
He looked at her.
“Desperate men do stupid things.”
“Did you?”
Vincent almost smiled.
“Good nurse.”
He stood.
At the door, he paused.
“One other thing.”
Clara waited.
“If Liam tells you he hired you because you were cheap enough to control or desperate enough to stay, he’s lying.”
Liam’s expression darkened.
“Vincent.”
“No.”
Vincent looked at Clara.
“You deserve that much.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You weren’t picked by an agency.”
Clara stared at Liam.
Vincent continued.
“The other nurses were.”
“Stop.”
Liam’s voice had become cold.
Vincent did not.
“You were personally selected.”
Clara felt her stomach drop.
“By whom?”
Vincent smiled without humor.
“Ask the man in the bed.”
Then he left.
The doors closed.
Clara remained motionless.
Liam looked tired suddenly.
More tired than sick.
“I can explain.”
Clara laughed once.
It sounded ugly in the dark room.
“You know what I hate most about rich men?”
“Probably a long list.”
“You always think the explanation belongs to you.”
She stepped closer.
“You knew about Tommy.”
“Yes.”
“You knew where I worked.”
“Yes.”
“You knew I was drowning.”
His silence was answer enough.
Clara felt heat behind her eyes and hated that too.
“Why me?”
Liam looked toward the window.
Toward the half-raised blinds.
Then back at her.
“Three years ago, County General suspended a nurse for accusing a surgical administrator of diverting medication.”
Clara froze.
Nobody outside the hospital should have known those details.
The investigation had been sealed after a settlement.
Liam continued.
“You refused to withdraw the report even when they threatened your license.”
“You investigated that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because the administrator had a connection to one of our businesses.”
Clara stared at him.
“You knew?”
“Not then.”
“What happened to him?”
“He left the state.”
Something in Liam’s tone told her not to ask how voluntarily.
He went on.
“I needed someone who noticed when medication didn’t look right.”
Clara’s anger slowly changed shape.
“Why?”
Liam’s blue eyes locked on hers.
“Because I didn’t trust the care I was receiving.”
Clara looked at his IV bag.
His medication tray.
The wound that had become infected under professional nursing care.
“You thought somebody was tampering with your treatment.”
“I didn’t know.”
“So you hired me to find out.”
“I hired you because you couldn’t be bought.”
Clara laughed bitterly.
“You offered me ten thousand dollars a week.”
“That wasn’t to buy you.”
“What do you call it?”
“To make sure your brother didn’t die while you decided whether I did.”
The sentence landed like a blow.
Clara stared at him.
He had researched her suffering.
Calculated her price.
Yet somewhere inside that violation was a strange, brutal faith in her character.
It made her angrier because part of her understood it.
Liam reached toward the bedside drawer.
“Look inside.”
“No.”
“Please.”
The word stopped her.
Clara opened the drawer.
Inside lay an old photograph.
Mara Mercer stood between Liam and Vincent at a summer picnic.
She was laughing.
Her arm was around Vincent’s shoulders.
Around her wrist was a thin silver bracelet.
Clara turned the photograph over.
Three words were written in blue ink.
KEEP THEM HUMAN.
M.
Clara looked at Liam.
“She wrote that?”
“The week before she died.”
Clara lowered the photograph.
Something else was beneath it.
A scorched piece of paper.
Only one edge survived.
A company name remained visible.
HARROW CLINICAL RESEARCH.
Clara stopped breathing.
That was Tommy’s trial.
Slowly, she looked up.
Liam’s face had gone pale.
“I’ve never seen that before.”
Clara’s fingers tightened around the burned paper.
For the first time since entering the Mercer estate, she believed him completely.
And that frightened her more than anything else.
Because if Liam had not put it there—
May you like
someone else had.
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