Chapter 21 No Code For Death
LAWRENCE
The private suite at St. John's Hospital carries the faint metallic tang of illness.
I sit beside my mother's bed, resting one hand lightly on hers. She's asleep, finally, after another violent episode that required sedation.
The male nurses had to restrain her gently while she screamed that "they" were coming to take her house, her children, her life.
She didn't recognise me during the worst of it. Called me "thief" and tried to claw at my face until the lorazepam kicked in.
Now she looks small and fragile.
The same woman who once chased me around the garden with a wooden spoon for sneaking biscuits is barely recognisable beneath the oxygen mask and the IV lines.
I stroke the back of her hand with my thumb.
"Hey, Ma," I whisper. "I need you to be strong."
My mood's been shit since Tuesday, when Dr Gregory called to say there's a chance she could have cancer.
They've been running some serious tests since then.
We get the results today, and I'm nervous just thinking about it.
Laura, my younger sister, is curled in the armchair opposite me, scrolling through her phone with the volume off. She's been here since yesterday afternoon.
Dark circles under her eyes almost match mine. We're both exhausted mentally.
Mother was really there for us after Father died. She was strong, and now, look at her.
She has no business being this sick at sixty-two. Absolutely no business.
The door opens quietly, and a nurse comes in to direct us to Dr Gregory's office.
He must've arrived.
We reach the furnished space, taking our seats opposite the doctor.
"Mr Moore, Miss Moore." He nods at us.
We nod back.
"What's the latest?" I ask nervously.
Dr Gregory glances at the chart on his tablet, then lets out a deep breath.
The sound alone breaks me.
"Unfortunately," he begins, "The latest scans confirm what we suspected. The vascular dementia, progressing rapidly, is now compounded by metastatic pancreatic cancer. Stage IV."
Laura gasps, then breaks down into tears.
"It's aggressive. She's declining faster than we anticipated."
My entire body goes stiff. "How come we never suspected anything?"
My voice comes out cold. Robotic.
"How come we're just finding out when it has reached stage IV?"
"Pancreatic cancer is difficult to catch early," he explains gently. "The symptoms: tiredness, weight loss, vague stomach discomfort, are easy to blame on getting older. Or, in your mother's case, on the dementia itself. By the time more obvious signs appear, it's usually advanced."
Dr Gregory pauses, letting the words settle. "The dementia masked a lot of what was happening. When the pain got worse, and she stopped eating, we ran more tests. The scans from yesterday show the cancer has spread to her liver and her lymph nodes. That's why she's jaundiced now. The yellowing of her skin."
Laura lifts her head, her voice coarse from the tears. "There has to be something we can do. C-c-chemo, or surgery. "
Dr Gregory's expression softens. "At this stage, with her overall condition, aggressive treatment would cause more suffering than it would help. Surgery isn't possible."
Laura bursts into tears again while I remain rigid in my seat, watching the doctor, listening to every word.
"Chemotherapy would be harsh on her body, and with the dementia, she wouldn't handle it well. The kindest thing we can do now is focus on keeping her comfortable. We do that by managing the pain, helping her rest, making sure she's calm and peaceful."
"How long does she have?" I ask coldly, feeling Laura's gaze on me.
He hesitates. "With comfort care only… weeks. Maybe a month or two if we're lucky. We can manage pain and agitation, but the cancer is too advanced for meaningful intervention."
I nod in understanding. "Thank you, doctor. Please continue the current protocol. Keep her comfortable."
He nods.
Laura is crying harder now. I get up, then help her to her feet.
Once we're outside Dr Gregory's office, I pull her into my chest.
She clings to me, sobbing loudly.
"She doesn't even know who we are half the time," she whispers. "And now she's… she's going to die without remembering us."
I don't say anything, but I hold her tighter.
Because what can I say?
That I've spent years building an empire so I could give her the best care money can buy… private suites, round-the-clock nurses, experimental therapies… and it still wasn't enough?
The woman who raised us, who stuck by us after our father's death, who sang beautiful lullabies and loved us fiercely, is fading, and I can't code my way out of it.
I can't buy my way out of it or intimidate it into submission.
I'm useless. Utterly fucking useless.
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I pace the length of my home office, which, in appearance, is more like a war room.
Three of the walls are covered in big screens, thirty in total, all six 55-inch curved monitors mounted in a shallow arc, showing maps, data trails, security feeds… everything I need to hunt the hacker who tried to tear into my company... as well as anyone who catches my fancy.
The fourth wall is all glass, looking out over the Thames, because I like seeing the city while I tear it apart digitally.
This room is where I come to build things that change everything, lines of code so clean, so ruthless, they rewrite reality before breakfast.
It is also where I come to hunt.
There is no piece of information on the internet that I can't find.
No dirty secret buried deep enough.
No hidden account, no deleted message, no transaction that escapes me if I decide to look.
Over the years, people have approached me quietly, offering obscene amounts of money to dig up leverage on their rivals.
Exposing affairs, financial fraud, hidden children, and offshore accounts. I've turned every single one of them down, not because I'm noble, but because I don't need their money. I have my own.
I'm an unstoppable force. And people are smart enough not to test that.
Which is why the hacker who dared try to breach Law & Moore will not survive this.
He or she thought they could slip into my systems, steal what I built from nothing, and walk away clean.
They were wrong.
I sink into the ergonomic chair in front of the triple-monitor rig, and immediately, the screens wake at my presence.
I'm so close to finding the bastard.
A few more layers. A few more decrypted packets, and I get him.
I can feel the bastard sweating. He knows someone's peeling back his camouflage. I've torn down every decoy, every misdirection. Just a few more threads and I'll have a name, a face, a keyboard he touched.
I crack my knuckles, leaning in when a notification pings on my burner phone.
Scarlett's location just updated.
Yes, I track her.
Even from London.
She's home now. Must've left the office twenty-three minutes ago. Took the usual route.
I really don't like the idea of her putting herself through all that stress to take the subway.
But if I get her a car, she won't take it from me. We're not exactly on good terms.
I've had her location since like forever.
All it took was a quiet install on her work phone during a routine security update I pushed to all executive assistants. "Enhanced device protection," the memo said.
She clicked accept without reading through the fine print, and voila.
At least I can always know she's safe, especially when the need to see her becomes unbearable.
It's crazy.
But, yeah, it's already been established that I'm equally as crazy.