Chapter 262 She Served Her Purpose
ADRIANA
Hazel stared at me.
“The doctor who has been treating Elijah,” I said. “The one I authorized. The one I trusted with my husband’s life for seven months. That’s him. That’s the face in Rita’s photo.” I could hear something in my own voice that I was working to keep controlled, not quite anger, not quite grief, something that was both of those things at the same time pressed into a very small space. “I gave him access to this house. I brought him in myself.”
“How do you want to do this?” Hazel’s voice was steady.
“I need him here. Tonight.” I was already moving, pulling out my phone as we got back in the cars. “If I call and tell him Elijah needs something, he’ll know something’s wrong. He knows exactly what state Elijah is in because he’s the one who kept him there.” I stopped walking. “But Lana he doesn’t know about. He doesn’t know what the new doctors have changed or what treatment she’s on.”
Hazel nodded in agreement. I couldn’t stop my legs from bouncing for the entire ride back.
I dialed before Hazel could speak just as the front door closed behind us.
It rang five times before he picked up, and he didn’t say anything when he did.
“Doctor.” I let my voice crack. It didn’t take much effort. The emotion was there, I just redirected it. “I need you. Please. It’s Lana — she can’t breathe properly, she’s burning up, she won’t stop shaking. I don’t know what’s happening to her. I can’t—” I let it break. “Please come. I can’t lose her.”
He didn’t say anything immediately, which made me wonder if he didn’t believe me. But then he responded.
“My Queen.” His voice was smooth and practiced. “Of course. I’ll be there shortly. Try to stay calm.”
He ended the call.
I lowered the phone and looked at Hazel. “Set everything up, I want the house on normal footing, nothing that looks like a trap. And I need something in Lana’s crib that looks like a wrapped baby. She stays in Elijah’s room with the kids.”
“Guards?”
“Heavy rotation on Elijah’s room. All the children should be in there. Nobody moves, nobody opens that door.” I was already heading for the stairs. “And send people to Damien’s house. Bring him and Nancy here tonight. If Thomas knows Damien was released and was part of this, Damien is a loose end he hasn’t dealt with yet.”
“You think he’ll go after them?”
“I think he goes after anything that threatens his position. I’m not leaving them exposed tonight.”
I went to Elijah’s room first.
The guards were already positioned when I arrived, a line of them that stretched down the corridor in both directions, more than I’d asked for, which meant Hazel had anticipated me. I looked at them and said what needed to be said.
“The people in that room are the most important people in my life. You don’t move from this hallway for any reason until I tell you to. No matter what you hear.”
The twins were asleep across the foot of Elijah’s bed, Lorain was curled in the chair, and Leo was sitting against the headboard with Lana in his arms, rocking her gently. He looked up when I came in.
“Mum. What’s happening?”
I crossed to him and put my hand on his face briefly for a second, just because I needed to and then I looked at all of them.
“I found him,” I said. “It’s the doctor, he's behind everything. He’s coming here tonight and I’m going to end this.” I looked at Leo directly. “I need you to stay in this room. All of you. No matter what you hear, the door stays closed. Leo—” I held his gaze. “I trust you with them. You know that.”
He looked at me with an expression that was several things at once. “Are you going to be safe?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not a real answer.”
“That's the answer I have.” I took Lana from him carefully and held her for a moment against my chest and then I passed her back. “Lock the door when I leave.”
My phone buzzed as I reached the corridor. I read the text from Hazel. ‘He’s here Bringing him up now.’
I splashed water on my face from the bathroom at the end of the hall, enough to make my eyes look wet, and I went to the landing and came down the stairs with my hand trailing on the rail like someone who’d been crying and was trying to hold herself together.
He was in the entrance hall with Hazel beside him, his medical bag in his hand. When he saw me he arranged his face into something concerned and professional and completely hollow.
“My Queen. Where is she?”
“She fell asleep finally but she’s still so hot.” I let my voice waver. “I gave her the medication you left last time and she just got worse. She was shaking and—” I pressed my hand to my mouth. “I don’t know if I did something wrong.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.” He picked up his bag. “Let’s go look at her.”
I led him upstairs. Hazel walked close behind him and I listened to his footsteps and his breathing and measured every second of the climb.
He walked into Lana’s room and went directly to the crib and stood over it and went completely still.
The bundle in the crib was wrapped tightly but it wasn’t a baby and he knew it wasn’t a baby within a second of looking at it. The stillness lasted about three seconds. Then he turned very slowly, and I already had the gun raised and aimed at his chest.
“Hands where I can see them,” I said. “Turn around slowly.”
He didn’t move.
“I know you can hear me. Turn around and look at me.”
I heard a click behind me and the press of a cold metal to the back of my neck.
“Drop the gun.” Rita’s voice. Low and very steady.
Thomas turned around then, and the smile on his face was the smile of a man who had planned for exactly this and was enjoying the arrival of the moment.
“Did you really think I didn’t see you coming?” He sat down in the chair like he’d been invited. “I have cameras in my house, Adriana. I’m not stupid. I watched you walk in. I called Rita before I even got in the car.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. My hands were steady. The gun didn’t move. “You’re in this room and so am I, and that’s what matters.”
He just shrugged, looking completely unbothered.
“I trusted you,” I snapped. The anger came through clean and unperformed. “I brought you into my home. I let you near my husband, near my children, and you—”
“You’re extraordinary,” he said. He said it the way someone said a fact they’d been holding onto. “Seven months watching you manage everything alone, watching you fight for people nobody else would fight for. You’re remarkable. You should be with someone who sees that.”
“You have a wife,” I said.
He glanced past me toward the door, toward Rita behind me, with an expression that didn’t even try to be kind. “She served a purpose.” His eyes came back to me. “But you, I could see you beside me. And that husband of yours, lying there like a—”
“Who are you calling a vegetable?”
The voice came from the doorway. Deep, cold and steady.
I would recognize that voice even if I just felt it.
Elijah.