Chapter 2 - Shadows in the East Wing
The sun dipped below the Boston skyline, casting long, skeletal shadows across the stone corridors of the Pascale estate. My first official day ended not with relief, but with a chilling discovery.
After putting Massimo through a grueling two-hour regimen of sensory stimulation and passive range-of-motion exercises—during which he cursed me in three different languages and sweated through his shirt—I was given a small, austere guest room in the east wing. The room was clean, but utterly devoid of warmth, much like the rest of the fortress.
Unable to sleep, my mind racing with the clinical data I had gathered from Massimo’s spine, I slipped out into the dimly lit hallway around midnight to find the kitchen and locate a glass of water. The mansion was dead quiet, save for the low hum of the security servers and the occasional crunch of gravel outside as perimeter patrols made their rounds.
As I padded softly down the corridor, a sliver of light caught my eye beneath a heavy, double-panel door at the far end of the hallway—a section of the house Viktor had explicitly warned me was off-limits.
Curiosity, that fatal flaw that had already dragged me into the orbit of organized crime, got the better of me. I crept closer, pressing my ear against the polished mahogany.
“...the timeline is slipping,” a low, venomous voice hissed from within. “If the therapist actually gets him standing by December, everything we’ve built over the last three months falls apart.”
A second voice—smoother, colder, and terrifyingly familiar—responded.
“Let her try. A paralyzed boss is a vulnerable boss. But a boss who dies during a ‘miraculous recovery’? That’s an inside job. Just make sure her medical supplies are... adjusted.”
My breath hitched in my throat. I clamped a hand over my mouth, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. Adjusted? They weren't just planning to keep Massimo in that wheelchair; they were planning to poison him or sabotage his recovery, and they were going to frame me for it.
Before I could back away, a heavy hand clamped down on my shoulder.
May you like
I spun around, a scream dying in my windpipe as Viktor stared down at me, his eyes dead and unreadable in the dark.
“Doctor Fitzgerald,” Viktor murmured, his voice dangerously soft. “The east wing is private. What are you doing wandering around in the dark?”
