Chapter 5 - NO ONE TOUCHES MAYA
The next morning, Luca changed every security protocol surrounding Elena and Maya.
Elena protested.
“I don’t want her growing up surrounded by guards.”
“She won’t.”
“There are three men outside her bedroom.”
“There are two.”
“That is not helping your argument.”
Luca looked at her.
“Someone photographed her school.”
Elena’s anger disappeared.
“I know.”
“Then let me protect her.”
Elena folded her arms.
“Protection is not the same as control.”
The words struck harder than she intended.
Luca looked away.
For twelve years, control had been the only thing he still possessed.
His schedule.
His companies.
His estate.
His staff.
His wheelchair.
He had mastered everything that could be mastered because his body had become the one territory that refused his commands.
Maya appeared in the doorway.
“Are you fighting?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Luca and Elena spoke simultaneously.
Maya sighed.
“Adults are weird.”
Then she walked away.
That afternoon, the arrested intruder finally spoke.
His name was Dean Keller.
He had worked private security for Arthur Costello fifteen years earlier.
Keller claimed he had been paid anonymously to retrieve Luca’s medical evidence.
He never saw the person issuing instructions.
Payments arrived through shell companies.
But one instruction had been unusual.
Watch the girl.
Do not approach her.
Report anyone she talks to.
Luca asked why Maya mattered.
Keller did not know.
Vincent searched Keller’s phone more carefully.
Buried in deleted messages was one photograph Luca had not been shown.
It depicted Elena twelve years earlier.
Pregnant.
Standing outside a grocery store.
Someone had known about Maya before Luca did.
Elena sat down when she saw it.
“They knew.”
“Yes.”
“They knew I was pregnant.”
Luca’s voice became dangerously quiet.
“And they made sure I never reached him.”
Vincent entered with another discovery.
The shell company paying Keller had received funds from a medical consulting firm.
Mercer Health Strategies.
Elena looked toward Luca.
“Dr. Mercer?”
Luca said nothing.
His personal physician had been inside his home every month for eleven years.
He controlled prescriptions.
He reviewed Luca’s bloodwork.
He had discouraged experimental treatments.
He had repeatedly told Luca that additional neurological testing was pointless.
Vincent reached for his phone.
“I’ll have him brought in.”
“No.”
Luca stopped him.
“If Mercer is involved, he’s not the top.”
“What do you want to do?”
Luca looked toward the hallway where Maya had disappeared.
“We let him believe we still trust him.”
That evening Dr. Mercer arrived for Luca’s scheduled injection.
For the first time in eleven years, Luca looked carefully at the syringe.
And when Mercer turned away, Maya appeared silently in the doorway.
Her eyes moved to the silver medical case.
May you like
Then she whispered something only Luca heard.
“That’s the same box from the pharmacy.”
