Chapter 5 - The Shadow of Nathan
The clinic was silent save for the rhythmic, oceanic whoosh of the Doppler monitor.
*Thump-thump-thump-thump.*
Evelyn lay on the examination table, her sweater pulled up over her stomach, cold gel coating her taut, pale skin. Dr. Hallowell, an obstetrician who had served the Mercer family for thirty years, leaned over the screen with a focused frown.
Silas stood by the door, arms crossed, his gaze fixed on the hallway.
“Heartbeat is strong,” Dr. Hallowell said, her voice a soothing balm against Evelyn’s raw nerves. “One hundred and forty-two beats per minute. Placental attachment is intact. No signs of abruption. The child took the shock better than you did, Evelyn.”
Evelyn let her head fall back against the paper pillow, tears finally escaping the corners of her eyes. “Thank God. Oh, thank God.”
“Your blood pressure, however, is dangerously elevated,” Hallowell continued, cleaning the gel from Evelyn’s skin with warm towels. “One-sixty over one-ten. If it stays there, I will admit you to Presbyterian tonight and induce within the week. Do you understand me? You cannot have another shock like this.”
“I’m fine,” Evelyn whispered. “I just… I just need to breathe.”
The door opened without a knock.
Roman entered.
He brought the smell of winter into the warm room—cold rain, expensive wool, and tobacco. He stopped at the foot of the bed.
He was the image of their father: high cheekbones, dark, merciless eyes, and hair cut with military severity. But where their father had been loud and prone to drunken theatricality, Roman was granite. He looked at Evelyn’s left cheek—now dark purple, swollen, the split lip crusting over with dried blood.
Something flickered behind Roman’s eyes. A shutter opening into an incinerator.
“Hello, Evie,” he said quietly.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said, her voice small. “I’m not a corpse.”
“You’re thirty-four weeks pregnant and taking blows for a private school’s scholarship budget,” Roman said. He walked to the side of the bed, took her hand, and brought it to his lips. His skin was ice. “Nathan would have built you a greenhouse and kept you inside it.”
“Nathan respected what I did,” she said fiercely, pulling her hand away. “He knew that running away to your compounds doesn’t fix anything. He knew that people like Conrad Voss exist because men like you buy their loyalty and ignore their rot.”
Roman’s jaw set. He looked at Silas.
“Has she seen the toxicology reports?” Roman asked.
Silas hesitated. “Not yet.”
Evelyn sat bolt upright, pain flaring across her abdomen. “What toxicology reports? What are you talking about?”
Roman pulled a black leather folder from beneath his arm and laid it across her knees.
“Nathan’s death was not an accident, Evie.”
The room seemed to stop spinning; it simply ceased to exist. Evelyn stared down at the black leather.
“What?”
“The pickup truck that hit his Volvo on Route 17,” Roman said, his voice flat, merciless in its clarity. “The local police called it a hit-and-run by an unidentified drunk. But Nathan wasn't just restoring old municipal buildings, Evelyn. He was auditing the county historical preservation grant program. He found sixteen shell companies laundering state revitalization funds into commercial developments.”
Roman leaned down until his eyes were level with hers.
“The managing director of the LLC that owned that pickup truck was a subsidiary of North Vale Consulting,” Roman said. “Nathan didn't die because of fog. He died because he found Conrad Voss’s offshore accounts six months before you did.”
Evelyn looked from Roman to Silas. Silas would not look away; his face held only an ancient, sorrowful confirmation.
Her hand went to her mouth.
The slap across her face from two hours ago was nothing.
May you like
This was the blow that broke her ribs.
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