Chapter 12 - THE PRICE OF KEEPING ME ALIVE
Gabriel tried to send me away again.
This time I understood why.
Raymond wasn’t merely trying to kill him.
He wanted to control him.
And somehow, during three impossible days, I had become useful leverage.
“No,” I said.
We were inside a secure apartment Elias maintained under a false name.
Gabriel stared at me.
“Norah.”
“You don’t get to decide my life because you’re scared.”
“I’m not scared.”
“You haven’t eaten in eight days because you’re scared.”
His expression changed.
Nobody spoke to Gabriel Hayes that way.
Apparently, I did.
“You’re terrified,” I continued. “Of food. Of family. Of trusting Leo. Of Rosa leaving again. And now of somebody hurting me.”
He stepped closer.
“You think I should not be?”
“I think fear is information. Not an order.”
Something in his face softened.
“You really are going to become a nurse.”
“If I survive your family drama.”
That got a quiet laugh from Rosa.
For a few minutes, the room felt almost normal.
Then Leo found the next problem.
Raymond’s financial records showed a scheduled transfer of fifty million dollars.
Midnight.
Destination unknown.
Elias recognized the account format.
“It’s an escape fund.”
Gabriel checked the time.
Three hours.
“If Raymond leaves the country, we lose him.”
Vivian shook her head.
“He won’t leave.”
“Why?”
“Because my father hid something from him.”
She opened Paulie’s old cloud archive.
A video appeared.
Paulie sat at his kitchen table two days before his death.
“If you’re seeing this, Raymond found out I know.”
Vivian covered her mouth.
Paulie continued.
“Charles Hayes did not kill Antonio Ventura.”
Rosa stood.
Gabriel stared at the screen.
Paulie leaned closer to the camera.
“Antonio survived.”
Gabriel whispered, “My father is alive?”
The video continued.
“Rosa believed Antonio died in the fire. Raymond wanted everyone to believe it. But Antonio was taken to a private medical facility under another name.”
Elias immediately began searching the records.
I remembered something from nursing school.
Long-term care facilities often transferred records under court-appointed identities.
“Search birthdays, not names.”
Elias looked at me.
“What?”
“If the identity changed, the birth date might not.”
Rosa gave us Antonio’s date.
Three matches.
Two were dead.
One patient remained alive.
Anthony Vale.
Seventy-one.
Long-term neurological care.
Private facility outside the city.
Gabriel stared at the photograph.
The old man had his eyes.
Rosa sank into a chair.
“My God.”
Gabriel looked like someone had removed the floor beneath him.
Then the facility record updated.
PATIENT TRANSFER AUTHORIZED.
“Where?” Gabriel demanded.
Elias traced the transaction.
His face hardened.
“Raymond is moving him.”
“When?”
He looked up.
“Right now.”
We were already too late.
The ambulance carrying Gabriel’s father had left the facility eleven minutes earlier.
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And the destination field contained only three words:
BENNY’S DINER - SOUTH END.
