Chapter 6 - THE CAREGIVER WHO DISAPPEARED
Her name was Monica Reyes.
She had worked in my house for six weeks after the hospital discharged me.
I remembered her as quiet.
Efficient.
Always nervous around Arya.
Then one Monday, she simply stopped coming.
Arya told me Monica had taken another job.
That was apparently another lie.
My attorney found her apartment empty.
Her phone disconnected.
Her nursing license inactive.
No forwarding address.
Tessa stared at Monica's employee file.
“She complained about something before she disappeared.”
“What?”
“I don't know. But Elaine told everyone Monica violated policy.”
I called my head of security.
Not Dominic's men.
Mine.
Or at least the few I still believed were mine.
I ordered a complete audit of every visitor, vehicle, and access code connected to Monica.
Four hours later, they found something.
Three nights before she vanished, Monica had entered my bedroom at 2:14 a.m.
She stayed eight minutes.
I remembered none of it.
At 2:25 a.m., she entered the security office.
At 2:31, Dominic entered behind her.
At 2:36, they both left.
The next morning, Monica called the agency.
Three days later, she disappeared.
“What happened at 2:14?” I asked.
Tessa studied my medication records.
Then froze.
“You were prescribed ten milligrams of zolpidem that night.”
“For sleep.”
“You received twenty.”
I stared at her.
“Are you sure?”
“The chart says ten. The medication inventory says two tablets were removed.”
Someone had doubled my dose.
Monica had noticed.
Maybe she had gone to the security office to find proof.
Maybe Dominic had caught her.
My attorney contacted her younger brother in Arizona.
He hadn't seen Monica in months.
But he had received one envelope.
No return address.
Inside was a storage-unit key.
The unit was in Philadelphia.
We arrived after dark.
Tessa drove.
I hated that.
Before the shooting, I controlled every movement.
Now I sat in the passenger seat while someone else folded my wheelchair into the trunk.
But humiliation was slowly turning into something else.
Acceptance.
Not surrender.
At the storage facility, my security men opened the unit.
Inside were three boxes.
Clothes.
Photographs.
Medical notebooks.
And a small black flash drive taped beneath a shelf.
The drive contained one audio file.
Monica's voice.
“If anything happens to me, Vincent Corvino needs to know Dominic Moretti was inside his room the night before the shooting.”
A man's voice sounded behind her.
Dominic.
May you like
“You shouldn't have seen that.”
Then the recording ended.
