Chapter 4 - Patient Seven
The townhouse fell into darkness except for the red pulse of emergency lights.
Arabella stood frozen beside the dining table.
The voice from the speakers repeated itself.
“Patient Seven, return to your room.”
Dante’s men spread through the house.
“Find the source,” Dante ordered.
His security chief checked the wall panel. “System’s been breached.”
“Shut it down.”
“I’m locked out.”
The speakers crackled.
Then a different sound filled the room.
A slow metronome.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Arabella covered her ears.
“No.”
Dante turned toward her.
“What is it?”
“They played that sound before the injections.”
The ticking continued.
Her breathing became shallow. Her pupils widened. She backed against the wall, trapped inside a memory no one else could see.
Dante crossed the room and ripped the nearest speaker from the ceiling.
The sound continued through others.
“Cut the power physically,” he shouted.
His men rushed downstairs.
Arabella slid to the floor.
“White ceiling,” she whispered. “Leather straps. Don’t let them turn on the light.”
Dante knelt in front of her.
“You’re not there.”
She did not hear him.
“Arabella.”
“Patient Seven.”
“No. Arabella Vale.”
Her gaze drifted toward him.
“That name belongs to the girl in the photograph.”
“It belongs to you.”
“She died.”
“Then why are people trying so hard to kill you?”
The ticking stopped.
Silence returned.
Arabella’s hands remained pressed against her ears.
Dante lowered his voice.
“Tell me five things you can see.”
She stared at him.
“What?”
“Five things.”
Her eyes moved around the room.
“The table.”
“Good.”
“The red light.”
“What else?”
“Your gun.”
Dante placed it on the floor.
“Two more.”
“Rosa’s soup.” Her voice steadied. “The window.”
“Four things you can feel.”
“The wall. The floor. Your coat.” She touched the sleeve around her shoulders. “My heartbeat.”
The panic began releasing its grip.
Dante rose only when she did.
His security chief returned.
“The breach came through the building’s smart system. Whoever did it used a relay from inside our network.”
“A traitor?”
“Or planted hardware.”
Dante ordered every electronic device removed.
While his men searched, Rosa led Arabella upstairs.
The guest room had wide windows and pale walls. Arabella checked beneath the bed, inside the closet, and behind the curtains before sitting.
Rosa did not question her.
Instead, she opened a drawer and removed a small wooden music box.
“My daughter slept with this during thunderstorms,” Rosa said.
“You have a daughter?”
“Had.”
Arabella looked at her.
Rosa placed the music box on the table.
“She died when she was twenty-two.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
“Did Dante know her?”
“They grew up together.”
That explained something in Dante’s eyes. A grief he carried without showing.
Rosa opened the music box. A soft melody played.
Arabella recoiled.
Rosa quickly closed it.
“That song,” Arabella whispered.
“You recognize it?”
“My father used to hum it.”
Rosa opened the box again, more slowly.
The melody was an old lullaby.
As Arabella listened, an image surfaced.
A bedroom overlooking water.
Her father sitting at the edge of the bed.
A gold lion ring flashing in moonlight.
“You are braver than anyone knows, Bella,” he had told her.
Then another memory followed.
Richard standing in the doorway.
Watching.
Arabella reached for the music box.
“There was a key inside mine.”
“A key?”
“My father gave me a box like this. He hid something beneath the velvet.”
“What?”
“I don’t remember.”
Downstairs, Dante’s men found the device.
It had been hidden inside a wine delivery that arrived three days earlier.
Only six people knew the safe-house address.
One of them was Dante’s cousin and chief financial officer, Vincent Serrano.
Vincent arrived twenty minutes later, furious at being summoned.
He was forty, well dressed, and softer than Dante, with none of his cousin’s visible scars.
“You think I planted it?” Vincent demanded.
“I think someone used your delivery account,” Dante said.
“I order wine. That isn’t treason.”
“The driver vanished.”
Vincent looked toward the staircase.
“Is she really Arabella Vale?”
Dante’s expression changed.
“I never told you her name.”
The room became still.
Vincent realized his mistake.
“I heard your men talking.”
“My men call her Bird.”
Vincent stepped backward.
Dante’s security chief blocked the door.
Vincent raised both hands. “Dante, think. Richard Vale controls half the ports we use. If he believes we’re hiding her—”
“So you warned him?”
“No.”
“Then how did you know?”
Vincent’s fear became anger.
“Because he called me.”
Dante grabbed him by the collar and slammed him against the wall.
“When?”
“This morning.”
“What did he offer?”
“Nothing.”
“What did he threaten?”
Vincent looked away.
“My children.”
Dante released him.
Vincent straightened his jacket with shaking hands.
“Richard knew Arabella was alive before you did. He said she escaped from one of his clinics years ago. He believed she was dead until someone recognized her under the bridge.”
“Who?”
“A street informant.”
“Why contact you?”
“To place the device. He wanted to frighten her, not kill her.”
A gunshot cracked from upstairs.
Dante ran.
He reached the guest room and found the window shattered.
Rosa was on the floor, unharmed but stunned.
Arabella had disappeared.
A rope made from torn bedsheets hung from the windowsill.
Dante looked down.
Three floors below, the rope ended above the alley.
No Arabella.
Only the wooden music box lay open on the floor.
Beneath its velvet lining was a tiny brass key.
Rosa picked it up.
“She remembered,” Rosa said.
Dante stared into the rain-dark alley.
“Remembered what?”
May you like
Rosa handed him the key.
“Where her father hid the truth.”
