Chapter 7 - The Third-Floor Ward
The private medical wing on the third floor of the Lausanne estate was designed to look like a luxury recovery suite at a Swiss alpine clinic, complete with warm oak paneling, soundproof acoustic glass, and a panoramic view of the snow-dusted Alps.
Right now, it looked like a battlefield.
The heavy double doors of the suite stood wide open, the electronic keypad blown out by a localized magnetic pulse charge. Inside, an IV pole had been knocked sideways, its plastic bag leaking saline across the white wool rug in a slow, spreading puddle.
In the center of the room, an elderly man with silver hair and a pale, drawn face sat propped up in a motorized hospital bed. His wrists were hooked to heart-monitoring leads that beeped with a frantic, erratic rhythm. Standing over him was a tall man in a bespoke charcoal overcoat, his silver-rimmed glasses catching the harsh amber glow of the emergency lighting.
Assistant Director James Vance of the Federal Transport Bureau didn't even turn around when Khloe and Silas stepped through the shattered doorway.
"Put the gun down, Silas," Vance said smoothly, his voice carrying the calm, patrician authority of a man who had spent three decades rewriting federal policy from a mahogany desk in Washington. "You're holding a losing hand. The Swiss federal police are already three miles down the mountain, and they're responding to a priority call logged by my office concerning a cartel hostage situation on this property."
Silas didn't lower his SIG Sauer. He stepped into the room, his boots making a soft squishing sound on the damp rug. "You've been running arms through Chicago's South Side since before my father built this syndicate, James. The Swiss police aren't going to find a cartel hostage. They're going to find a federal bureaucrat trespassing in a private vault."
"They won't find anything," Vance replied with a thin, bloodless smile. He turned his head slightly, his cold eyes glancing down at the elderly man in the bed. "David here was just telling me how eager he is to return to his nursing home in Zurich. Weren't you, David?"
The old man in the bed raised his head. His eyes, watery and yellowed with age, flicked toward Khloe. A shuddering breath tore through his thin chest, and his lips parted.
"Khloe..." the old man whispered, his voice trembling so violently it barely carried over the steady beep of the heart monitor. "Child... you shouldn't have come back."
Khloe stepped past Silas, her boots clicking against the floor. She stared at the man she hadn't seen in twenty years—the uncle who had supposedly driven off an icy mountain pass in New York, the ghost whose signature had damned her father's memory.
"You're alive," Khloe said, her voice hollow, stripped of all anger and left with only a cold, burning emptiness. "Every anniversary, every time I looked at my mother crying over an empty grave in Chicago... you were sitting in a Swiss safehouse, collecting a paycheck from the men who killed my father."
David Gallagher closed his eyes, a single tear cutting a clean path through the dust and sweat on his sunken cheek. "I didn't have a choice, Khloe. Vance had the clearance codes. If I didn't sign the secondary manifests, the federal audit wouldn't just have ruined the warehouse—it would have named your father as the primary conspirator."
"That's a lie," Khloe hissed, stepping right up to the edge of the hospital bed. "My father was an auditor. He didn't conspire with anyone."
"No, he didn't," Vance interrupted, stepping smoothly between Khloe and the bed. His face was entirely devoid of remorse, replaced by the clinical detachment of a man managing an accounting discrepancy. "Which is why Arthur had to be eliminated. He was too honest to bribe, too smart to fool, and too loyal to the syndicate's old code to let us run our operations through his ports."
Vance’s hand dipped smoothly into his overcoat pocket.
May you like
"And unfortunately, Miss Gallagher," Vance continued, his eyes locking onto hers with sudden, lethal finality, "neither you nor your uncle are going to leave this room to tell the story."
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