Chapter 12 - Seventeen Days Become One
Nico’s wheelchair turned so fast one footplate hit the waiting-room chair.
Lorenzo did not flinch.
Adeline stood.
Hospital security was twenty feet away.
Lorenzo raised both empty hands.
“If I came to hurt you, Nico, I wouldn’t walk through the front entrance.”
Nico’s voice was flat.
“You authorized the brake command.”
“Yes.”
Adeline’s stomach dropped.
Lorenzo looked at her.
“You must be the nurse.”
“Don’t call her that like you know her.”
“I know enough.”
Nico moved closer.
“Why?”
Lorenzo glanced toward the surgical doors.
“Your nurse’s brother just survived heart surgery. Maybe we don’t do this here.”
Nico pulled the pistol from beneath his coat.
Adeline stared at him.
“You brought that into a children’s hospital?”
“It’s registered.”
“That was not my question.”
Lorenzo smiled.
“Still you.”
Nico did not.
“Talk.”
Lorenzo sat.
Five years in Sicily had changed him.
Or maybe only removed the part of him Nico remembered.
He explained that Victor approached him before the crash.
Not to kill Nico.
To disable the SUV.
Lorenzo authorized access through an old fleet-management account.
He believed the car would fail to start.
Victor changed the command.
“Convenient,” Nico said.
“I knew you’d say that.”
“Because it is.”
Lorenzo slid a flash drive across the chair arm.
“Then look.”
Adeline took it.
Emails.
Victor asking for fleet access.
Lorenzo granting limited diagnostic control.
Then another email.
Victor asking for brake-calibration permission.
Lorenzo refusing.
Nico read twice.
“Why didn’t you come back?”
“Because when the crash happened, Victor sent me the telemetry.”
“What telemetry?”
“Fake telemetry. It made it look like my access caused the failure.”
“So you ran.”
“I had enemies already.”
“You let me think you were gone.”
“I was gone.”
“You let me think you didn’t care.”
Lorenzo’s face tightened.
“That was easier than letting Victor bury both of us.”
A nurse called Adeline’s name.
She looked toward the surgical doors.
“Go,” Nico said.
She hesitated.
“Go.”
She left the brothers.
When she returned twenty minutes later, Lorenzo was standing.
Nico held the flash drive.
His face was unreadable.
Lorenzo said, “Victor is not the top.”
Adeline stopped.
Nico looked at her.
“What does that mean?”
Lorenzo answered.
“It means somebody signed the trust amendments after Father died.”
Nico’s eyes narrowed.
“Victor.”
“No.”
Lorenzo reached into his coat slowly.
He removed a notarized document.
A corporate succession amendment.
Senior family representative upon permanent incapacity.
Victor Alfieri.
Approved by:
Camille Ashcroft’s father.
Martin Cole.
And one more signature.
Nico stared.
Adeline leaned closer.
The name at the bottom made no sense.
Because the man had been dead for nine years.
SALVATORE ALFIERI.
Nico’s father.
May you like
His supposedly dead father had signed the amendment.
Two years ago.
