Chapter 5 - The Twenty-First Doctor Never Arrived
Lorenzo Falcone had six weeks to live.
Maybe less.
Gabriel stood beside his uncle's hospital bed without weapon visible.
Carmine remained outside.
Sadi had no reason to be there.
Gabriel asked her anyway.
“You see things other people miss.”
She came.
Lorenzo looked smaller than photographs.
Yellow skin.
Thin hands.
Oxygen.
But his eyes remained sharp.
“You survived.”
Gabriel:
“Disappointed?”
“Surprised.”
That was confession enough.
Gabriel leaned closer.
“Why?”
Lorenzo looked at Sadi.
“Amira's daughter.”
Sadi:
“You stole from my mother.”
“Yes.”
No denial.
“Why?”
“Because your mother had enough evidence to destroy Falcone companies.”
“She was sick because of those companies.”
“Partly.”
The word infuriated Sadi.
Lorenzo continued.
“Your mother thought exposure would save workers. It would have shut factories overnight. Thousands unemployed. Vittorio imprisoned. Rival families taking territory.”
“So you stole her settlement?”
“I needed her financially desperate.”
Sadi stared.
He said it like business.
“You wanted to force her to give you evidence.”
“Yes.”
“Did she?”
“No.”
A tiny satisfaction.
Amira had beaten him.
Lorenzo coughed.
Gabriel:
“Why poison me now?”
Lorenzo looked nephew.
“Because you were going legitimate.”
Gabriel froze.
For two years Gabriel had quietly reduced violent operations, moving money into shipping, construction and property.
Sadi hadn't known.
Lorenzo hated it.
Not because crime profitable.
Because legitimate restructuring required audits.
Audits would uncover old biomedical accounts.
Including experiments.
“What experiments?”
Sadi asked.
Lorenzo closed eyes.
No answer.
Gabriel gripped bedrail.
“What did my father fund?”
Lorenzo:
“Not Vittorio.”
“You.”
Silence.
Lorenzo had used Falcone Biomedical to test unapproved industrial chemical coatings, bribing clinics and factories.
Workers became involuntary exposure population.
Monarch was one site.
Amira discovered pattern.
There were others.
Hundreds potentially harmed.
Gabriel's modernization would reveal liabilities.
Lorenzo wanted Gabriel dead so he could become trustee, bury records permanently, then die.
“Protecting your reputation after death?”
“No.”
“For what, then?”
“My daughter.”
Gabriel stared.
Lorenzo had secret daughter.
Dr. Elena Voss.
A respected biomedical executive.
She had inherited companies connected to experiments without knowing source.
If scandal surfaced, her career and businesses could collapse.
“You murdered me to protect someone who doesn't even know?”
“I tried.”
Gabriel's expression went cold.
Sadi stepped between bed and him.
Not physically blocking.
Just visible.
“Don't.”
Gabriel looked.
“He tried to kill me.”
“And he's dying already.”
“That doesn't make him innocent.”
“No. It makes killing him pointless.”
Lorenzo smiled weakly.
“Your maid gives orders now?”
Sadi:
“No. I remind men when they're about to do stupid things.”
Gabriel almost smiled.
Then Lorenzo said something unexpected.
“Mercer is alive.”
“Where?”
“I don't know.”
“You hired him.”
“I hired him to use thread. Someone else took him afterward.”
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
Gabriel didn't believe.
Lorenzo gave name of intermediary.
Dr. Harrison Cole.
Surgeon eighteen.
Sadi's stomach dropped.
Cole had ridiculed poisoned-thread theory.
Because he knew exactly what it was.
Gabriel immediately called estate.
Cole had disappeared after being dismissed.
Security footage showed him leaving.
Then returning two hours later through service entrance using stolen badge.
What had he done?
They searched.
One nurse discovered medication cabinet tampered.
Gabriel's IV supplies.
If Sadi had not removed stitches, Cole had backup method.
The “doctor trying to save him” had been there to ensure death.
Gabriel ordered search.
Cole's financial records revealed payments from Elena Voss's corporation.
But did Elena know?
They couldn't assume.
Gabriel had spent lifetime assuming.
Sadi had watched doctors do same.
Evidence first.
They contacted Elena anonymously through attorney.
She agreed meeting after seeing copies.
When she arrived at neutral office, she looked horrified.
“My father did this?”
Gabriel:
“Apparently.”
Elena read files.
Then cried.
Not elegant tears.
Shaking.
“My company is built on patents from this research.”
Sadi understood.
Lorenzo had protected daughter by making her unknowingly profit from victims.
Elena looked at Sadi.
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
“I didn't know.”
“I believe you.”
Elena seemed surprised.
“How?”
“Because people who know usually explain before apologizing.”
Elena surrendered internal archives.
They revealed Cole had worked as consultant.
And Mercer had contacted him after Gabriel surgery.
Mercer regretted participation.
He threatened confess.
Cole kidnapped him.
Location hidden in metadata of encrypted video.
An abandoned clinical research facility in New Jersey.
Gabriel wanted raid.
Sadi:
“Call police.”
Room went silent.
Mafia boss calling police.
Gabriel stared.
She continued.
“You're trying to become legitimate? Start by not invading medical buildings with twelve armed men.”
Carmine looked offended.
“She has point,” Elena said.
Gabriel rubbed jaw.
He contacted attorney, who contacted federal authorities with limited disclosure.
Within hours Mercer recovered alive.
Cole arrested attempting flee through rear loading bay.
Mercer confessed.
Lorenzo hired him to insert contaminated cord during emergency closure.
He did it for money.
Then guilt consumed him when Gabriel deteriorated.
Cole had been assigned to monitor treatment and make sure nobody discovered.
“Twenty surgeons?” Sadi asked.
Mercer shook head.
“Lorenzo planned twenty.”
“What?”
“He had list. If first doctors failed, more would be brought. Cole was number eighteen because he needed to be near end, when everyone was desperate enough to accept amputation.”
Gabriel understood.
Amputation would remove evidence.
Poisoned stitches destroyed with limb.
If Gabriel died afterward, infection blamed.
If survived, evidence gone.
“What about twenty?”
Mercer:
“Number twenty wasn't a doctor.”
“Who?”
Mercer looked at Sadi.
“Your mother.”
Sadi went still.
“She's dead.”
“I know.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“Lorenzo called his contingency file ‘Surgeon Twenty.’ It was everything Amira collected.”
“Where?”
Mercer swallowed.
“Inside Falcone estate.”
Gabriel frowned.
“Where?”
“Your father hid it.”
Then Mercer delivered final shock.
“Vittorio knew what Lorenzo did.”
Sadi's anger returned.
Of course.
“But instead of destroying evidence, your father hid it somewhere only Gabriel could find.”
Gabriel:
“Why me?”
“Because before Vittorio died, he decided Lorenzo had gone too far.”
“Where did he hide it?”
Mercer shook head.
“All he told Lorenzo was this: ‘When Gabriel finally learns how to look beneath what we built, he'll find the woman who tried to warn us.’”
Sadi remembered estate.
Portraits.
Library.
Basement.
A mansion filled with secrets.
May you like
And somewhere inside it, her dead mother had been waiting for Gabriel for years.
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