Chapter 258
Author
Walter only needed five days.
Five days of digging through hospital archives, county records, and police reports that someone had tried very hard to bury.
He made calls to people who didn’t want to talk. Called in markers that had been sitting untouched for years.
Threatened to expose an affair, a gambling debt, a kid who wasn’t actually his wife’s. Whatever it took.
Walter showed up at Elara’s office on a Tuesday afternoon, looking like he hadn’t showered in two of those five days.
He gave a short nod. Then he placed the folder on her desk”Luna Elara.This is what you asked for p>
Elara flipped it open. Her eyes moved fast across the first page, then slowed down. Then stopped entirely.
She pulled out her phone.
Elara: I’ve got something on your parents. Can you get away?
Nancy showed up forty-five minutes later, still in her work clothes.
She was carrying a takeout coffee and looked like she’d stepped out of a conference call she wasn’t done with.
She stopped when she saw the folder on Elara’s desk.”That’s it p>
Elara pushed it across. “Sit down p>
Nancy didn’t sit. She set down her coffee, picked up the folder, and opened it standing up.
The first thing she saw was her mother’s medical records. The real ones. Not the sanitized version the family had been told at the funeral.
Severe stenosis in multiple coronary arteries. Massive myocardial necrosis. Patient is not a candidate for stent placement or bypass surgery. Repeated episodes of malignant arrhythmia. Optimal treatment: heart transplant.
Nancy’s fingers tightened on the paper.
She kept reading. The doctor’s notes mentioned that the patient’s daughter had reported a compatible heart was available. Urgent timeline needed.
Her stomach turned.
The dream came rushing back. Xander’s voice, clear as day. I found a heart for your mother.
She’d thought it was just a nightmare. A twisted replay of grief and guilt.
Now she wasn’t so sure.
She turned the page.
Several months later, the patient’s daughter returned and stated the transplant situation had changed. A new heart source was required.
One week after that, the patient died from injuries sustained in a fall from a building.
Nancy stopped breathing.
Not a car accident. Not a sudden cardiac event. A fall.
She flipped to the next file. Her father. Died in a head-on collision with a semi. Driver was fatigued—ran a red light at sixty miles an hour. Charged with vehicular manslaughter. Served eighteen months of a three-year sentence.
One month after her mother died, her father was gone.
“The hospital sealed the originals,” Elara said quietly. “That’s why you didn’t find anything when you went looking a few years back p>
Nancy’s jaw tightened. “Why would they seal them p>
“I don’t know yet. But someone made a call. Hospital administrators don’t do that on their own p>
Nancy stared at the papers in her hands. Her mother’s looping handwriting in the margins of one page. Her father’s name on a death certificate that didn’t tell the whole story.
“Thank you, Elara.” Her voice came out steady, even though her hands were shaking. “I mean it p>
Elara studied her. “You want me to keep digging p>
Nancy almost said yes.
She wanted to know everything. What Xander had promised. What had changed. What happened in that final week.
She wanted Elara to pull financial records, phone logs, anything that would tie Xander to the timeline.
But Elara was Dominic’s wife. And Dominic paid attention to everything Elara did.
One favor from Walter was easy to brush off. Two would make Dominic stop and think. Three, and he’d pull Elara aside and ask what was really going on.
And if Dominic found out, it was only a matter of time before Yardley heard about it.
Yardley wasn’t dumb. He’d connect the dots. He’d see she was looking into Xander. And once he started asking questions, everything would fall apart.
He’d realize she’d gotten some of her memory back.
That she wasn’t the same woman who woke up in that hospital room with nothing.
She’d spent months playing a part. Keeping her head down. Letting him think nothing had changed between them.
If he found out the truth, that careful balance would break.
She couldn’t risk that. Not yet.
“No,” Nancy said. “This is enough for now p>
Elara didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t push.
Nancy left the office with the folder tucked under her arm. The hallway was quiet. Her heels clicked against the floor.
She needed answers. Real ones.
And there was only one place left to go.