Chapter 37: The Inspection

WREN

Beatrix wasn’t just in Mayfair. She was here.

The words hung in the suffocating silence. Downstairs, the grandfather clock struck three, its hollow chimes echoing through the floorboards like a warning.

Silas stepped farther into the room, his charcoal coat sweeping behind him. The sharp smell of wet asphalt and gun oil followed him inside. He was Beatrix’s shadow, the man who handled quiet disappearances and clean paper trails for the Ashford family.

His gray eyes ignored Julian, who stood near the broken doorway, wiping sweat from his forehead. Silas stopped a few feet from Kael, perfectly relaxed.

“The Duchess doesn’t tolerate anomalies, Dr. Vane,” he said. 

“And you are a considerable one. A high-profile specialist accepting an off-the-books contract at an isolated estate, overseeing a patient whose blood work has been flagged twice by our Mayfair servers.”

My chest tightened. I pressed myself harder against the bathroom wall, knees drawn to my chest, fingers picking at the torn lace of my nightgown.

I kept my face frightened, but every nerve in my body was focused on Kael.

One wrong answer. One hesitation. That was all Silas needed to order his men to kill him and drag me into the Range Rovers outside.

Kael didn’t blink.

He stood among the broken glass and splintered wood with the stillness of a man who had learned long ago how to survive danger.

“Anomalies?” His voice was smooth and cold. He reached into his jacket.

Silas’s hand moved toward his holster.

Kael pulled out a leather medical portfolio.

“If your central server flagged her panels, Silas, it’s because the incompetent people running your Mayfair lab don’t understand a dynamic neurochemical profile.”

He pressed the file against Silas’s chest.

Silas caught it, his expression tightening.

“Page four,” Kael said. 

“Look at the serum concentration levels of the psychotropic compound Julian has been administering under your order.”

Silas opened the portfolio. His tactical terminal illuminated the medical graphs and toxicology reports Kael had prepared.

“She’s receiving a heavy dose of an unapproved neuroleptic,” Kael continued. 

“It causes severe liver enzyme fluctuations and affects blood-brain barrier permeability. At that level, the drug doesn’t leave the body predictably. It accumulates and can be released in dangerous waves.”

Julian swallowed. “I followed the dosage instructions from the lab.”

“You followed instructions without understanding the medication,” Kael snapped.

Julian’s face tightened, but Kael never looked at him.

“Look at tonight’s EEG telemetry. Two hours before your men broke down my door, Emerence suffered a temporal-lobe seizure triggered by the pressure drop from the storm and worsened by chemical toxicity.”

Silas studied the pages, cross-checking the figures against the live data on his terminal.

I watched Kael from the floor.

He was standing in front of Beatrix’s head of security, delivering lie after lie with complete confidence. His hands were steady. His voice never faltered.

Relief surged through me, followed by something deeper.

In a world where people had tried to control me, poison me, and convince me that I was broken, Kael stood between me and them without hesitation.

Silas tapped his screen.

“The Mayfair lab reported no secondary metabolites in her Tuesday blood draw.”

“Because Tuesday’s sample was taken three hours after an intravenous fluid flush,” Kael shot back. 

“I ordered it to protect her kidneys. If you want a living patient who can sign over her corporate power of attorney to the Duchess, let me manage her treatment. If you want a corpse in a bathtub, keep letting Julian play doctor.”

Silence filled the bathroom.

Silas slowly closed the portfolio.

His gray eyes met Kael’s silver ones.

For several seconds, neither moved.

“You’re thorough, Dr. Vane,” Silas said.

“I’m expensive, Silas. There’s a difference.”

Silas lowered his terminal and glanced toward Julian.

“The Duchess will be pleased to know her money isn’t completely wasted.”

He looked back at Kael.

“You have ten minutes to stabilize her. Get her dressed appropriately. The Duchess will inspect her in the primary study before the transport leaves.”

“Ten minutes,” Kael replied.

Silas signaled his guards. The three men followed him from the room.

Julian lingered, giving Kael a frightened, hateful look before hurrying after them.

The moment the hallway cleared, Kael dropped beside me.

His hands closed around mine. They were warm, his grip firm. Only then did I notice the slight tremor in his fingers.

“Wren,” he whispered. “Are you all right?”

I looked at him, my heart pounding for an entirely different reason now.

“You were incredible,” I said, tightening my fingers around his wrists. “You completely dismantled him.”

“I’m not letting them take you.” His face came close to mine. “Not tonight. Not ever.”

The heat between us intensified in the wreckage of the bathroom.

For one fragile second, the danger outside seemed distant.

Kael brushed a strand of damp hair from my cheek. “Listen to me. When we go downstairs, you stay in character.”

“What if she knows?”

“Then we give her nothing.” His thumb moved once across my knuckles. “Fear is your shield tonight. Let her believe you’re terrified of everyone in this house.”

“And you?”

“I’m your doctor.” His gaze held mine. “Nothing more.”

The words should have hurt. Instead, they reminded me how much it depended on the lie.

I nodded, forcing my breathing to slow.

Kael stood and helped me to my feet. He glanced toward the shattered doorway, then back at me.

“Ten minutes,” he murmured. “We use every second.”

I barely had time to answer before the alert appeared.

I wanted to ask whether we could still escape, but the question felt useless. The estate was surrounded, Beatrix was waiting downstairs, and Kael’s identity was already being hunted. We had nowhere left to hide anymore tonight.

Then his phone vibrated.

Kael pulled it from his pocket and looked at the screen.

The color drained from his face.

A high-priority alert glowed across the display.

SECURITY WARNING: SECONDARY PROTOCOL INITIATED.

EXTERNAL BIOMETRIC CROSS-MATCH RUNNING ON DR. KAELEN VANE.

MATCH FOUND: THORNE DYNAMICS ARCHIVES (CLASSIFIED).

My blood turned cold.

Silas hadn’t believed the story.

He had played along, taken Kael’s digital profile, and run his biometric data against the hidden archives of the rival family the Ashfords had destroyed years ago.

Kael’s real identity had just been flagged.

“Kael,” I whispered.

He stared at the screen, his expression hardening.

Downstairs, a sharp click echoed through the marble foyer.

Beatrix’s silver-tipped cane.

Another sound followed.

The unmistakable racking of a gun.

My breath caught.

Beatrix had arrived to inspect me.

And now she knew exactly who my doctor really was.