Chapter 35: The Bitter Note

 

Blood soaked through Elara's fingers.

"Stay with me." Her voice shook. "Odette, look at me."

The old woman's eyes fluttered. Her lips moved, but no sound came.

"Elara!"

Rhys dropped beside them, pulling off his coat. He pressed it against Odette's wound and caught Elara's trembling hand beneath his own.

"Hold here. Hard."

"She's losing too much blood."

"Look at me." His gray eyes locked on hers. "We're not losing her."

Another gunshot cracked across the river.

Rhys threw himself over both women.

Stone shattered against the railing. Tobias returned fire from behind a concrete pillar, his voice sharp through the fog.

"Shooter's moving! Right bank!"

"Let him go!" Rhys shouted. "We need an ambulance!"

Elara barely heard them.

Odette's blood was warm against her palms. Her breaths came in shallow, terrible little catches.

Twenty-five years of birthdays. Twenty-five years of lessons. Of gentle hands correcting hers over a perfume bottle. Of a voice calling her ma petite when the world had nothing kind to offer.

"You cannot leave me," Elara whispered. "Not before I finish being angry with you."

Odette's eyes opened.

For one brief second, something like amusement touched her face.

Then she went limp.

"No."

Elara shook her.

"Odette!"

Rhys caught her wrists.

"She's breathing."

"She's not moving!"

"Elara. She's breathing."

Sirens rose beyond the river.

 

The ambulance arrived six minutes later.

Elara counted every second.

She climbed inside before anyone could stop her. Rhys followed, his white shirt stained dark beneath the borrowed coat.

The paramedic worked quickly, checking Odette's pulse and securing an oxygen mask.

"Gunshot wound. Possible lung injury. Blood pressure falling."

"Will she live?" Elara asked.

The paramedic hesitated.

Rhys saw it.

"Answer her."

"We're doing everything we can."

It was not an answer.

Elara stared at the monitor while Paris flashed past the windows.

A small green line rose and fell.

Rose and fell.

She had never understood how cruel hope could be until it became a line on a screen.

Rhys sat beside her without speaking.

When her hand began to shake, he covered it with his.

She did not pull away.

 

At the private hospital, surgeons took Odette through a pair of swinging doors.

Elara tried to follow.

A nurse stopped her gently.

"You must wait here, madame."

"She's my family."

"I understand."

"No." Elara's voice broke. "You don't."

The doors closed.

She stood staring at them.

Rhys approached with two paper cups of water. He offered her one.

She couldn't take it.

"She betrayed my mother."

"I know."

"And I still want her alive."

"Those things can both be true."

Elara looked at him.

Something in his expression made her chest tighten.

Not pity.

Understanding.

For the first time since their marriage began, she wondered how many people Rhys Calloway had loved and resented at the same time.

Her phone rang.

Priya.

Rhys answered on speaker.

"Tobias found the shooter's position," Priya said. "Abandoned rifle. No fingerprints. Brandt has sealed the bridge."

"And Margot?" Elara asked immediately.

A pause.

"She's safe. Brandt sent officers to her house in Lyon."

Elara closed her eyes.

"Thank God."

"But there's something else." Priya lowered her voice. "Before Odette left the hospital, someone accessed her medical file."

"Conrad?"

"We don't know. The access came through a Calloway Group medical authorization."

Rhys went perfectly still.

"That's impossible."

"I checked it twice."

"Who signed it?"

"Your personal physician."

Silence.

Elara turned toward him.

"Rhys?"

He was staring at the phone.

"Dr. Sebastian Vale," he said.

The name meant nothing to her.

Then he added, "He's treated me since the fire."

 

Twenty minutes later, they were in the hospital's empty consultation room.

Priya had sent the records.

Twenty-one years of prescriptions.

Twenty-one years of confidential assessments.

Every examination authorized by the same physician.

Every report concluding that Rhys's anosmia was permanent.

Elara studied the documents.

"Did he ever prescribe you medication?"

"After the fire. For years."

"What kind?"

"Supplements. Something for the headaches. I stopped taking most of them."

"Most?"

Rhys frowned.

"My evening tea. A herbal preparation. He said it would help with the nerve damage."

Elara's stomach tightened.

"Do you still drink it?"

"When I'm home. Sometimes when I travel."

"Who prepares it?"

"My household staff."

"Who supplies it?"

"Vale."

The room seemed to tilt.

Elara remembered Odette's final warning.

Someone has been poisoning his tea.

She reached across the table and took Rhys's hand.

"Don't drink it again."

His fingers tightened around hers.

"Elara, whatever was done to me, we don't know whether stopping it changes anything."

"I know."

He looked at their joined hands.

Then at her face.

"You're frightened."

She swallowed.

"Yes."

"For Odette?"

"For both of you."

Something changed in his eyes.

Before he could answer, her phone vibrated.

A message from Vivienne.

I found something in Julian's files. You need to see this immediately.

Attached was a photograph.

A handwritten invoice dated twenty-one years earlier.

Elara enlarged it.

A recurring pharmaceutical delivery. An experimental compound. A private patient identified only by the initials R.C.

Below the payment authorization was a signature.

Elara recognized the handwriting from the old Calloway documents.

She turned the phone toward Rhys.

His face drained of color.

"No," he whispered.

Elara looked again at the signature.

Augustin Calloway.

The grandfather who had forced Rhys into marriage had apparently been paying for his medication since the night of the fire.

And the payments had never stopped.