All Chapters of THE DON'S DOCTOR : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

34 Chapters

Chapter Eleven Did I choose wrong?

Light came first.Warm and slow, spilling through the curtains and across the face of the man sitting in the chair beside my bed like he had been there all night.Frank.Jacket off. Sleeves still rolled. Forearms on his knees, hands loose between them. Watching me with the particular stillness of someone who had been watching for a long timeI sat up so fast the room tilted."Easy, Jane." His voice was low. He didn't move toward me. Just steadied me with his presence from a distance."I'm fine." The words came out before I'd decided to say them. Reflex. Survival habit.He didn't say anything.I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. Found the floor. Pressed my feet flat against it and focused on the solidity of it, until the room stopped moving.Frank watched me do all of this and said nothing.The silence stretched."How are you feeling?"I didn't answer.He let that sit for a moment. Then he leaned forward slightly, elbows on his knees, and looked at me the way he looked at things

Chapter Twelve Sofia Costello.

The medical bay felt smaller after Frank left.Not physically. The equipment was still where it was. Nothing had moved.But the air was different without Frank in it, and I noticed that and hated that I noticed it and decided that was enough of the medical bay for one morning.I checked Marco's vitals one last time. Nothing new.I walked back toward my room with my hands in my pockets and my mind doing the thing it did when I gave it too much space — running the same loop over and over without arriving anywhere useful.Each piece refusing to fit cleanly with the others. Like a diagnosis where the symptoms pointed in three different directions, and none of them led to a single clean answer.I stopped outside my room door and stood there for a second with my hand on the handle.Go in. Wash your face. Change your clothes. Be a person.I pushed it open.The room looked the same. Everything exactly as I'd left it.Except.On the pillow, an envelope. Manila. Thick.I stood in the doorway an

Chapter Thirteen The Truth He Never Told Me.

Frank locked the door.Not threatening. Just deliberate. The quiet finality of a man who had decided this conversation was happening and nothing was interrupting it.He crossed to the bar. Poured two glasses. Set one in front of me without asking.I didn't touch it.He didn't sit. Just stood on the other side of the desk with his drink and looked at me like he was deciding where to start."Sofia Costello." He said her name like he hadn't said it out loud in a long time. "She was twenty two when I met her. A translator. Her father did business with mine."I said nothing."She wasn't supposed to be here. That was my fault. I brought her into this world because I wanted her close and I told myself I could keep her safe." His jaw tightened. "I was wrong.""What happened to her?""She got sick." He set his glass down. "Suddenly. No warning. She was fine in the morning and by evening she was in the medical bay and by midnight—" He stopped."Cardiac arrest," I said."That's what the certific

Chapter Fourteen Before You Ever Did.

I walked out of his office.Not because I had somewhere to go, but because staying in that room one more second meant waiting for an answer he wasn’t going to give me.The corridor was empty.I stood in it for a moment with the particular hollow feeling of someone who had just asked the most important question and received silence as the only response.I didn't go back to my room.I went to the medical bay because it was the only place in this compound that made sense. The only place where everything had a name and a purpose.I pulled up a stool at Marco's bedside, sat beside his bed, and let my fingers brush the blanket as if seeking some anchor.I looked at his face and remembered how he had grabbed my wrist on the operating table, trying to warn me and how I had let Frank talk me out of listening.He was delirious. Blood loss. Trauma.I had believed that because I wanted to.That was the problem with this compound. It had a way of making you want things that weren't safe to want.T

Chapter Fifteen Closer Than He Thinks

I gave myself a week to think.A week of Frank giving me exactly what I asked for.Space.He didn't seek me out. Didn't appear in doorways. Didn't find reasons to be in whatever room I was in. He stayed away. Like he didn’t know what to say to me anymore.With the particular discipline of a man who had decided to do something difficult and was doing it completely.The medical supplies came at noon on the fifth day later than usual.Just another standard delivery. Twice a week, white boxes stacked neatly on a metal cart, wheeled through the service entrance by two men in gray uniforms who never looked at me or lingered.I signed for them myself. Rosabella was in consultation, easier to take them alone.In the medical bay, I unpacked gauze, suture kits, IV bags, and saline. Everything was in order.Until the last box.It was smaller than the others. No supplier label. No delivery code. Just my name written on the top in block letters with a black marker.DR. Natalie Evan.Not my alias.

Chapter Sixteen Hello Jane.

I stared at my phone until the screen went dark in my hand.At some point exhaustion dragged me under, because when I opened my eyes again the room was flooded with pale morning light and my neck ached from the awkward angle on the pillow.I lay there for a moment, heart racing with the memory of the box. Rising from the bed, I washed my face in cold water, but the tightness in my chest remained.Then I put on my coat the way I always did when I needed to feel like a doctor instead of a woman barely holding herself together.No new calls.No packages waiting outside my door.Nothing moving on the security cameras that shouldn’t be there.Whoever had sent the finger wasn’t finished.They were either very patient… or very confident.The thought made a cold knot tighten in my stomach.I suspected both.I was in the medical bay at eleven AM when my phone rang.Not an unknown number this time. A number I recognized.A number I had deleted two years ago and apparently still knew by heart, b

Chapter Seventeen Get The Fuck Out.

The private lounge was empty at that hour.That was why I went there.I pulled a bottle of whiskey from the bar Frank kept stocked for guests who never came and poured into a glass. The glass was halfway to my mouth when the door opened."You're drinking at 8AM," Frank said. He crossed the room. Didn't sit. Just stood on the other side of the coffee table and looked at me."When were you going to tell me?”“Tell you what?”"That Magnus Vance is alive, and he called you yesterday at eleven AM.”The glass stopped halfway to my mouth.Whiskey sloshed against the rim, and a drop ran over my knuckle. I didn’t feel it at first.I opened my mouth to speak, but he cut me off."Don't. Don't tell me you were about to. Don't tell me you were waiting for the right moment. Just answer the question.”"I was going to—”“When.”The single word landed hard in the room.“When were you going to tell me, Jane?”“This morning. It's just eight a.m. I'm telling you right now.”"Darius flagged the call yest

Chapter Eighteen Coffee For One

The street outside the compound was quieter than I expected.I walked without direction. Just movement. Frank’s voice followed anyway, pressing against my ribs like a weight I couldn’t shake.I stopped at the first place I found that wasn't his house. A small café on the corner. Chairs outside. Nobody looking at me.I sat down. Ordered nothing and stared at the table."You look terrible."My head snapped up.Magnus Vance sat down across from me like he had been waiting for the chair to be warm. Same face. Same careful grooming. Same eyes.The back of my neck prickled. Then, the feeling drained out of my arms like someone had cut the wires. For a second, I couldn't feel my hands."Don't." He said it quietly enough that the couple at the next table kept laughing. "Don't run. Don't scream. We're in public, and you know I won't do anything here." He settled back. "I just want to talk.""You followed me.""I was already here." He glanced at the street. "I told you I was close."My finger

Chapter 19 Gravity

I was still staring at the empty chair across from me when the café door opened.The chatter died.The barista froze mid-pour. A couple at the corner table held their sandwiches mid-air.I looked up and saw Frank walking in like the room had been waiting for him. Like the air itself had been holding its breath.Darius behind him. Two men flanked him. Another lingered a few paces back. No raised voices. No visible weapons. Just the authority of people who’d never needed to announce themselves.Every person in the café felt it. I felt it in my chest, pressing down like an invisible hand, like someone had slammed the lid on a coffin over my ribs.Frank’s eyes found me. He stopped at my table and scanned the empty chair across from me like he already knew who or what should be there. Then my face.His jaw tightened.“Who was sitting there?”“Nobody,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.“Jane.”“I said nobody, Frank.”Before I realized what was happening, his shoulder slid under my rib

Chapter Twenty Standard Procedure

He stepped back from the wall. Not far. Just enough.His hand slid away from my throat with deliberate slowness, as if he were weighing every inch of release. The other hand lifted from the wall above my head.I stayed pressed against the plaster, chest heaving, trying to find a rhythm in my breathing.Elevated heart rate. Hands unsteady. The word mine still sitting in my chest like a splinter.No clinical assessment available. Moving on.I pushed off the wall.“We need to talk about what Magnus said.”“We do,” Frank replied, calm again. Like the last ten minutes hadn’t happened. Like his hand hadn’t been at my throat thirty seconds ago. He took a small step closer, just enough to make the space between us feel taut, like a drawn bowstring.“First,” he said, holding out his hand.“Give me your phone.”I blinked. “Why?”“I need to fix it. So no one can track you.” His voice was calm, but every syllable carried weight. "Magnus called you on that number. Which means he has it. Which me

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