The call came at 6:05 a.m., pulling us back to the hospital before the sun had fully risen. Shawn’s phone lit up with an unknown number. When he answered, his expression tightened. He put it on speaker. “Mr. Reid,” a woman’s voice said, sharp and cold. “This is Sophia Laurent, Charles’s sister. You need to come. Now.” We arrived twenty minutes later. The private wing was quiet, the only sound the soft beep of monitors behind closed doors. Mayette had already left hours earlier, but two new figures waited in the hallway outside Charles’s room. Sophia Laurent was a tall, elegant woman in her late thirties, with the same sharp features as her brother but colder eyes. Beside her stood a woman I recognized from old photos — Marianne Voss, Charles’s ex-girlfriend of five years, who had been out of the picture long before I entered it. She looked exhausted, eyes red from crying. Sophia didn’t waste time on pleasantries. “You did this,” she said, voice low but venomous as she gl
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