He has fired seven nurses this week, and if your child makes a single sound, you will both be thrown into the snow, Chief Guard Mikhail warned me at the heavy iron gates of the Volkov estate.
Returning to the manor felt like stepping back into a cage. The staff’s hostility was a palpable wall, their gazes like daggers.
But I now had a name for the horror, a potential ally. Dr. Silas Montgomery’s words echoed in my mind: “systematically murdered.”
I decided to start with the man who should have been Damian’s first line of defense: Dr. Aris Finch, the estate’s retained physician. He was a timid man, always nervous, easily flustered.
I found him in the narrow, dimly lit medical office, hunched over Damian’s charts, his face pale in the glow of a desk lamp.
“Dr. Finch,” I said, stepping into the room. He jumped, spilling coffee on a stack of papers.
“Nurse Halloway! You startled me.” His hands trembled as he dabbed at the spill.
“I need to understand Mr. Volkov’s erratic charts,” I pressed, my voice firm. “His temperature readings, the complete lack of improvement. It doesn’t make sense. And where are the neutralizing serums?”
He avoided my gaze, shuffling through papers. “His condition is, as you know, complex. We’re doing everything we can.”
“Are you?” I asked, stepping closer, my voice low and intense. “Or are you following orders that are actively harming him? Mr. Volkov is suffering. You’re a doctor. You took an oath.”
My direct pressure seemed to crack his already fragile composure. His breath came in shallow gasps. His eyes darted around the room, as if searching for an escape.
“I had no choice!” he suddenly blurted out, his voice rising in panic, almost a shout. “Mr. Drake specifically ordered me to withhold the silver-bound anti-toxins!”
The words hung in the air, echoing in the small office. The meaning was devastatingly clear. He had confessed. Intentional medical neglect, at Drake’s behest.
Dr. Finch’s eyes widened in horror. He clamped a hand over his mouth, his face turning an ashen gray. He realized what he had just said.
His confession, a complete admission of guilt, had slipped out under pressure.
He scrambled backward, knocking over his chair with a clatter. “I… I have to go!” he stammered, his voice choked with fear.
He fled the office, his footsteps pounding down the corridor, leaving me alone in the sudden silence with the weight of his accidental truth.
This was the evidence I needed. A direct link between Drake and Damian’s worsening condition.
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