Chapter 6 - THE PRICE OF THE TRUTH
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Serena called Liam six times.
Every call went straight to voicemail.
By the seventh attempt, her hands were shaking so badly that she could barely hold the phone.
Matteo reached toward her, then stopped.
“I'm getting Walsh.”
“No.” Her voice broke. “We need to find my brother.”
“Then we find him.”
She looked at him, searching for the familiar impulse to take control. When it did not come, she nodded once.
They left the hotel through separate exits and met Walsh at a federal field office outside Boston.
The agent listened to the recording of Liam's call twice.
“His phone last connected to a tower near Worcester,” he said. “We have a team checking the area.”
“What did he mean by 'your father is'?” Matteo asked.
Walsh looked at Serena.
“Her father died in an accident seven years ago. Your father reportedly died that same year. Both deaths involved private medical facilities before the bodies were released to their families.”
Serena's face went white.
“You knew this?”
“We suspected a connection. We didn't have proof.”
Matteo's expression darkened.
“How many people have you been investigating without telling us?”
“Enough to know that somebody has been exploiting both families for years.”
Walsh laid out a series of photographs. The first showed Vincent Falcone entering a private clinic. The second showed Serena's father, Michael Gallagher, arriving at the same facility eleven days later.
The third showed Thomas Weaver leaving the building.
Serena stared at it.
“Thomas was there?”
“According to the records, yes.”
Matteo's hands curled into fists.
“Why wasn't this in the original investigation?”
“Because the records disappeared. Someone removed them from the clinic's archive before our team arrived.”
Walsh tapped the third photograph.
“Last month, a former clinic employee contacted us. She said the two men weren't treated for injuries. They were transferred to a secure residential facility operated by a company called Ashcroft Biologics.”
“Were they alive?” Serena asked.
“We haven't established that.”
Her eyes filled with tears, but she refused to let them fall.
Matteo knew that expression. He had seen it the night she removed her engagement ring.
It was the look of someone bracing for a truth that might destroy everything she believed.
Walsh received an update from his team.
A vehicle matching Liam's description had been found abandoned beside a service road. The windshield was shattered. Blood was visible on the driver's seat, but there was no body.
Serena stood so abruptly that her chair scraped across the floor.
“I'm going.”
“We'll take you,” Walsh said.
“No. I'm not sitting in another room while someone else decides what I can know.”
Matteo rose beside her.
“I'll go with you.”
She turned on him.
“This isn't your decision.”
“You're right.”
He stepped back.
“Tell me what you want me to do.”
For a moment, she looked almost startled.
“Find out why Thomas was at that clinic.”
Matteo nodded and made the call.
Within an hour, his security chief had located an old property record linking Ashcroft Biologics to a remote estate in Connecticut. The property had been purchased through six layers of corporations, the final one registered to Bellweather Trust.
The estate was supposedly a private rehabilitation center.
Its public website had been taken offline three years earlier.
Walsh arranged a lawful search based on the newly discovered records. Matteo insisted on accompanying the team but agreed to remain outside until the agents secured the building.
Inside, they found empty bedrooms, abandoned medical equipment, and a locked basement containing dozens of archived files.
One file bore Vincent Falcone's name.
Another bore Michael Gallagher's.
Serena opened her father's file with trembling fingers.
The medical records were incomplete, but a handwritten note had been preserved inside the folder.
Patient responsive. Memory intact. Requests contact with daughter. Contact denied by order of T.W.
Serena pressed a hand over her mouth.
Her father might have been alive after the date of his reported death.
Someone had kept him isolated.
Someone had denied his requests to contact her.
Matteo found a second note in Vincent's file.
Patient refuses transfer. Claims original agreement has been violated. Requests meeting with successor.
At the bottom was a signature.
Thomas Weaver.
A noise came from the far end of the basement.
An agent shouted for everyone to stop.
A man emerged from a side corridor, thin and gray-haired, wearing a hospital identification bracelet. He stumbled as he approached, shielding his face from the bright lights.
Serena recognized him before anyone else did.
“Dad?”
The man froze.
His eyes moved to her face.
For several seconds, he seemed unable to speak.
Then he whispered her name.
Serena ran to him.
She caught him as his knees buckled and held him against her chest, sobbing into his shoulder.
Matteo stood several feet away, unable to move.
Michael Gallagher was alive.
And if Michael had survived, Vincent Falcone might have survived too.
An agent hurried toward Walsh with a tablet.
“We found a second room. It was occupied recently.”
“By whom?”
The agent turned the screen.
A surveillance photograph showed a man seated at a desk, reading a newspaper.
The timestamp was less than forty-eight hours old.
Matteo recognized the face.
His father.
Then Michael Gallagher lifted his head from Serena's shoulder.
His voice was weak, but the words were clear.
“Don't trust Thomas,” he whispered. “He's not the one who planned this.”
Serena pulled back.
“Who did?”
May you like
Michael looked directly at Matteo.
“Your mother.”
