Chapter 2 - The Dead Man in My Childhood Photograph
I didn’t remember leaving the consultation room.
One moment, Vincent was sitting across from me.
The next, I was in the employee stairwell with both hands braced against the concrete wall, trying to breathe.
My father had died when I was six.
That was the story.
There had been a boat accident off Cape Ann.
His body had been recovered two days later.
My mother had identified him.
There had been a funeral.
I remembered rain on umbrellas.
I remembered a navy-blue dress that scratched my neck.
I remembered my mother holding my hand so tightly that my fingers hurt.
What I did not remember was anyone named Elena.
The stairwell door opened.
Vincent stepped inside.
“Leave me alone.”
“I can’t.”
I laughed once, without humor.
“That sounds like a you problem.”
“Rachel, listen to me.”
“You had me investigated.”
“Yes.”
“You showed up at my workplace with six men.”
“Five.”
I stared at him.
He looked almost embarrassed.
“This is not the time to correct me.”
“No.”
He leaned against the wall opposite me.
For a man who traveled with armed security, he looked strangely tired.
“What happened to my father?”
“I don’t know everything.”
“Convenient.”
“I know what my wife knew.”
“Her name?”
“Isabella.”
The way he said it changed his face.
Whatever else Vincent Castrovani was, he had loved his wife.
“Isabella found records while investigating something involving my family.”
“What kind of something?”
He hesitated.
“That’s where this becomes difficult.”
“It became difficult when you mentioned my dead father.”
“My family has interests that aren’t always... conventional.”
I stared at him.
“That’s a very elegant way to say organized crime.”
His mouth tightened.
“So you know who I am.”
“I know what Google says.”
“Google says worse.”
“I’m sure.”
He let the silence sit.
Then he said, “My father, Carlo Castrovani, controlled shipping contracts along the eastern seaboard for thirty years. Legitimate business mixed with less legitimate business. He died seven years ago. I inherited the legitimate companies.”
“And the other ones?”
“I’ve spent seven years getting rid of them.”
“People usually don’t need armed guards to leave crime.”
“They do when other people make money from them staying.”
That answer I believed.
I hated that I believed it.
He continued.
“Isabella discovered a series of payments made from one of my father’s old shell companies to a man named Thomas Foster.”
My breath caught.
My father’s name.
“Payments for what?”
“Medical work.”
“My father was a paramedic.”
“Officially.”
“What does that mean?”
Vincent’s eyes dropped.
“He worked as an emergency medic for people who couldn’t go to hospitals.”
I understood immediately.
Gunshots.
Stabbings.
Men who couldn’t explain their injuries.
My father had treated criminals.
“No.”
“Rachel—”
“My father was not part of your family.”
“I didn’t say he was.”
“You’re implying it.”
“He saved my father’s life twice.”
I looked away.
A childhood memory flashed across my mind.
My father coming home after midnight.
Blood on the cuff of his jacket.
My mother asking whether he was hurt.
He had laughed.
Said it belonged to someone else.
I had forgotten that.
Or maybe I had chosen to.
“What does any of this have to do with Noah?”
Vincent stepped closer.
“Thomas Foster was also involved in a private pediatric study.”
My head snapped up.
“What study?”
“We don’t know.”
“You’re telling me you have my financial history but not the answer to the only relevant question?”
His jaw clenched.
“Most of the records were destroyed.”
“By who?”
“I don’t know.”
He handed me another page.
It was a photocopy of a lab report from 1999.
Patient names had been redacted.
But the physician line was visible.
Samuel Halpern, M.D.
I knew the name.
Everyone in pediatric medicine did.
Dr. Samuel Halpern had been one of the country’s leading pediatric geneticists before he disappeared from public life after an ethics scandal.
“What did Halpern study?”
“Rare metabolic disorders. Pain episodes. Abdominal crises. Neurologic symptoms.”
My mind went to Noah pulling his knees toward his abdomen.
“How old was Noah when Isabella started looking into this?”
“Five months.”
“And what happened then?”
“The episodes had already started.”
“Did she take him to a geneticist?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Vincent didn’t answer.
My stomach dropped.
“Halpern?”
“He came out of retirement.”
I stared at him.
“Where is he?”
“Missing.”
Of course he was.
I closed my eyes.
“This is insane.”
“Yes.”
“And you want me to become involved?”
“I want you to keep my son alive.”
The bluntness of it cut through everything.
I looked at him.
“Is Noah dying?”
“I don’t know.”
His voice cracked.
Just once.
But I heard it.
“The doctors say his tests are normal. Halpern said the same thing right before he disappeared. Isabella kept saying there was something everyone was missing. Then she died.”
“How?”
Vincent’s face went still.
“Car accident.”
I waited.
“And you don’t believe it was an accident.”
“No.”
I thought of Elena calling him on the plane.
“What does her sister know?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
“Yes.”
I blinked.
That was not the answer I expected.
Vincent exhaled.
“Elena knows enough to be afraid. But she won’t talk to me.”
“Why?”
“She thinks I’m responsible for Isabella’s death.”
“Are you?”
His eyes flashed.
“No.”
The stairwell door opened.
A resident stepped in, saw us, muttered an apology, and immediately left.
I almost laughed.
Instead, I rubbed my forehead.
“What exactly are you asking me to do?”
“Come to New York for six months. Take over Noah’s medical care. Review every test. Every record. Every specialist.”
“And in exchange, you erase my debts.”
“Yes.”
“You really don’t understand how offensive that sounds.”
“I understand exactly how it sounds.”
“Then why offer it?”
“Because you’re underpaid, overworked, and supporting three people while pretending you aren’t drowning.”
I stared at him.
He had found every vulnerable part of my life and turned it into a spreadsheet.
“You don’t know me.”
“No,” he said. “But my wife apparently did.”
He reached into his jacket.
This time, he removed a small envelope.
My name was written across the front.
Rachel Foster.
The handwriting was not Isabella’s.
It was my mother’s.
I froze.
“Where did you get that?”
“From Isabella’s safe.”
I took the envelope.
The seal had never been broken.
Inside was a letter dated four months earlier.
Rachel,
If this reaches you, then something I prayed would stay buried has found you anyway.
Do not trust anyone just because they loved your father.
Do not trust anyone just because they say they are protecting a child.
And if the Castrovani family comes to you, ask one question before you agree to anything:
Who is Noah’s biological mother?
I read the last line again.
Then I looked at Vincent.
He had gone pale.
“You told me Isabella was his mother.”
“She was.”
“My mother says I need to ask who his biological mother is.”
Vincent stood perfectly still.
I felt the truth arriving before he said it.
“Noah is not Isabella’s biological son.”
My voice came out flat.
“Then whose son is he?”
Vincent looked at me.
May you like
And for the first time since he entered my hospital, I saw fear in his eyes.
“We don’t know.”
