Chapter 12 Massimo
MASSIMO
The coroner arrived in the afternoon. I had no idea who had discovered Vargas’s body, but the director and his goons had left immediately in heavy-duty armed cars.
Pavol and Benedict suspended the usual therapy schedule, so patients were free to wander around in the rec room for the rest of the day.
I grabbed a coffee and sat at a table in the staff kitchen, staring out at the frozen ground. Yesterday had been unexpected, and now my schedule was fucked.
Of course, I could have just refused and tied up the loose end that was Katarina Dmitrova, but honestly, there was nothing I’d like to do less.
Our time together earlier in Blackwood’s office returned to me with force, the sight of Katarina’s cheeks flushing as she came, the feel of her dragging her pussy against my hard-on .
. . I’d been erect all fucking day even though she’d made me come in my pants.
She was completely unexpected, and I was hooked.
Getting her out of my head was a challenge, and saying no to her proposal hadn’t been a real option.
I always built flexibility into my schedule.
You couldn’t really promise that someone would be dead by a certain date, so I could adjust. Killing Benedict and Pavol would be a pleasure, honestly, I just couldn’t do it too soon.
It would raise suspicion. Clearly they had smoothed Vargas’s death over and had it ruled a suicide, so as not to bring the authorities into Hallow Hall.
It wouldn’t end well for them if detectives started to question the therapy that was done here, the pregnant patients.
A lot of things didn’t add up in this hellhole, and Pavol and Benedict were hiding things.
A lot of things. The only worry on the horizon was my cover story.
If Centrium Group got too involved, it was only a matter of time until someone worked out that I wasn’t the man they’d sent here for training.
Or worse, Christoph’s body would be identified.
I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.
I took my phone out of my robes, fighting a shudder. The fucking material of the cassock was hot and scratchy.
I checked my emails, waiting to see if my hacker friend had made any progress investigating the people who might have worked with Fabio Carrozzo in the past. He’d said that the hospital burned down.
Surely that was the kind of thing that made local news.
I was sure the hospital had been in the South.
However, the whole thing was so clinically scrubbed, even from legal record, I had no doubt that officials had been involved in the cover-up.
The question was why. My old Army commander’s father-in-law, Prosecutor Bellisario, had been the kind of official who’d been up for sale for the right price.
He could have helped to remove every trace of a catastrophic fire at a hospital from local record.
I wished I could ask him directly, but unfortunately, it wasn’t the sort of thing he’d remember since it was so long ago, and Bellisario had bigger problems these days.
He was imprisoned and likely never to see the light of day.
No new emails. I tucked my phone away, questioning the odd sense of relief in my chest at finding out I was no further ahead. Making progress on my mother’s past would mean leaving here to go and deal with the people involved.
It would mean leaving Katarina . . . But I wouldn’t leave her here while she owed me. Where I went, she went. She hadn’t quite realized that when she was negotiating her terms yesterday.
She had given herself to me . . . and not once mentioned a time limit. And that worked well with my plan to keep her.
I caught myself smiling in my faint reflection in the window.
That oversight was going to cost her dearly. She had given me license to take whatever I wanted from her, for however long I wanted to.
Finishing my coffee, I stood and tapped my pocket to check for the roll of tape and painkillers I’d taken from the infirmary.
“Oh, you’re here, Father Lucciano.” Dr. Blackwood stood in the doorway watching me.
He was another unsettling fucker, but Katarina didn’t seem to lump him into the same category as Pavol and Benedict.
“Just leaving, actually.” I stepped away from the table. “I take it everything is wrapped up with Father Vargas, may he rest in peace.”
Dr. Blackwood nodded absently. “Yes, it’s a shock, honestly. Suicide by a man of the cloth is a sobering thing. How did he seem to you last night?”
Blackwood poured himself a coffee and collapsed into a chair by the window.
“I didn’t see him, I’m afraid. I was busy all day.”
Blackwood scrubbed a hand over his face. “I wonder what deep, dark secrets a man like Vargas had that could drive him to take his own life.”
“Perhaps something went wrong with the inspection. The director of the board was here, I heard. Maybe Vargas wasn’t performing well as the head of this business.”
Blackwood looked surprised by my words. “Business? We help people here.”
I studied him for a long moment, holding his gaze silently until he fidgeted.
“Right, so you do. Still, it’s not funded by the Church and is run by a board of directors for profit. That describes a business to me.”
Blackwood shrugged. “I suppose. I don’t know your background, but in case you don’t know, in medicine, trying to make a difference, trying to help people without worrying about bureaucracy and funding and insurance, is next to impossible.
Hallow Hall is the only place I’ve worked where the objective is just about helping people. ”
The man was either very calculating or painfully naive. I didn’t have time for either.
“Hmm, yes, indeed. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go and make sure the patients don’t need anything. They must be unsettled by all of this.”
Blackwood nodded. “Good idea. In times like this, people need guidance. Help them.” He trailed off, his eyes fixed on mine.
Did he know something? There was a look in his eyes that held something I couldn’t quite read. Dr. Blackwood was a man to keep an eye on, clearly.
“Yes, of course. That’s why I’m here, to help people . . . just like you.”
I found Katarina in the office. She volunteered her time there, and it seemed to be encouraged, seeing as she was one of the more lucid patients. There were plenty of younger patients who weren’t interested in volunteering, and then those who wouldn’t be capable.
I watched as she sat at a desk and stared down at some files in front of her.
She traced her finger along lines of text on a spreadsheet and then jotted down something on a notepad.
A bruise had bloomed on the back of her hand from last night.
I didn’t like the way the sign of injury appeared against her skin.
An orderly hung over the desk watching her.
The same orderly I’d seen with her before.
His expression showed he was fond, overly fond.
I didn’t like that one bit.
“Miss Dmitrova,” I said from the other end of the desk.
Katarina glanced up and jolted so hard her teeth clicked shut, and she winced. The orderly looked between us.
“Father Lucciano,” Katarina said, her eyes dancing away from mine. She bit her lip, right over the small cut my teeth had ripped last night.
“Ah, Father. You are the new holy spirit around here. Nice to meet you. I’m Alonso.” The orderly approached, sticking his hand out to shake mine.
It wavered in the air until he realized I wasn’t going to shake it. He dropped it to his side.
“Alonso, aren’t we keeping you from something?”
Alonso faltered and then shrugged. “I’m observing patient Dmitrova. It’s all part of the job.” He grinned and wiggled his eyebrows at Katarina.
She smiled at him, a small, trusting smile. No one had ever smiled at me that way.
“Well, I’m here now, so you can move along,” I found myself saying.
Alonso shrugged. “I’m on a break, and there’s no one else I’d rather hang out with here at Hallow. Me and Katarina, we’re tight. Maybe she’ll tell you in therapy.” He chuckled at his own words and peeked back at Katarina.
“You should go,” Katarina said, still maintaining eye contact with me but speaking to Alonso. She was growing more and more nervous as my expression darkened.
“What? Really? But I didn’t even have a chance to tell you how my date with Lael went the other night,” Alonso said, his tone playful.
Katarina’s eyebrows rose, and she seemed wistful for a second. “Was the dinner place good? I’m so jealous.”
“I’ll take you when you get out,” Alonso promised, stretching his goodbye to the point where I started to imagine stapling his hand to the desk to make him understand that he wasn’t wanted.
Alonso ambled off, pissing me off with his slow, deliberate steps. The fucker was going to pay for that.
Katarina sighed loudly. “Must be nice.”
“To date Alonso?”
“To date anyone . . . to have a girlfriend, or a boyfriend—”
“He doesn’t have a girlfriend,” I interrupted.
She frowned at me. “What? Of course he does. He’s always coming and talking to me about her.”
I rolled my shoulders to ease my tight neck. The fucking wooden pallet I was sleeping on was doing a number on my neck, and now it was wound tight from interacting with a territorial male.
Alonso didn’t understand yet—Katarina was no longer available to flirt with. She was spoken for.
“There is no girlfriend. She’s an excuse to come and talk to you. And there I remember you telling me that you weren’t naive, and yet here we are.”
She shook her head. “You’re crazy.”
“That’s my line,” I muttered, and shook off my annoyance at finding that fucker flirting with my little stray, someone so far out of his league it was laughable.
Katarina rolled her eyes and returned her attention to the paper she was writing on.
“You’re industrious this morning,” I murmured, leaning over the desk.
Putting a hand to her side, she made a soft noise of discomfort.
“Ribs giving you trouble?”