Chapter 16 #2
"And here I thought you might simply ignore it. Hide away in your father's townhouse until this all blows over." A hint of amusement colored his tone. "I'm pleased to see you're more practical than that."
"What do you want?"
"The same thing I've wanted from the beginning. A conversation. An opportunity to resolve this situation without any further... unpleasantries."
I closed my eyes. Thought about Brian's bruised face. About the crew's families living in fear. About how many more people would suffer if I didn't find a way to make this stop.
"Bellini's," I said. "Tonight. What time?"
"Midnight. The restaurant will be closed, but arrangements have been made." A pause. "And Dr. Rothwell? Do come alone. I'd hate for this conversation to be complicated by unnecessary parties."
The line went dead.
I sat in the dark for a long time after, phone still in my hand, screen dark.
Midnight. Five hours away. Enough time to talk myself out of this. Enough time to call my father. Brian. The police.
Enough time to imagine what would happen if I did nothing. If I stayed hidden while the threats escalated, while Kevin grew more desperate, while everyone I cared about became a target.
I couldn't let that happen. I wouldn't let that happen.
At eleven-thirty, I slipped out of my room and headed downstairs.
The hallway was dark. My parents had gone to bed hours ago—my father to his study first, then the master suite. My mother followed with unsteady steps. The house had the heavy silence of a place where everyone was asleep, where nothing unexpected ever happened.
I made it to the front door before a voice stopped me.
"Ms. Rothwell."
I turned. Larsen Cole, the bodyguard my father had hired for me, stood in the shadows by the staircase. He was ex-military. Compact, alert, with the coiled stillness of a man who'd seen combat and never fully left it behind.
"It's nearly midnight," he said.
"I need to go out."
"We were given direct orders to keep you at home." His voice was polite but firm—the tone of a man who'd spent decades protecting people who didn't always want to be protected.
"No." I kept my voice steady. "You were given orders to keep me safe. Not keep me imprisoned."
Larsen was quiet for a moment. Assessing. I could see him weighing options, calculating risks.
"If you want to keep me safe," I continued, "then take me where I need to go and wait outside." I met his eyes. "I'll either sneak out a window and go alone, or you can come with me and make sure I'm protected. Your choice."
A long pause. Then Larsen sighed—the sigh of a man who recognized a losing battle when he saw one.
"The car will be ready in five minutes."
Bellini's was in Long Island City—a small Italian place that had been there for forty years, serving the same families who'd been coming for generations.
Old Queens money. Not Manhattan flash.
At midnight, the street was quiet. Too empty. The restaurant's windows glowed with warm light, but I couldn't see any movement inside.
One car was parked out front. Black. Immaculate. Richard Lang's.
Larsen pulled the sedan to the curb across the street. I could feel his tension from the back seat—the tense readiness of a man who didn't like anything about this situation.
"I'm going in alone," I said. "Stay here."
"Ms. Rothwell—"
"If I'm not out in thirty minutes, or if you hear anything that sounds wrong, come in." I met his eyes in the rearview mirror. "But I need to do this myself."
He didn't like it. That much was clear in every line of his body. But he nodded once.
"Thirty minutes."
I stepped out of the car. The night air hit me like a slap. Cold. Sharp. Real.
For a moment, I stood on the sidewalk, keys to my old life in one pocket, phone with Brian's unanswered calls in the other.
Then I crossed the street.
The night air was cold against my face, sharp with the smell of exhaust and cold metal. My heels clicked against the sidewalk as I crossed the street, each step carrying me closer to whatever waited inside.
The door was unlocked.
I pushed it open and stepped into soft lighting and the smell of garlic and wine. The restaurant was empty—chairs pushed in neatly, white tablecloths gleaming, everything arranged with care for a dinner service that wouldn't come.
But something was wrong.
The silence was too complete. No kitchen sounds, no distant hum of refrigeration. And underneath the smell of food—
Chemical. Sweet. Wrong.
My medical training recognized it before my conscious mind caught up. Sevoflurane. An anesthetic gas. The kind used in operating rooms to put patients under before surgery.
It shouldn't be anywhere near a closed restaurant at midnight.
I turned to run.
The door clicked shut behind me. When I spun around, it wasn't Richard Lang standing there.
Kevin.
The name hit before the recognition did.
He looked nothing like the entitled young man who'd sprawled on my ER gurney months ago. Hollow-eyed, unshaven, his expensive clothes wrinkled and stained. But what froze me was the gas mask covering the lower half of his face—military-grade, the kind that filtered out everything.
Including whatever was already making my head swim.
"Dr. Rothwell." His voice was muffled through the mask, but I could hear the fractured edge underneath. The sound of a man who'd stopped sleeping days ago, who'd been running on chemicals and desperation ever since. "So glad you could make it."
"Kevin." I forced my voice to stay calm even as the edges of my vision started to blur. "Where's your father?"
He laughed. High and brittle, nothing like the arrogant confidence I remembered. "My father? He's busy giving interviews. Saving his precious career." He took a step closer, and I stumbled back into a table. "He doesn't have time for you anymore. You're someone else's problem now."
The gas was working faster than I'd calculated. Sevoflurane was potent—I'd seen it drop patients in minutes under controlled conditions. In a closed space like this, with no idea how long it had been building...
"I just want to talk," Kevin continued, almost conversationally. "That's all. Have a civilized conversation about how you destroyed my life."
"Kevin, listen to me—" My words were starting to slur. I gripped the edge of the table, fighting to stay upright. "Whatever you've done, whatever you're planning—this will only make things worse."
"Worse?" The word came out like a bark. "How could it possibly get worse?
I'm going to prison. My father's going to prison.
Everything we built—gone." He was pacing now, quick and jerky, the movements of a man holding himself together with wire and spite.
"Because you couldn't keep your mouth shut about something I said when I was out of my mind. "
"You killed a kid."
I don't know why I said it. The gas was making it hard to think, hard to filter what came out of my mouth. But the words landed like stones, and Kevin's whole body went rigid.
"It was an ACCIDENT." The scream echoed off the restaurant's walls. "I didn't see him! I didn't mean to—"
He stopped. The mask made it impossible to read his expression, but I could see his hands shaking—the tremor of someone pushed far past their breaking point.
"You're the only one who heard," he said, and his voice had dropped to something almost calm. "The only witness. And once you're gone..."
My knees buckled. I caught myself on a chair, but my arms felt like water. The room was spinning now, the lights bleeding into each other, Kevin's masked face swimming in and out of focus.
"The security guard outside," I managed. "He'll come in. He'll—"
"Already handled."
Gunshots. Muffled but unmistakable. The crack of violence.
Larsen.
"You should have stayed hidden." Kevin's voice had gone flat. Rehearsed. Like he'd practiced this. "You should have let it go."
I tried to respond, but my mouth wouldn't form words anymore. The world was tilting sideways, the floor rushing up to meet me, and the last thing I saw before the darkness took me was Kevin's eyes empty in a way I'd only seen once before. In the morgue.
Then nothing.