Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Saint Jude’s
The wind outside the glass tower wailed against the reinforced panes, driving needles of sleet against the dark night. Inside the penthouse office, the temperature felt subzero.
Richard Vance stood frozen in the doorway, his leather briefcase hanging limp at his side. Eleanor Whitmore did not flinch, but her manicured knuckles had gone bloodless where she gripped her leather handbag.
"Ethan, you are acting like a lunatic," Eleanor said, her voice dropping into an icy, modulated whisper designed to command boardrooms. "Dragging a janitor’s child into a hospital on Christmas Eve for an illegal paternity test? Do you have any idea what the press will do to our stock tomorrow morning if this leaks?"
"I don't give a damn about the stock," Ethan said without blinking. He didn't turn around to face her; his focus remained fixed on Hannah Mercer, whose breath came in ragged, shallow gasps. "Richard. Call Dr. Harrison at Knox Memorial. Now."
Richard swallowed hard, his eyes darting frantically to Eleanor for permission. "Ethan, Dr. Harrison is on holiday leave. The private diagnostics wing is locked down until the twenty-sixth—"
"Then wake him up," Ethan snapped. "Tell him the Whitmore Foundation endowment for his research wing depends entirely on whether he picks up his phone in the next sixty seconds."
Richard pulled out his phone, his hands noticeably unsteady. Eleanor made no move to stop him this time; she simply stared at her son with cold, calculating fury.
"Hannah," Ethan said, his voice dropping into a gentle register that sounded completely foreign coming from the man whose portrait hung above the boardroom table. "Come with me. My private elevator goes straight to the underground garage. We won’t go through the lobby."
Hannah clutched Ellie against her chest. The baby’s little fingers were still wrapped tightly around the frayed velvet ear of the rabbit. "Mr. Whitmore... what if this is a mistake? What if she’s just... an orphan someone gave up? What happens to me? What happens to my job?"
"Nobody is firing you," Ethan said firmly. "Nobody is touching you or that little girl. You have my word. But if there is even a one-percent chance that my daughter did not die four years ago... I have to know. And so do you."
Hannah looked down at Ellie. She thought of the cold, drafty apartment on Magnolia Avenue. She thought of the overdue rent notice burning a hole in her pocket. She thought of the mysterious nurse at the shuttered St. Jude Care Pavilion ten months ago—a middle-aged woman named Sarah who had handed Ellie over with trembling hands, a forged birth certificate, and a single, desperate warning: Take her out of Knox County if you can. Love her. Never let anyone run her blood.
Hannah had assumed the warning was about an abusive biological father or an unpaid medical debt. She had never dreamed the bloodline in question carried one of the greatest fortunes in the American South.
"Alright," Hannah whispered. "We go. But she stays in my arms."
"Every second," Ethan promised.
As they moved toward the private elevator behind his desk, Eleanor stepped directly into Ethan's path. The smell of her expensive French perfume was thick, almost suffocating.
"You are opening a door you cannot close, Ethan," Eleanor warned, her voice barely audible over the hum of the HVAC system. "Some graves are dug for a reason. Leave the past where it belongs."
Ethan stopped inches from his mother. For four years, he had deferred to her grief, believing they shared the same shattered heart. But looking into her eyes now, he saw no grief. He saw only preservation. Protection of a facade.
"If you dug that grave, Mother," Ethan whispered back, "you’d better pray this child isn't mine."
He keyed the private elevator. The stainless-steel doors slid open, and Hannah stepped inside with the squeaking stroller. Ethan followed, the doors sealing shut before Eleanor could say another word.
Down in the concrete basement, Ethan’s armored black SUV sat waiting under the amber fluorescent lights. Within three minutes, they were cutting through the blizzard, the wipers fighting a losing battle against the mounting slush.
Hannah sat in the backseat, strapping Ellie securely into the secondhand car seat Ethan had helped hoist into the leather interior. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking. "Mr. Whitmore... your mother. She looked terrified."
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"My mother doesn't get terrified," Ethan said, his eyes scanning the rearview mirror as they turned onto Cumberland Avenue. "She gets dangerous. That means whatever is buried at St. Jude, it leads straight back to her."
Behind them, two blocks back through the swirling snow, the high beams of a black sedan clicked on, falling into step with their tracks.