“Let my daughter go.”
“She is perfectly safe.”
“Liar.”
He smiled.
“Noah said the same thing.”
My blood turned to ice.
“You killed him.”
“Noah entered a world he did not understand.”
“You burned him alive.”
Mikhail’s expression did not change.
“He refused to surrender the evidence.”
I looked at Lila.
“And now you think she has it.”
“I know she had it.”
“The agents took the card.”
“Yes. An insignificant copy.”
My eyes narrowed.
Mikhail tapped his cane against the floor.
“Noah was clever. He knew the memory card could be found. So he created a second archive.”
“Where?”
Mikhail looked at Lila’s hearing device.
My breath stopped.
“The device was replaced after Noah’s death,” I said.
“By a charity clinic funded through one of his accounts.”
I remembered the appointment.
A kind technician.
A free upgraded device.
A donor who wished to remain anonymous.
Noah had arranged it before he died.
Mikhail walked toward the glass.
“The archive inside that hearing device contains account numbers, judges, senators, police chiefs, and businessmen who purchased access to my routes.”
“You will never get it.”
He smiled.
“I already have.”
A nurse stood near Lila’s bed holding the pink hearing device.
Rage tore through me.
“Give it back!”
Mikhail ignored me.
A surgeon entered the operating room.
“Mr. Volkov, the donor’s cardiac function is unstable. If we proceed now, the organ may not survive.”
Mikhail looked at Damian.
“Then stabilize him.”
“The poisoning caused inflammation.”
“Use the brother if necessary.”
Gabriel lifted his head.
His voice was hoarse.
“You won’t survive either heart.”
Mikhail turned.
“Genetic compatibility says otherwise.”
“No. The disease is not hereditary.”
Mikhail’s cane stopped.
Gabriel smiled despite the blood on his lip.
“That was the secret Noah found.”
Mikhail’s eyes sharpened.
“What are you talking about?”
“Your doctors lied to you thirty years ago.”
Damian began to wake.
His eyelids fluttered.
Gabriel continued.
“You do not have inherited cardiomyopathy. You have chronic heavy-metal poisoning.”
Mikhail’s face changed for the first time.
“Impossible.”
“Your own council poisoned you for decades. Slowly. Just as you poisoned Damian.”
Damian opened his eyes.
He saw his father.
Every monitor around him began to race.
Mikhail gripped his cane.
“Prepare the operation.”
The surgeon hesitated.
“Sir—”
“Now!”
Then Lila woke.
She looked around, frightened.
I signed desperately through the glass.
Stay calm.
She saw the device in the nurse’s hand.
Then she noticed Damian.
His chest rose unevenly.
She slipped from beneath the blanket.
The nurse grabbed her arm.
Lila bit her hand.
The woman cried out.
My daughter ran.
Barefoot and silent, she darted beneath the equipment and crawled under Damian’s operating table.
Mikhail shouted.
“Get her!”
Lila reached the central power cord.
She had seen me unplug appliances that way a hundred times.
She pulled.
The surgical lights went black.
The locks released.
Backup alarms screamed.
Gabriel tore one hand free from his loosened restraint. Viktor smashed a chair against the glass chamber. Damian rolled from the operating table, dragging tubes from his arms.
I kicked the nurse as she rushed past and grabbed Lila.
