Chapter 2 – THE BOY IN THE WAITING ROOM

Seattle Memorial Hospital was quiet at two in the morning.

The rain lashed against the large glass windows.

Sebastian walked through the automatic sliding doors, his dark wool coat dripping water onto the linoleum.

I walked two steps behind him.

He had insisted I come.

“You have a good memory, Olivia,” he had told me in the car. “And Camille doesn’t notice people like you and Maggie. You see the things she misses.”

I needed this job to pay for my mother’s dialysis.

If helping a mafia boss find his sister secured my employment, I would follow him into a burning building.

We reached the pediatric wing on the fourth floor.

The receptionist, a tired-looking woman in scrubs, glanced up.

She saw Sebastian’s suit. The tattoos on his knuckles. The way he commanded the space.

She immediately sat up straighter.

“I’m looking for Leo Blackwood,” Sebastian said.

The nurse typed on her keyboard.

Her brow furrowed.

“I’m sorry, sir. We don’t have a Leo Blackwood registered.”

Sebastian’s expression darkened.

“Check Elizabeth Sterling.”

The nurse typed again.

She nodded. “Ah. Leo Sterling. He was admitted yesterday afternoon for severe asthma. Room 412.”

Sebastian didn’t wait for directions.

He strode down the sterile white hallway.

My heart hammered against my ribs.

Sterling.

Camille had given Anna’s son her own last name.

Room 412 was dark.

The door was slightly ajar.

Sebastian pushed it open.

A small boy, no older than five, was asleep in the hospital bed.

An oxygen tube rested under his nose.

He clutched a worn, stuffed bear.

He looked exactly like the child in the photograph.

He had Sebastian’s dark hair.

But the chair next to the bed was empty.

Anna wasn’t there.

Sebastian stepped into the room.

He stared at his nephew.

For the first time since I met him, the terrifying Sebastian Blackwood looked entirely helpless.

He reached out, his tattooed hand trembling, and gently adjusted the blanket over the boy’s shoulders.

Then, a voice came from the shadows near the window.

“Step away from my son.”

We both froze.

A woman stepped into the dim light.

She was wearing a faded denim jacket.

Her dark hair was tied back in a messy knot.

Her brown eyes were wide, terrified, and defensive.

She was holding a heavy metal IV pole like a weapon.

It was the woman from the photograph.

Anna.

Sebastian slowly turned around.

He looked at her face.

The eyes. The jawline.

It was a mirror image of his late mother.

“Anna,” he whispered.

She tightened her grip on the metal pole.

“Don’t call me that,” she said, her voice shaking. “Camille said you would come. She said you would try to take him.”

Sebastian stepped forward. “Anna, it’s me. Sebastian.”

“Stop!” she cried softly, glancing at the sleeping boy. “Camille warned me about you. She said you were dangerous. She said you killed my father.”

Sebastian stopped dead.

The air left his lungs.

“What did you just say?”

“She told me who you are,” Anna whispered, tears streaming down her face. “The Blackwood crime family. She said if I ever tried to contact you, you’d take Leo away just like you took my parents.”

I watched the realization hit Sebastian.

Camille hadn’t just hidden Anna.

She had brainwashed her.

She had made Anna believe her own brother was a monster.

Before Sebastian could explain, the hospital room door slammed open.

Three men in dark suits stepped inside.

They weren’t hospital security.

And they weren’t Sebastian’s men.

The man in the front smiled.

He pulled a silenced pistol from his jacket.

“Camille sends her regards, Mr. Blackwood.”

Share