Chapter 4 - The Clinic Search Turned Into a Test of Trust

Nadia was already moving before Priya finished speaking.

Luca caught her wrist.

“No.”

“My friend is there.”

“And the man holding her knows you will react exactly like this.”

Nadia jerked free. “Then give me a better idea.”

Luca looked at Matteo. “Cameras?”

“Clinic system is cloud-based. Elias installed it, according to the records.”

Nadia stared at him. “You can get in?”

Matteo’s expression said he had already asked someone who could.

A laptop came alive within minutes. Four security feeds appeared. Reception was empty. Hallway empty. Medication room showed Priya standing beside the cabinet with her hands visible. A man in a baseball cap stood behind her.

Nadia recognized him.

“He came in twice last month with fake back pain.”

Luca leaned closer. “Name?”

“Daniel Price. At least that’s what he wrote.”

Matteo swore softly.

“What?”

“Price worked private security for Bellwether.”

Nadia forced herself to think clinically rather than emotionally. Panic created mistakes. She had spent years teaching patients to breathe through pain while doing exactly that herself.

“He doesn’t know where the bullet is,” she said. “If he did, Priya wouldn’t still be standing.”

Luca nodded once.

“Can you speak to her?”

“They took her phone.”

“Call the clinic desk.”

The landline rang on the camera feed.

Price froze.

It rang again.

Priya looked toward it.

Price shook his head.

Third ring.

Nadia said, “He wants information, not noise. He’ll let her answer if he thinks it’s me.”

On the fifth ring, Price pointed.

Priya crossed to reception and picked up.

“Nadia?”

“I’m fine,” Nadia said clearly. “Listen carefully. The specimen is not at the clinic.”

Price appeared beside Priya and took the phone.

“Where is it?”

“Safe.”

“Not a location.”

“You don’t have anything I want.”

He looked at Priya.

Nadia’s throat tightened.

“You have ten seconds,” Price said.

Luca took the phone from her.

“Daniel.”

Price’s face changed on the feed.

“Mr. Vassallo.”

“If you hurt the woman, Victor will bury you before I have to.”

Price swallowed.

That reaction mattered.

Nadia saw Luca notice it too.

“You’re assuming I work for Victor.”

“No,” Luca said. “I’m telling you Victor has already decided you are disposable.”

Price glanced toward the rear exit.

Luca continued, voice calm. “Police are two minutes away. Leave through the alley and you may get the chance to ask your employer why your name was the first one handed to investigators after the shooting.”

The bluff worked because it was plausible.

Price dropped the phone and ran.

Matteo sent two men to follow, not intercept, and called an actual police contact he trusted. Priya locked herself in the staff restroom until uniforms arrived.

Nadia’s relief lasted less than a minute.

“You used Victor’s name as leverage,” she said.

Luca handed back her phone. “Price believed me.”

“Which means he fears Victor.”

“Or someone he thinks is Victor.”

Nadia opened the clinic camera archive on the laptop. Elias had installed the system. If he had been meeting Kroll, perhaps he had left something behind.

“What are you looking for?” Matteo asked.

“Anything my brother touched.”

They searched access logs and found an administrator account created under a meaningless string: ER-0714.

Nadia recognized the date. July 14 was their mother’s birthday.

The account had been used six months ago—the same week as the photograph.

Inside a hidden directory were encrypted files.

Matteo’s technician could not open them immediately, but one filename was plain text.

Nadia read it twice.

VASSALLO_MEDICAL_CHAIN.txt

Luca’s face lost all color unrelated to his wound.

“What medical chain?” Nadia asked.

He did not answer.

For the first time since meeting him, he looked afraid of something other than death.

Finally he said, “My father died in a hospital four years ago.”

Nadia waited.

Luca’s jaw tightened.

“We were told it was cardiac arrest.”

After Priya was safe, Nadia called her again from a secure phone. Priya was furious enough to sound normal, which helped.

“If this is because of one of your mysterious terrible decisions,” Priya said, “I am charging you for the broken cabinet.”

“I’ll pay for the cabinet.”

“And the door.”

“What happened to the door?”

“Long story.”

Nadia closed her eyes, grateful for the ordinary irritation in her friend’s voice.

When the call ended, Luca said, “She is brave.”

“She is going to murder me when this is over.”

“That may also be brave.”

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The humor lasted only seconds. On the screen, the newly recovered filename remained visible. VASSALLO_MEDICAL_CHAIN. The words changed the scale of everything. Elias had not stumbled into a street-level dispute or a bad debt. He had been tracing something that reached backward years, into the death of a man powerful enough to leave enemies long after burial.

Nadia realized that finding Elias might require solving the crime that made him disappear.