Part 2
Four Days After the Fire

Vincent held the pH๏τograph until the edges bent. Arya, in the coat she had worn to the hospital the week of the shooting. Dominic, his brother, a hand half-lifted as if caught between a wave and a warning. Dr. Leonard Vale, the surgeon who had stood at the foot of the bed and called meaningful recovery nearly nonexistent. And Luca Serrano, alive in a sodium-vapor glare, collar up, standing close enough to Dominic to share the frame.

The police report said Serrano had fired the round that broke T12 and died three days later in a warehouse fire, before the cuffs. Dominic had sat in the hospital chair, grip тιԍнт on Vincent’s shoulder, and said it was finished. Nobody could hurt him now.

The timestamp in the corner read 11:47 p.m. Four days after that fire.

Tessa stood at the side of the bed, arms folded, watching his face more than the picture. “Vincent?”

It was the first time she had used his name. He barely heard it.

“When?”

“Four days after you were sH๏τ. My sister works records. The hospital pulled archived cameras that week because medication walked off a restricted floor. This frame was kept with that file. She wasn’t looking for you. She knew the name Corvino and she knew I was in this house.”

He looked again. Not a funeral. Not a suspect sketch. Four people who should never have shared a sidewalk, on the pavement outside the building where he had been unconscious, with a man already declared ash.

“Dominic told me Serrano was ᴅᴇᴀᴅ.”

“Then Dominic lied,” Tessa said. “Or the fire lied. Vale is in it too. That’s the same doctor who signed the therapy restrictions Arya’s been quoting at the staff.”

The document from the morning was still on the nightstand. Signature. A clause about sustained incapacity. A cleaner path to the harbor enтιтy if the principal remained unable to appear. Vincent set the pH๏τograph on top of it. Arya’s mouth in the picture was not grieving. It was arranging.

“She canceled the session because a walking man can ask who took this,” he said.

“Yes.”

Downstairs, a car door shut. Dominic’s voice, easy, calling up that he had the papers. Tessa’s eyes went to the door, then back.

“Your therapist is still coming at three,” she said. “If you want him to. If you want them to think you’re done, I can send him away and we keep this between us until you decide who walks into this room.”

Vincent listened to his brother’s shoes on the stair. The old instinct moved through him, cold and useful. He slid the pH๏τograph under the blanket, against the leg that could not feel it.

“Let him come up,” he said. “You stay. If he asks what you’re doing, you’re elevating a foot. And Tessa—”

She waited.

“If Serrano is breathing, the bullet was never the end of it. It was the opening.” He met her eyes. “Don’t leave this house tonight.”