Chapter 2 - TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF MY DAUGHTER
Dorian turned slowly toward the driver.
“What did she just say?”
The woman swallowed.
“I don’t know anything about that.”
Her name badge read DARLENE PIKE.
Dorian memorized it.
He had built his career around the ability to remember details other people wished he would forget.
“Who told my daughter she would be sent somewhere I couldn’t find her?”
“I said I don’t know.”
Ren tightened her fingers around his lapel.
“Daddy.”
The fear in her voice stopped him from moving toward Darlene.
Dorian looked down.
Ren’s face had gone gray.
He immediately abandoned the confrontation.
His instincts had always told him to pursue threats until they broke. But Ren did not need a businessman.
She needed her father.
He carried her to the car.
Darlene called after him.
“You can’t just take her! The route has procedures.”
Dorian opened the passenger door.
Then he looked over his shoulder.
“If you come within ten feet of my daughter again, the procedures you should concern yourself with are the ones your attorney will explain to you.”
The driver said nothing.
Dorian settled Ren carefully into the rear seat because it allowed her leg to remain extended.
Her brace remained in the street.
He returned for it.
The moment he picked it up, something felt wrong.
The brace had been custom-built fourteen months earlier through a pediatric orthopedic clinic Dorian’s office had selected. He remembered approving the invoice because his chief of staff, Gideon Thorne, had placed it among a stack of documents between two acquisition contracts.
Dorian had signed without asking questions.
The brace in his hands now had strips of cheap silver tape around one hinge.
A screw near the ankle joint had been replaced with something that did not match the original hardware.
The inner padding was compressed and torn.
Dorian stared at it.
This was not neglect from one bad afternoon.
It had been deteriorating for months.
He carried it back to the car.
Ren looked away when she saw him examining it.
“Sweetheart, when did this break?”
“It isn’t broken.”
“It is.”
“Mrs. Pike says it still works.”
“Who repaired it?”
Ren hesitated.
“Mr. Nolan.”
“Who is Mr. Nolan?”
“He comes to school sometimes.”
Dorian put the brace beside her.
“Does he work at your school?”
“I think he works for you.”
That sentence landed differently.
Dorian took out his phone.
His assistant, Camille Ortega, had called him nineteen times.
He returned the call.
She answered immediately.
“Mr. Ashcroft, the investors are waiting and Mr. Thorne says—”
“Cancel everything.”
Silence.
“Everything?”
“For the rest of the day.”
“The Vale Meridian closing is in forty minutes.”
“I said cancel it.”
Camille knew him well enough not to argue twice.
Dorian continued.
“I need the personnel file for anyone in Ashcroft Holdings named Nolan who has had contact with the Bellweather Academy transportation program.”
There was a pause.
“May I ask why?”
“No.”
Another pause.
Then Camille’s tone changed.
“All right.”
“And get me the full contract between Bellweather Academy and whatever transportation company operates shuttle twenty-seven.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dorian looked at his daughter.
“And Camille?”
“Yes?”
“Find a pediatric emergency department with orthopedic neurology support.”
This time the silence was different.
“Is Ren hurt?”
Dorian closed his eyes for half a second.
“Yes.”
Camille did not ask another question.
Twenty-five minutes later, Dorian carried Ren through a private entrance at Hawthorne Children’s Hospital.
He could have requested a private suite immediately.
He could have called trustees.
He could have turned the hospital into a display of influence.
Instead, he sat beside his daughter while a nurse cleaned the blood from her knee.
Ren stared at the floor.
Dr. Lena Shah arrived with a physical medicine specialist and examined the brace.
Her expression hardened.
“Who has been maintaining this?”
“That’s what I’m trying to determine.”
Dr. Shah ran her thumb along the altered hinge.
“This hardware is not approved for this model.”
Dorian’s jaw tightened.
“Is it dangerous?”
“It can be. Particularly for a child with asymmetric weakness. If the joint catches, the brace can force the leg into an unnatural position.”
Ren whispered, “It hurts when I go downstairs.”
Both adults looked at her.
Dr. Shah crouched.
“How long has it hurt?”
Ren glanced at Dorian before answering.
“A while.”
“How long is a while?”
“I don’t know.”
“Since summer?”
Ren nodded.
It was October.
Dorian felt something cold open inside his chest.
Dr. Shah continued the examination.
“Ren, are you still going to physical therapy three afternoons a week?”
Ren’s eyes lowered.
“No.”
Dorian turned sharply.
“Yes, she is.”
The doctor looked at him.
“No, Daddy.”
He stared at his daughter.
“What do you mean?”
“They stopped it.”
“When?”
“Before school started.”
“Who stopped it?”
Ren picked at the edge of the hospital blanket.
“Miss Voss said I wasn’t improving enough.”
Dorian knew the name.
Dr. Lenora Voss was Bellweather Academy’s director of student development.
He had met her once at a fundraiser.
She had shaken his hand under a chandelier and told him Bellweather treated every child as an individual.
Dorian had donated half a million dollars that evening.
He suddenly wanted that memory erased from his mind.
“Ren,” he said carefully, “your therapy clinic sends me invoices every month.”
“I don’t go there anymore.”
Dorian looked at Dr. Shah.
Her expression told him what his own face probably showed.
“How much function has she lost?”
The physician did not answer immediately.
“We need proper testing. I don’t want to frighten either of you prematurely.”
“Don’t protect me.”
“I’m protecting her.”
That shut him up.
Ren looked between them.
“Am I in trouble?”
Dorian turned to her.
“No.”
“Because of the money?”
“What money?”
“The therapy money.”
His breathing changed.
Ren’s eyes filled.
“They said it costs a lot when I don’t get better.”
Dorian leaned forward.
“Who said that?”
“Miss Voss.”
A sound escaped him that was not quite a laugh.
He had paid twelve thousand dollars for a single dinner table at Bellweather’s annual fundraising gala.
His daughter believed physical therapy was too expensive.
Dorian knelt beside the bed.
“Ren, listen to me. There is no treatment you need that I cannot afford.”
“That’s not what they said.”
“I don’t care what they said.”
He saw her flinch again and immediately softened his voice.
“I’m sorry.”
Ren studied him uncertainly.
Dorian held out his hand.
She stared at it.
Then placed her small fingers in his.
He almost lost his composure.
“You are never in trouble for needing help,” he said.
Ren’s mouth trembled.
“Even if I don’t get better?”
“Especially then.”
Dr. Shah looked away, giving them a small measure of privacy.
An hour later, imaging showed no fracture from the fall. Ren had bruising, abrasions, and inflammation caused partly by the defective brace. The larger concern was muscle loss.
Four months without consistent therapy had mattered.
Dorian sat beside her while she ate half a cup of vanilla pudding.
He realized he could not remember the last meal they had eaten alone together.
That realization joined a growing pile of things he hated about himself.
His phone vibrated.
CAMILLE.
He stepped no farther than the doorway.
“What do you have?”
“Bellweather contracts with Northstar Student Transit.”
“I know.”
“There’s something else. The transportation liaison from Ashcroft Holdings is Nolan Price.”
Dorian looked at Ren.
“What department?”
Camille hesitated.
“Executive risk management.”
Dorian went still.
Risk management reported to Gideon Thorne.
His chief of staff.
His most trusted employee.
“How long has Nolan been assigned?”
“Eleven months.”
“Who authorized it?”
“I’m looking at the document.”
“Who?”
“Your electronic signature is on it.”
Dorian’s fingers tightened around the phone.
“I never signed it.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
Dorian lowered his voice.
“Do not tell Gideon what happened.”
There was a pause.
“Mr. Thorne has already asked where you are.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That you canceled for a family emergency.”
“Nothing else.”
“Understood.”
Dorian ended the call.
When he returned to the room, a nurse was holding a folded piece of paper.
“Mr. Ashcroft?”
“Yes?”
“We found this tucked into the lining of Ren’s backpack while looking for her insurance information.”
Ren’s face changed.
She stopped eating.
“Don’t.”
Dorian looked at her.
The nurse handed him the paper.
On the outside, written in uneven blue pencil, were seven words.
FOR DADDY IF I GET HURT AGAIN.
Dorian could not breathe for several seconds.
Again.
Not if she got hurt.
If she got hurt again.
He sat beside her.
“Ren.”
Tears slid silently down her cheeks.
“I wasn’t supposed to keep it.”
“What is it?”
She shook her head.
“Please don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad.”
“They said you’d be mad.”
“I’m not.”
She finally looked at him.
“Promise?”
Dorian thought about how many promises he had made casually in his life.
To investors.
To employees.
To Maris.
To his daughter.
He would never make one casually again.
“I promise.”
Ren nodded toward the folded paper.
“It tells you where my butterfly notebook is.”
Dorian unfolded it.
There was only one sentence.
CHECK THE LOCKER THEY SAID I WASN’T ALLOWED TO OPEN.
Below it was a number.
B-17.
Dorian looked up.
Ren whispered, “I wrote down everything.”
Then someone knocked once on the hospital-room door.
May you like
Before Dorian could answer, Gideon Thorne walked in.
And Ren immediately stopped breathing.
