“What’s she doing here?” asked Carter, who by the sound of it was seated on the living room couch.
“What do you think, Carter?” said Rose impatiently. When she reached the center of the living room and Jenny guided her to a sofa chair, she sat. “I wanted to talk to you both because I was attacked the other night, and the detective working the case caught you, Carter, on security footage. He thinks you’re a suspect.”
“I didn’t attack you.”
“I know that. The person who attacked me had dress shoes, and I could sense he wasn’t as big as you. But now that I understand you’re staying in Porter’s suite, I have a whole new set of questions. The first one being, what in the hell is going on?”
Carter sighed then said, “He’s funding us.”
Rose laughed, his statement was so outlandish.
“Laugh all you want,” said Layla. “It’s true.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
Carter went on to clarify. “Starlight has competitors. Porter approached us after you kicked us out of One World. He said he had an idea. He wants us to shut down his competitors’ pipelines, and not interfere when he builds ones with Starlight.”
“And you agreed?” When they said nothing, she added, “That makes you total hypocrites. I can’t believe you. I feel like I don’t even know you.”
“Trust us, we have our reservations,” said Carter. “But at the same time, we didn’t have a penny to get Layla out on bail, and when Porter came along offering to drop the charges so long as we agreed to work with him, what were we going to say? He’s already given us thousands to get started on planning to shut down his competitor’s new pipeline that is going in next month.”
“I’m so happy for you,” she said in a tone dripping with sarcasm. “So whose idea was it to take Taylor’s medical records to the press?”
Carter spoke up right away. “You know I’d never betray you—”
“Unless the price was right,” she supplied. “So Porter Montgomery has completely bought you. He told you to give Taylor’s private records to the press, and you did?”
Jenny asked, “Why would he want his own son off the project?”
“Because,” said Rose, “I was getting through to Taylor. And if Porter couldn’t take me out, then he’d take out his own son.” Rose drew in a deep breath and asked, “Why was Frank Wright here in the Escala the other night?”
“We have no idea,” said Layla, and what surprised Rose most was that her former friend’s tone sounded truthful.
“Who attacked me?” she asked.
“I couldn’t say for sure,” said Carter, “and we had nothing to do with it. But I’d bet anything it was Porter who gave the order.”
“And the two of you can live with yourself working for him?”
“At this point,” said Layla, “we don’t have a choice.”
“Don’t give me that,” she said, shaking her head.
“No, really,” said Carter. “We’re scared.”
“Scared of what?” she challenged, wondering if she could stomach any more of their explanations.
“We can’t prove it,” said Layla.
“We don’t even remember it,” added Carter. “But we’re certain he drugged us.”
“What?” asked Rose in disbelief.
“The afternoon you were attacked,” Carter went on. “Porter met us here to discuss the Exxon pipeline, which is our first project now that we have his investment. He made the drinks.”
“Within minutes I had tunnel vision and I was severely mentally impaired. It’s like I had the mind of a child and all I could think was I couldn’t believe how drunk I had let myself get.”
“But it didn’t make sense,” said Carter. “In the moment, we thought we were drunk, but looking back, we’d only had half a glass of alcohol.”
“The insane part,” Layla continued. “Was that I felt happy. So incredibly happy, and Rose, you know me. I’m not a happy drunk.”
“Then maybe an hour after feeling that way and barely hanging onto the conversation we were having with Porter, who by the way, had absolutely no reaction to the fact we were practically falling out of our chairs, it all goes blank.”
“We can’t remember a thing.”
“Just like Taylor the night of Porter’s charity function,” Rose observed.
“That’s what we were thinking,” said Layla. “Except we never flipped out.”
“My guess is that this time Porter used scopolamine without the PCP and MDMA,” said Carter.
“But that’s not the worst of it,” said Layla. “He had us do things, strange things, which we found out about because the next day someone slipped a packet of photos under the door.”
“So he’s blackmailing you?” Rose surmised.
“In case taking his money isn’t enough to control us,” said Carter.
“What did you do? What do the photos show?”
Layla looked disgusted and grimaced as she said, “I lured the security guards out of their booth.”
“And I turned off all the cameras in the lobby, elevator, and on the fiftieth floor.”
“Oh my God,” said Rose. “You have to contact Detective Tavaras and tell him.”
“And get arrested?” Layla challenged. “Or killed if we mention Porter’s name?”
“We didn’t want to say what we did at the press conference. We don’t want you to hate us, Rose,” said Carter, sounding remorseful. “But there’s nothing we can do.”
“He’s a dangerous man,” she said, wishing she could see their faces. “If you say he drugged you, then I believe you. And it gives me insight to the fact that he drugged Taylor, as well. He destroyed Taylor’s career. And he tried to kill me. There has to be a way to bring him down.”
“If there is,” said Carter, “one that won’t get us all killed or sent away to prison, then we’re with you. But we can’t take any risks. We’re too scared.”
In that moment, so was Rose.
The first step would be telling Taylor that his father was the one who had drugged him that night, the reason he had spent months in a psyche ward and lost his medical career. But would he believe her? He hadn’t even suspected his father, so what made Rose believe he would suddenly take her word?
With Hector behind the wheel, Rose in the passenger’s seat of the One World Jeep, and Jenny in the backseat, they drove out to East Bellevue where the rest of One World would meet them to take pictures of the new construction site.
When they arrived, Jenny verbalized that the trench looked well underway. There was a corporate trailer to the east of the trench just where it had been at the prior site in Bellevue. Bulldozers and construction workers were crawling all over the place, a fact that Rose was aware of thanks to her keen sense of hearing.
As soon as they stepped out of their Jeep and made their way towards the trailer, Taylor descended the trailer steps, joining them.
“Hey,” he said, taking Rose’s hands.
Regretfully, she said, “We need to talk.”
“We certainly do.” She could hear the smile in his voice.
“I have some bad news,” she said to get his attention, but he seemed too elated for bad news to register.
“I have good news, so I’ll go first,” he quickly interrupted her. “I’ve scheduled you for surgery first thing tomorrow morning.”
“What?”
“I found you an eye.”
Chapter Twenty Three
She didn’t know how to break it to him that his father had drugged him all those years ago and was the person behind her terrorizing attack. Taylor immediately announced how thrilled he was that, in his words, by this time tomorrow she would be able to see. Every time she tried to get a word in on the subject of Porter and his dark plans to control just about everyone around him, Taylor would once again bubble over with glee that he had found her a donor—“a match!” he kept saying, as though it were a miracle.
It was. She didn’t deny i
t, but similar to that morning, Rose was boiling over with conflict.
By the time they got back to the Escala after leaving East Bellevue and eating a five-course meal at a five-star restaurant on the west side of Seattle, Rose had given up on telling Taylor about Porter and all she’d learned with Carter and Layla earlier that day. She would take the night, get good rest, go through her surgery tomorrow, and then when she was well and ready, she would explain to Taylor that his father was a very bad man.
Rose knew she shouldn’t hold off on telling him the truth, but the fact of the matter was that Taylor was so excited about her surgery that the feeling had become contagious. She didn’t want to get her hopes up, but she couldn’t help it. What if the surgery worked? What if she regained her sight? What if she really would be able to “see” by this time tomorrow?
As Taylor held the suite door open for her and led her inside, he said, “I’m determined to find you a second eye, but Dr. Fitzpatrick explained that it’s actually a blessing I only secured one. This way, you can heal, recover, and then perhaps in a month have another surgery for the other eye.”
“Dare I ask how much it cost you?” she teased, as she sat on the bed now that they’d made their way into the bedroom.
“Don’t you dare,” he teased back then helped her pull her shoes off.
“We should go to bed so you can rest up, get a good night’s sleep,” he said, sitting beside her and wrestling his own shoes off.
“Won’t I be asleep on the operating table?” she asked, implying she had other ideas for how they might spend the rest of their evening.
“That’s hardly the same.”
As she laid back, her head meeting the pillows, she asked, “So is it the left eye or the right one?”
“The right one,” he said after some time.
“Will you be in the room with me?”
He drew in a breath, giving her the impression that he was carefully choosing his words. “For the sake of keeping the room as sterile as possible, no, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Rose furrowed her brow at that. It struck her as a strange reason, but she had to admit she knew nothing about surgery procedures. If Taylor thought being in the room would be a bad idea, then it was a bad idea. Still, she would’ve liked to hear he would be there with her. For as excited as she was, she was also scared.
“I have nothing to lose,” she said out loud, though to herself.
“Hm?”
“If the surgery doesn’t go well,” she explained, drawing in a deep breath, “then I won’t be worse off. I’ll come out the same. I have nothing to lose.”
“Don’t be nervous, Rose,” he said, rolling over onto his elbow so he could gaze down at her and run his hand across her stomach. “It’s going to go well.”
“You don’t know that,” she countered. “Not for sure. I’m just trying to manage my expectations.”
“How can you be so optimistically unrealistic when it comes to your activism work, and so completely negative when it comes to your own health?”
“I don’t know,” she said. But after a moment, she went on to say, “No, I do know. Both of my parents died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
There was silence before she continued to speak. “My mom was in a bad car accident when I was barely twelve. And when she was in the hospital I hoped so hard she would pull through. And she didn’t. Then when I was in college, my dad was diagnosed with cancer. And again, I hoped and hoped, and I hung onto every silver lining I could. When he died, I realized that hoping was worse than not hoping. If you don’t get your hopes up, you don’t have as far to fall when you’re let down.”
Taylor brushed her cheek.
“Your eyes aren’t a matter of life and death,” he reminded her.
“For me, seeing is life and death. It’s either life as I used to know it, or the death of who I used to be.”
“You’re not dead now,” he pointed out.
“But I’m not functioning.”
“You are. Just in a different way.”
“In a different way I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to.”
“You never shut down a pipeline when you had your vision. You never got a billion-dollar corporation to spend millions on relocating their pipeline. You did all that after you lost your sight. I wouldn’t be so quick to discredit how you’re functioning.”
“I did that, because you’re a pushover.”
“Oh, is that right,” he said with a smile, as he pinched her hip.
“All right, I see your point. Now consider mine. If I had been blind and crossed the lounge in the hotel that night, if you had seen a white cane and eye patches approaching, would you have taken me upstairs?”
“Let’s not forget your forward, flirtatious personality,” he added.
“Fine, let’s not forget it. Factor it in. Would you have taken me upstairs?”
She sensed the smile falling from his face.
Finally, he said, “I’m really not sure.”
Nodding, she took a moment to absorb the truth of his statement.
“Then I’m really not sure getting you to move the pipeline can be at all credited to my loss of eyesight.”
Rather than responding, Taylor gently brushed his lips against hers then kissed her.
As they made love that night before falling asleep, Rose was consumed with hopes and fears. If she truly did regain the ability to see tomorrow, and Porter found out, what would he do about it? And would Taylor be able to stop him from executing his dark plan? Would anyone?
The next day, Rose woke like a lark at the crack of dawn and showered as if she could scrub the worry from her mind. She dressed with minimal help from Taylor, and when they reached the curb, he held the passenger’s side door of his Lexus open for her.
As he drove across town to Seattle Mercy, she rattled off a million questions. Who was the donor? Why did they think they could live without an eye? Could she thank the person afterwards? How could she ever repay them? Was it a man or a woman? How good was their eyesight?
Taylor had been evasive. At times, he was simply guessing, and other times he stated his lawyer had used a contract with several confidentiality clauses, and he wasn’t at liberty to discuss it.
By the time they arrived at the hospital, Rose had received almost no answers, and the ones she had were speculative. She knew no more about the mysterious donor than she had that morning.
As soon as Taylor announced their arrival at the desk on the third floor outside of Dr. Fitzpatrick’s office, he received a phone call on his cell that he said he couldn’t ignore.
“I’ll kiss you good-bye now,” he added.
“What? I thought you would stay with me at least while they sedate me? I want you to be with me as I go under.”
“I’m sorry, Rose, I really can’t.”
“What is it? Is it the pipeline?” she asked, growing frantic.
“There’s nothing to worry about. Try to stay calm. Elevating your heart rate isn’t good before surgery.”
“But I need a reason for why you can’t be there with me. Is it your father? Did he do something?”
“No, no, everything’s fine, but I have to go now.”
Confused as she was, she released him. He kissed her mouth then rushed off through the entrance, leaving her to ponder what could possibly be going on with him.
Before she could fret further, Dr. Fitzpatrick entered the anteroom.
“Rose, fantastic, I’m so glad you’re here. Let me walk you down to surgery.”
He offered her his arm, and when she grasped it, he led her out of the anteroom and down the hall towards the elevators.
“All of our surgery rooms are on the first floor. We’ll get you changed and on the table. The anesthesiologist is here.”
“How long will the surgery take?”
“It’s a complicated procedure, and it could take anywhere from three to five hours.”
“Oh my God.”
“Well, I’m going to be attaching each nerve, one by one, and before I move on from one nerve to the next, I have to see that your body is accepting it.”
“And after I wake up, how long will it be before we know I can see?”
“Rose, if your body rejects the eye on the table, and there is always a chance it will, then we’ll tell you as soon as you wake up.”
“But if my body accepts it?”
“In that case, we’d take the bandages off in less than a day and you would know.”
She was both thrilled and terrified, as Dr. Fitzpatrick passed her off to one of the nurses who was there to help her change into a surgical gown and tuck her hair under a cap.
Soon the nurse was guiding her into the operating room where a long table was set in the middle of the area. Rose hopped up then lay back, feeling the bright lights overhead.
It felt like an eternity before Dr. Fitzpatrick entered the operating room with another doctor whose face was concealed with a surgical mask.
“Rose, this is the anesthesiologist, Dr. Mendel.”
“Hi, Rose,” said the doctor, who was fully focused on readying his equipment. She could hear him shifting and moving his instruments. When he placed a plastic dome over her mouth and nose, he told her to start counting backwards from thirty.
“So this is it?” she asked. “I’m going under?”
She wasn’t sure why she had expected some kind of reassuring pep talk, but the doctors weren’t planning on giving her one.
“Yes,” said Dr. Fitzpatrick. “Go ahead and start counting.”
She did, and she was unconscious before she reached twenty.
Chapter Twenty Four
When Rose woke, gradually regaining consciousness, she could see nothing. Groggily, she lifted her hand to her eyes, though her arm felt heavy as cement. Touching gently, she felt a thick band of gauze wrapping her head and breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t that she couldn’t “see.”The gauze was preventing her from seeing. Vaguely, she remembered Dr. Fitzpatrick had told her it could take the majority of the day for her eye to heal, but by nightfall she would be able to take the bandage off and tell whether or not the surgery had been a success.
KYLE: A Mafia Romance (The Callahans Book 4) Page 89