Chapter 2 - What Isabella Wouldn’t Tell the Ambulance

NYPD Emergency Service officers entered less than three minutes later.

Nobody delivered a speech.

Officers ordered hands visible, separated everyone, secured the firearms, and photographed the room before paramedics cut Isabella down.

Her knees folded when her feet touched the floor.

I caught her under the arms.

She recoiled so violently that I released her immediately.

“Sorry,” I said.

She looked ashamed.

“Don’t.”

That one word told me more about the last two years than anything Jasper had said.

At Mount Sinai Queens, doctors documented bruising in different stages of healing, rope injuries around her wrists, dehydration, and a fractured rib that appeared several weeks old.

Isabella refused pain medication until the nurse showed her the packaging.

“He used to put things in my wine,” she whispered.

I sat beside the bed without touching her.

“How long?”

She looked toward the closed door.

“The controlling started after our first anniversary. The hitting came later.”

Jasper Blackwood had been arrested at the warehouse on allegations connected to unlawful imprisonment, assault, weapons found at the scene, and coercion. Prosecutors would decide exactly what could be charged after reviewing the evidence.

His attorneys were already calling what happened “a marital dispute catastrophically misinterpreted.”

Isabella laughed when I told her.

It sounded exhausted rather than amused.

“He always liked better vocabulary for ugly things.”

Detective Erin Walsh asked about the encrypted drive Jasper had demanded.

Isabella’s expression changed.

“It contains foundation records.”

“Where is it?”

“Safe.”

“Can you access it?”

Isabella looked at the digital clock beside her bed.

1:07 a.m.

Again, that strange attention to time.

“I don’t need to.”

Walsh frowned.

So did I.

Isabella closed her eyes.

“Caleb, what time did you get to the warehouse?”

“Eleven thirty-eight.”

Her breathing loosened.

“Then he was already too late.”

“Too late for what?”

She opened her eyes.

“I’ll explain when Nina gets here.”

“Who’s Nina?”

“The foundation’s general counsel.”

I had crossed an ocean because my sister sent me a six-word distress message.

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I had assumed she needed me to uncover Jasper’s crime.

Lying in that hospital bed, Isabella was telling me she had already started something without me.