Sebastian Lombardi stared at his left shoe as though it belonged to a dead man.
The leather had creased near the toes.
His ankle had pulled inward by less than an inch.
To anyone else, it would have looked like nothing.
To Sebastian, it was the first movement he had commanded below his waist in twenty years.
“Again,” he said.
Claire Bennett kept her hand beside the thick scar crossing his lower back.
Four armed guards watched from the walls.
Gabriel Mendez stood near the bedroom doors.
Dr.
Elias Vale, Sebastian’s private physician, remained beside the medical cabinet with one hand closed around a silver key.
Claire pressed slowly into the hardened tissue.
“Lift your toes,” she said.
Sebastian’s jaw tightened.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then his big toe rose beneath the polished leather.
Gabriel stopped breathing.
Sebastian looked at Dr.
Vale.
The physician’s face had gone pale.
“This could be an uncontrolled reflex,” Vale said.
“It proves nothing.”
Claire removed her hand.
“He moved after I gave him a command.
That is not the same as a reflex.”
“You are not a neurologist.”
“No.
I am the woman who noticed what you did not.”
Vale stepped toward her.
“You have no authority here.”
Sebastian’s voice cut through the room.
“She has more authority than you do until I understand why my foot moved.”
Vale looked toward the guards as though expecting support.
None came.
Sebastian held out his hand.
“The key.”
Vale hesitated.
That hesitation changed everything.
Gabriel crossed the room, took the key from Vale’s fingers, and opened the cabinet.
Rows of medical folders stood behind the doors, each labeled by year.
There were surgical reports, rehabilitation notes, prescriptions, nerve studies, and expensive opinions gathered across two decades.
The first folder began in 2007.
Claire searched the shelf again.
“Where are the records from the explosion?”
“The hospital misplaced them,” Vale said.
“There was confusion after the bombing.”
Sebastian did not look at him.
“You told me you had copies.”
“I believed I did.”
Claire pulled out the most recent prescription sheet.
Several medications were familiar.
One was not something she expected to see used every day for chronic pain.
She read the dosage twice.
“What is this?” she asked.
Vale glanced at the page.
