“Send a car to her apartment,” he said.
“Two men outside the building.
No one enters without her approval.”
Claire’s shoulders stiffened.
“That sounds like surveillance.”
“It is protection.”
“From whom?”
Sebastian looked at Dr.
Vale.
“That is what we are about to learn.”
Claire called her neighbor, Mrs.
Alvarez, who was watching Oliver.
The boy was asleep, his breathing steady.
Only after hearing that did Claire agree to remain.
She gave Sebastian one condition.
“My son is not leverage.
Not now.
Not ever.”
Sebastian glanced at Gabriel.
“Make sure everyone understands.”
Gabriel nodded once.
Claire examined Sebastian again, this time with the room cleared except for Gabriel.
She tested pressure, temperature, and muscle response.
Sensation was weak and inconsistent, but it existed.
Sebastian could distinguish warmth from cold near his left hip.
His thigh contracted when Claire positioned the joint correctly.
The response disappeared whenever he tried too hard, as though years of pain and medication had trained his body to shut the signal down.
“This does not mean you can stand tomorrow,” Claire said.
Sebastian gave a humorless smile.
“You think I require help managing disappointment?”
“I think you have survived by expecting the worst.
Rehabilitation will punish that habit.”
She explained what she suspected.
His original injury might have been classified as complete when it was actually incomplete.
Scar tissue, damaged hardware, or a foreign fragment could be compressing nerve roots near the shattered vertebra.
Heavy medication might have hidden small responses.
Without the first scans, there was no way to know whether the problem had been overlooked or concealed.
Sebastian listened without interrupting.
When she finished, he asked, “Who can prove it?”
Claire thought of Dr.
Nia Shah, the neurosurgeon who had supervised part of her hospital training years earlier.
Nia was brilliant, blunt, and nearly impossible to intimidate.
“She can,” Claire said.
“But she will not come here blindfolded, threatened, or paid to agree with you.”
Sebastian looked toward the door.
“Gabriel, invite Dr.
Shah politely.”
Gabriel understood the emphasis.
Nia arrived shortly after midnight carrying a laptop and the expression of a woman who had already regretted answering her phone.
She examined Sebastian, repeated Claire’s tests, and ordered portable imaging from a private hospital whose director owed Sebastian several favors.
When the new scan appeared on her screen, Nia leaned closer.
“There,” she said.
A narrow metallic object sat beside the damaged L4 vertebra, surrounded by dense scar tissue.
Sebastian watched her face.
“Bomb fragment?”
