Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the Room
Uncle Jake stood by the edge of my bed for a long moment, looking down at my face. He didn't touch the dark bruises on my neck; he didn't need to. He saw the five distinct fingerprint patterns, the swollen skin, and the subtle yellowing around the edges that indicated earlier pressure.
He turned slowly and walked toward the grand glass window overlooking Lake Michigan.
The rain was coming down harder now, streaking across the glass in heavy, oblique lines. Without saying a word, Jake reached out and pulled the heavy velvet hospital drapes closed, sealing out the gray afternoon light until the room was lit only by the faint, yellow glow of the bedside lamp.
Then, with meticulous, deliberate care, Jake reached up to his ears.
He removed his two small, beige hearing aids—devices he had worn since a mortar shell exploded forty feet from his position in 1991—and placed them neatly on the stainless-steel bedside tray next to my water pitcher.
In Jake’s world, removing his hearing aids meant one thing: he no longer cared to hear anything the people in the room had to say.
"Close your eyes, sweetheart," Jake said quietly to me.
I closed my eyes immediately. I trusted him with my life, just as I trusted him with my daughter's.
Across the room, Richard Collins stirred. Up until this moment, the billionaire businessman had remained near the sofa, casually checking his gold watch, treating Jake’s presence as an insignificant inconvenience.
But as Jake turned around from the window, he rolled back the left sleeve of his canvas jacket and flannel shirt, exposing his forearm to adjust a leather strap on his wrist.
Etched into the weather-beaten, scarred skin of Jake’s left forearm was a faded, blue-ink military tattoo.
It wasn't a standard eagle, an anchor, or a branch crest.
It was a minimalist, geometric design: a jagged silver dagger thrusting downward through a cracked skull, surrounded by four small, dark numbers: 7-7-1-2.
The moment Richard Collins’s eyes locked onto that faded blue tattoo, the smug, arrogant expression on his face shattered into a million pieces.
Every single drop of color drained from Richard’s skin. His face turned a sickly, ash-gray color. His hands began to shake so violently that the expensive leather folder he was holding slipped from his fingers and crashed onto the floor.
"Dad?" Ethan asked, startled by his father’s sudden silence. "Dad, what's wrong with you?"
Richard didn't answer his son. He couldn't.
His eyes were wide, bulging with a pure, primal, soul-crushing terror. His chest heaved as if he were suddenly suffocused of oxygen. He stumbled backward two steps, his expensive leather dress shoes slipping against the vinyl floor, until his back hit the wall behind the sofa.
May you like
His mouth worked silently, opening and closing like a fish pulled out of water.
Then, without a single word of warning, Richard doubled over at the waist, grabbed his stomach, and vomited violently into the stainless-steel trash can beside the armchair.
