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The hospital was a decent enough building, with some very good facilities. However, I had come because the man who had hired her, Archie Banner, had previously been involved in a few under-the-table dealings with me. The hospital had not come to exist on its own, after all...
The man owed me more than a few favors as I had personally overseen the hospital’s entire creation.
My mind trailed back to her.
Maria was fascinating, and the fact that she was somewhere in the building at that moment enthralled me. I had gotten Benny and Mike to stay in the car, not to draw any attention to me. Once I got to the floor where his office was, his secretary walked up to me, looking to stop me from going right in. I flashed a smile at her. “If you want to keep that face of yours pretty, you will not get in my way, my lovely lady.” She took me at my word and sat back in her seat. “Good girl.”
I pushed the door to see that it was locked. I threw it open with a second shove, and caught Archie at once, struggling to put on his pants as a female nurse walked away flushed red in embarrassment. I looked from her to the man, not caring what he was saying. He had asked who I was, which meant he hadn’t seen my face before, as intended. I looked him in the eye, and when he noticed me, the threats of calling security fell to the back of his throat.
“Mr. Preston,” Archie began.
“Archie, old friend. Good to see that you are still keeping busy. Who was that just now?” I asked, taking a seat close to the door and shutting it.
“Unimportant. You came here.Again. I heard you had visited previously. I would have come to see you, but you left without telling anyone what was wrong. Do you have something you need checked out?” He put on his glasses and adjusted his clothes. If the average person looked, they would not be able to tell that this man was a predator. I wanted to bash his head against the desk. But, then again, he was useful for other things.
“No, I’m fine. I’m here about one of your employees, however. A certain Maria Doyle.”
Archie scratched his head for a minute, and then I could tell that the face of the nurse had come into focus, “Yes, Ms. Doyle. She was the one who was assigned to you but said you seemed to be fine and left before she could assess you. What happened?”
“None of your business,” I replied. “What I can tell you is that I want Ms. Doyle out of the way.”
Archie stared at me, his eyes bulging behind his glasses. He cleared his throat before he spoke again, “Sir, you mean you… you want her killed?”
I raised a brow in confusion, “Out of the way, as in fired from her job here. Why would I want her killed?”
The man doubled over and let out a breath, glad that what he had suspected was not what I had wanted. In a way, I was certain that Archie was as scared of me as he was of my father.
“Well, I can’t just fire her. That would be in breach of the terms of her employment, and if she decides to take it up a court...”
“If I gave Eunice enough reason to charge you on sexual assault and workplace harassment, would you find a way to fire her?” I asked, recalling the woman’s name tag. He knew that I already knew too much.
Archie cleared his throat uncomfortably and sat upright, “It's not that I cannot fire Ms. Doyle. It is that she relies heavily on the hospital to keep up her finances. I can't just put her out of work like that, my conscience—”
“Your conscience is rotten, and you will do what I’ve asked. I will be taking care of her. Give her my card,” I added, throwing it on the table. “Let her know that it was the man she met during the car accident. She’ll call me.”
As I left the office, I heard Archie let out a sigh of relief. The man had been holding his breath the entire time, and now he was going to do what I needed him to do without question. If everything went according to my plan, she would fall into my trap. But I had to be sure, which was why I had Mike in the car. He was the tech brain of the family, one of the few people who I relied on to do whatever I needed. I walked towards the stairs and made my way down to the lobby.
At the end of the stairs, I opened the door to the floor that I suspected she would be on. I wandered the halls for five minutes before I saw her. She was checking on one of her patients, as beautiful as ever, with her red hair tied into a knot on top of her head. She smiled kindly at her patient, an older woman, and I felt my pants stir at how her soft curves looked under her uniform. Every part of my body told me to walk through the doors and talk to her, but I had to play the long con.
I turned around and went to the car where Benny and Michael waited for me.
“How did it go?” Benny’s voice was devoid of any emotion. He could care less about how it went.
“Good. Everything is in order,” I replied, adjusting my collar. “Take me home. I need a shower.”
“You were supposed to meet with the new guy from the union today. I think we can drive by and have a quick chat with him,” Benny began as he started the engine. But I was not in the mood for work. The workers union meeting could wait. “No, we reschedule that for tomorrow. Or better yet, you can represent me. You go see him after you drop me off.”
Benny turned away, but I could sense the tension. He was getting a lot more agitated. He wasn’t going to do anything out of the anger he felt. Instead, he would ask for a break, which I would gladly give him. I turned to Mike, “What did you get for me?”
“I got an address, financial records, a credit score that doesn’t look too good... She's broke. She has a sick mother, a job at Merriweather. I also got some background information about her college and high school. She moved in with her dad before he passed, then back with her Ma.”
“The mother. That would put her in a bind now. You’re really taking away the salary of a person with a sick mother?” Benny asked.
“It's fine, we’ll take care of everything. It's just to get her to see me.”
I listened as Mike rattled off the rest of the details he had collated on Maria Doyle. I had asked him to do his research on her because I had to be sure that she did not have any affiliations with any of my past enemies,andbecauseI wanted to get to know her before we finally met. A small part of me wondered if I had taken things too far, or if she would double down and decide against coming.
There wasn’t much I could do but wait and watch the outcome. It took a couple of days, but she finally called. She asked me if I was home, so it was a sign that she planned to come over. I dressed as casually as I could and had the cook prepare something for us for when she would arrive. It was around five in the evening when I heard the ping of the elevator downstairs. She walked into the building.
