Chapter 2 - The Sound of Breath
For three seconds, the only sound in Room 104 was the steady, rhythmic beep... beep... beep of the heart monitors.
Blythe Mercer lowered her small, thin hands from her face. Her eyes, large and pale grey against her sunken cheeks, blinked against the brilliant white glare streaming through the tall arched windows. She looked at Waverly—not with curiosity, but with the flat, unreadable detachment of a child who had seen too many adults enter her room with quiet voices and silver needles.
In the adjacent bed, five-year-old Jonah stirred. He groaned softly, his small head turning away from the light, his fingers clutching at the white sheets.
“Close it,” a voice rasped from the doorway.
Lawson Mercer stood in the frame, his tall frame blocking the hallway light behind him. His eyes were narrowed as he stared at the sunlit floorboards, his knuckles white where his hands gripped the doorframe.
“Close the curtains,” Lawson repeated, his voice carrying the dangerous, low vibration of a engine revving in a small garage. “The glare is disturbing them.”
Waverly did not touch the curtain cord. She walked slowly to the edge of Jonah’s bed, knelt down so her eyes were level with the small boy’s face, and reached out. She did not check his pulse. She laid her warm, bare hand gently over his tiny, bare foot where it peeked out from beneath the duvet.
His skin was ice-cold.
“Their feet are frozen, Mr. Mercer,” Waverly said without looking back at him. “You’re keeping this room like a morgue because you think cold keeps things fresh. It doesn't. It just makes little toes ache.”
The two nurses in the corner looked at each other in sheer terror, instinctively taking two steps back toward the washroom door, waiting for Lawson to tear the woman apart.
Lawson walked into the room. The sunlight hit his face, exposing the fine lines around his mouth, the grey hairs silvering his temples, and the deep, hollow exhaustion carved into his cheekbones. He looked like a statue that had been dragged out of the dark.
“Dr. Yates set the temperature to sixty-four degrees to prevent bacterial growth,” Lawson said, stopping at the foot of Blythe’s bed.
“Dr. Yates isn't sleeping in this bed,” Waverly replied calmly. She looked up at Lawson. “Turn off the AC unit in the ceiling. Bring in two oil heaters from the main house. And get rid of these wool blankets—they’re heavy and scratchy. They need cotton. Light cotton.”
Lawson stared at her. For two full years, no one in his organization, no one in his house, and certainly no domestic worker had given him a list of orders. Men who managed three hundred soldiers in the West Side numbers racket stood at attention when he entered a room.
“Prescott,” Lawson called out quietly over his shoulder.
Prescott appeared in the doorway instantly. “Sir?”
Lawson didn't take his eyes off Waverly. “Bring two oil heaters. Change the blankets.”
Prescott hesitated for half a second—a micro-expression of absolute disbelief—before bowing his head. “Yes, Mr. Mercer.”
Waverly didn't say thank you. She turned back to Blythe, who was watching her with silent, cautious intensity.
“You have a bear,” Waverly said, pointing to the brown stuffed toy lying on the foot of the bed.
Blythe’s voice was a thin thread of sound. “His name is Barnaby.”
“Barnaby looks like he hasn't had breakfast,” Waverly said. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a small wooden spoon she had brought from her backpack, and held it out toward the little girl. “Do you want to help me feed him?”
Blythe didn't reach for the spoon. “I’m not hungry.”
“I didn't ask if you were hungry,” Waverly said, her voice remaining soft, entirely free of pity. “I asked if Barnaby was hungry. He’s been lying facedown on a marble floor all morning while the adults were arguing. That’s very hard on a bear’s stomach.”
A tiny, almost invisible flicker crossed Blythe’s face. It wasn't a smile—it was too small for that—but her fingers shifted slightly against the duvet, reaching two inches toward the wooden spoon.
Lawson watched from the foot of the bed. He felt something strange and uncomfortable stir in his chest—a sharp, sudden pain that was distinctly different from the dull, heavy numbness he had carried since Genevieve’s funeral.
For four months, he had watched doctors stick needles into his children’s arms, watched nurses wipe their foreheads with damp towels, and heard specialists speak in long, Latin words that all meant the same thing: death.
None of them had spoken to Barnaby the bear.
“I’m going to my office,” Lawson said suddenly, his voice rough. He turned toward the door, pausing as his hand hit the brass handle. He looked back at Waverly. “If their temperatures spike by half a degree, I will know.”
“Their temperatures won't spike,” Waverly said, without looking up as she gently helped Blythe prop up her bear against a pillow. “They’re just cold, Mr. Mercer. Go manage your city.”
Lawson left the room, closing the door behind him with a heavy thud.
Outside in the hallway, Prescott was waiting with two house stewards carrying oil heaters.
“Sir,” Prescott murmured, stepping alongside Lawson as he walked toward his ground-floor study. “We ran a deeper check on Waverly Dunn through our sources at the precinct. Her background is clean, but her debt is extensive. Medical bills from her son’s care at St. Jude’s. She’s living out of a rooming house on 18th Street. If you want her removed, we can have a replacement nurse from Johns Hopkins here by midnight.”
Lawson stopped in front of his study door. He looked down at his own hand. It was shaking faintly. He clenched it into a tight fist until the knuckles turned white.
“No,” Lawson said.
Prescott blinked. “Sir?”
“She didn't look at me like I was a boss,” Lawson said, his eyes dark, fixed on the wood grain of his door. “And she didn't look at those children like they were dead.”
“Mr. Mercer, she opened the curtains. If rival surveillance—”
“Let them look,” Lawson snapped, his voice suddenly rising with a terrifying, raw authority that made Prescott step back two inches. “Let every bastard from the North Side look through those windows and see that my house is still awake. Set four more men on the perimeter fence. If anyone so much as points a camera at those windows, break their fingers.”
“Yes, sir,” Prescott said, straightening instantly.
Lawson opened his study door, stepped inside, and closed it behind him.
The study was dark, wood-paneled, and smelled of tobacco and old leather. On his desk sat three encrypted phones, a stack of financial ledgers, and a framed photograph of Genevieve holding newborn Jonah and Blythe in a hospital room five years ago.
Lawson walked over to the desk, sat down in his heavy leather chair, and covered his face with both hands.
For the first time in two weeks, he didn't look at the medical charts on his computer screen.
He listened to the silence of the mansion.
May you like
And from three doors down the hall, through the heavy oak panels and the thick stone walls, he heard the faint, distant sound of a child’s voice saying two words:
“More light.”
