Page 57 of His Orders

Time and place.

20

ETHAN

The sky outside my apartment windows is beginning to pale, that slow bleed from indigo to gray that signals morning is on its way, but I’ve been here the whole night, pacing the same square footage like the walls might suddenly open up and give me more room to move. I’ve made two cups of coffee and left both untouched. I’ve taken a shower that did nothing to cool the heat still smoldering under my skin. I haven’t called Ivy. Not because I don’t want to but because now I know too much.

The file Mason handed me sits on the kitchen table, thick and clinical, the paper worn at the edges from where I’ve flipped through it again and again. He hadn’t said much when I got there—just slid the folder across the desk, cracked open a bottle of something dark and expensive, and sat back like he was waiting for the real reaction to hit.

“You’re gonna want to sit down,” he’d said. “Because this goes deep.”

And he wasn’t wrong.

Inside the folder were a series of spreadsheets, old insurance filings, flagged prescription logs, and an offshore holding account tied to a shell company registered under a subsidiary of Holt Enterprises. The paper trail was fragmented, carefully constructed to evade scrutiny, but the pattern was there if you knew what to look for. I’ve spent a decade working inside hospitals, seen the underbelly of the system up close—understaffed clinics pushed to the brink, drug reps offering incentives they shouldn’t, families handed bills for treatments that never should have been charged.

But this? This is something else entirely.

Three years ago, a small pharmaceutical firm called Auralis Therapeutics began pushing an experimental mood stabilizer under the guise of a research trial—approved for limited clinical use, but only under strict supervision. The trial wasn’t public, the FDA filings were buried, but the kicker? Auralis doesn’t exist anymore. It was dissolved eighteen months ago, just after several patients reported severe side effects that never made it into any official database. And the signature on the paperwork authorizing the dissolution of the trial came from a man named Stuart Holt.

Daniel’s father.

The shell company, Garnett Biomedical Holdings, received quarterly “consulting” payments from Auralis before the shutdown. Those payments were routed to properties across the northeast, including two in Valleria. The names on those properties? One listed under Daniel Holt. The other—quietly, discreetly—listed under someone who used to work for the Valleria General psych ward. A woman I remember only because her resignation came the week after a minor scandal that never made the papers.

A patient had died.

It had been ruled natural causes. No autopsy. No inquiry. Just a closed file and a transferred nurse.

But I was there that day. I had just finished a consult on a cardiac patient when I passed the crash cart outside room 408. The family was in the waiting room—silent, angry, confused. The man who died had no history of mental health complications, only mild depression following the birth of his second child, and he’d been prescribed a new medication that no one had seen on formulary before.

Now, looking at this file, I realize what I saw was a test site. A trial gone wrong. A death that didn’t have to happen.

And Daniel? He was part of it.

Mason had looked me dead in the eye when I said the name out loud. “He’s not the brains, but he’s definitely the knife.”

I remember gripping the edge of that cheap laminate desk, feeling something cold spread in my chest, not fear, not even anger. Just the knowledge that the man threatening Ivy had the reach and arrogance to play God with human lives. That he’d been tied to something this dangerous, this criminal, and walked away without a scratch. Because the Holts always walk away.

But not this time.

The trick, Mason said, was proving intent. The shell company was clean on paper. But there were witnesses. One in particular—a nurse named Melinda Garrow. She filed an internal complaint just days before she left her job at the hospital, but the document never made it into the system. Mason found it buried in a secondary network drive, unsigned but timestamped. Thecomplaint described irregular dosages, falsified records, and pressure from higher-ups to ignore certain protocols.

It was enough to start building a case.

But it would take time.

What Mason didn’t know, what he didn’t say—because I didn’t tell him—was that Ivy had been dating Daniel at the time all of this was happening. That she might have seen something. That she might have been silenced not just by manipulation, but by the knowledge of what he was capable of. If Daniel was involved in running this trial under the table, if Ivy knew or suspected something, then she isn’t just a woman trying to escape an abusive relationship.

She’s a liability.

And that makes her even more of a target.

I scrub my hands over my face, the rough scrape of stubble grounding me in the moment. Every part of me wants to call her. To warn her. To tell her what I found. But if I do that now, if I make a move before I understand the full picture, I might send her running again. Or worse, I might put her in more danger.

And I can’t do that. The kettle whistles sharply from the stove, but I ignore it. My phone buzzes on the counter and I cross the kitchen in two strides, snatching it up with a pulse that thuds harder than it should.

It’s a text from Mason.

Update. New name surfaced. Might be nothing. Might be our missing link. I’ll loop back after the Garrow interview. Sit tight.

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