ALEXANDER
My father had summoned Anthony and me to his office over the article, and when I entered, Anthony was already seated across from his desk while Father stood near the windows finishing a call.
He ended it as I took the empty chair beside my brother. "Half the board wants an emergency meeting, donors are calling me directly, and the hospital has spent the morning answering questions about whether one of our doctors nearly killed a patient and escaped scrutiny because he's married to my son."
"Then stop allowing them to blame Dashiell for something we know he didn't do."
"And tell them what?" Father came around the desk. "That Calliope tampered with equipment during an operation and Astor Medical kept it quiet?"
"Yes."
He stared at me. "The moment we confirm what Calliope did, we have to answer for why we never reported it."
"That sounds like your problem."
"It becomes everyone's problem when the Astor name is attached to it."
There it was. His concern wasn't Dashiell or the sixteen-year-old who had suffered a stroke because Calliope decided a child's brain was an acceptable casualty in her pursuit of my attention.
It was our name.
I leaned back in the chair. "The article has Dashiell's operative note, the incident report and findings from before I discovered the sabotage. Someone gave them enough truth to make the lie convincing."
Father frowned. "You don't know that the source withheld anything."
"No. That's what I'm going to find out."
"The reporter may not even know about Calliope," Anthony said.
I didn't look at him. "Which is why I've brought in people who don't answer to Astor Medical. They'll find out who accessed those records, how they left the hospital and who gave them to the reporter."
Father pulled out his chair. "You hired an outside team?"
"Yes."
"We have people here capable of handling that."
"The last time this hospital investigated the Grant case, someone interfered with the evidence before it reached the review."
Father went still. Someone had helped conceal Calliope's sabotage before I discovered what she'd done, and I had never identified them. I had no proof they were involved now, but I wasn't going to ignore the possibility.
"You're reopening that?"
"I never closed it."
Anthony said nothing, which suited me.
"And I'm not stopping with the hospital records," I continued. "Someone dug through Dashiell's adolescence, found old photographs and tracked down former classmates who haven't mattered to his life in more than a decade. I want whoever started that search."
"You hired investigators to track down people from his high school?" Father asked.
"I hired them to find whoever tracked those people down first."
"And what exactly do you expect to find?"
"A connection."
"To Calliope?"
"To whoever did this."
Calliope was an obvious possibility. She hated Dashiell, had already risked a child's life trying to destroy his career and had told me to my face that he had taken something she believed belonged to her. But someone had protected her once, and until I knew who was behind the article, I wasn't ruling anyone out.
I wanted the entire structure: every person involved, every message, favor or payment that moved this forward, and ultimately the person who started it.
Father folded his arms. "You need to let the hospital handle this before you make it personal."
"My husband's records were stolen from your hospital and used to publicly humiliate him. People who tormented him as a child are being invited to do it again for an audience. At what point, exactly, did you imagine this wasn't personal?"
"That is exactly why you shouldn't be the one handling it," Father said. "You don't think rationally when Dashiell is involved."
"I think perfectly well."
"You're Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery. You're already named in the article. If you retaliate against anyone connected to this—"
"Retaliation is a word for lawyers."
His face changed, but I had another word and kept it to myself.
Whoever had done this had gone after Dashiell's career and his past with the sole intention of hurting him. I wanted that person dead rather than merely ruined, frightened or unemployable, and there was no anger attached to the thought because anger had never been necessary. I could kill someone with a perfectly steady pulse.
Anthony shifted beside me, the faint amusement he had been hiding whenever the conversation turned to my involvement appearing again.
I noticed, but Anthony wasn't my concern right now.
Father started talking about the board meeting again, and I stood.
"We're not finished."
"I am."
"Alexander."
I crossed toward the door, ignoring him until he asked, "What are you going to do when you find whoever did this?"
My hand settled on the handle. "You don't want the answer to that."
I left Father's office and headed for Neurology before returning to my own department, wanting to see Dashiell first. His assistant was behind the nurses' station when I arrived.
"Dr. Astor."
"Where is he?"
"His office. He finished his rounds." As I turned toward the corridor, she added, "Dr. Astor, you might want to stay with him for a little while. He keeps reading the comments."
Of course he did. Dashiell had always believed that if he understood something well enough, it would become easier to deal with.
His office door was closed, and I knocked once before entering.
Dashiell sat behind his desk working through patient notes, his white coat hanging from the back of his chair. His tablet was perfectly aligned with the desk, his pen parallel beside it, and the skin surrounding his eyes had been rubbed red.
He looked up when I entered, then returned to his tablet as I locked the door and crossed the room.
"What did your father want?"
"He'd rather protect the hospital than admit what happened with Calliope."
Dashiell glanced up again. "And you?"
"I have different priorities."
His fingers returned to Daniel's notes. "His fever is being managed. The movements are still frequent, but the ICU team thinks—"
"Dashiell."
"I need to finish this."
I reached the desk, slipped an arm beneath his knees and lifted him before he could turn back to the screen. A startled sound left him as I took his chair and brought him down across my lap.
"Alexander—"
My mouth covered his before he could finish my name, one hand sliding into his hair as I drew him closer and pushed my tongue between his parted lips. Coffee lingered on him, faint and bitter beneath the warmer taste of his mouth, and Dashiell opened for me without hesitation, his fingers gathering my shirt while his tongue met mine.
I drew his lower lip between my teeth and sucked before taking his mouth again, slower only long enough to feel the quiet sound he made against my lips. His hand moved behind my neck as the kiss grew wetter, keeping me close while my tongue stroked over his and saliva gathered between our mouths. Each time I pulled back far enough to taste his lower lip, he followed, catching my mouth again until his chest was pressed to mine and the hand at my neck had slipped into my hair.
When our mouths finally parted, saliva stretched between them and broke across his lower lip. I ran my tongue over it before pressing another kiss to the corner of his mouth, then across his cheek and beneath one irritated eye.
"You've been reading."
Dashiell lowered his eyes. "I wanted to know what people were saying."
My thumb passed beneath his eye. "And now?"
"I wish I hadn't."
I drew him against me again and pressed my mouth to his temple while his face settled into the side of my neck.
"I don't understand why they enjoyed hurting me."
Neither did I, despite understanding cruelty better than most people.
Dashiell remained against my chest as he spoke. "I keep thinking about going back out there and wondering whether everyone has seen it. Whether they're looking at me and remembering those pictures instead of who I am now."
His fingers pressed more firmly into my shirt.
"But they don't decide who you are."
I tipped his face toward mine and kissed him again, slower this time, letting my tongue slip between his lips until the tension in his mouth eased. He tasted me back without hesitation, and when I withdrew, he followed for another kiss before resting his forehead against mine.
For years, I had known this man in ways none of the people speaking about him ever would. They could collect photographs, stories and whatever fragments of his past they managed to dig up, but they were still strangers attempting to define someone they did not know.
Dashiell's thumb moved absently along my collar. "What are you going to do?"
"Find the person who started this."
"And after you find them?"
"Make certain they can't do it again."
Dashiell studied my face. "What does that mean?"
Rather than answer, I drew him into another kiss, sucking his tongue between my lips before releasing it to catch his lower lip gently between my teeth. My tongue passed over the spot, and when I pulled back, his mouth was wet and swollen.
"You aren't going to tell me, are you?" he murmured.
"No."
He didn't press. He settled against me with his face beneath my chin, and I kissed his hair while running a hand slowly down his back. My phone vibrated in my pocket, but I left it there and kept him against me.
For now, whoever wanted my attention could wait.