Rise of Cassian Vale: The Forbidden Healer

Chapter 3

Maya's hands tightened on the arms of her wheelchair until her knuckles went white.

"You really don't know," she said, and something in her voice cracked between disbelief and disgust. "Seven years, and you actually think this is the first time Helix's people showed up at our door."

"Maya. Tell me what happened."

She stared at him for a long moment, like she was deciding whether he deserved the truth at all. Then the words rushed out of her like a flood she had clearly been holding back for years.

"After you went to prison, I couldn't work. I couldn't hold a job because every place I applied, someone had already gotten to them first. Word gets around fast when your last name is Vale and your brother's the man who killed a patient and everyone avoided us." Her jaw tightened. "So I went to a rehabilitation clinic instead. Physical therapy work. It paid enough to help Mom."

"A clinic connected to Helix." Cassian added, already knowing where this was going. His hands already fisted at his side.

"I didn't know that at first. Neither did anyone else who worked there." Her voice dropped, flattened, like she was reading from a report about someone else's life instead of her own because that's exactly what it was, living on denial was how she has been surviving. "Eighteen months in, there was an accident with equipment on the therapy floor. A malfunction, they called it but I was under a rig that wasn't supposed to fail."

Her hand went, briefly, unconsciously, to her own knee, more like a reflex action.

"The official report says equipment failure. I've read that report a hundred times, Cassian. I know exactly which company made the machine. I know exactly which parent company owns that manufacturer." She looked up at him, her eyes burning. "It wasn't an accident. It was a warning. To make sure nobody in this family got any ideas about digging into what really happened to you."

"Apparently," she continued. "sending you to prison was not enough. They wanted to make sure anyone you left behind did not survive."

Her face became hardened, like as if she remembered something ugly again.

"And your so called wife and her family whom you abandoned us for, they didn't even bother coming to check on us, last we heard, she divorced you and that useless brother of hers has been going about, telling everyone who cared to listen that his sister is getting engaged to a man befitting of her and guess who? Julian Harrow!"

Cassian felt something in his chest go very still and very cold. He already knew about Lucia and Julian but his mind was more focused on Helix.

"Why would they need to warn anyone off. The case was closed. I was convicted."

Maya laughed but there was no humor in it at all.

"Because somebody didn't accept that verdict as final." She held his gaze. "Somebody spent years trying to prove you didn't do it."

The room seemed to tilt slightly under him.

"Who." He asked cautiously.

"Nora Callahan." Their mother said the name softly, from where she sat clutching a folded dish towel like it was the only solid thing left in the room.

Cassian's breath caught somewhere behind his ribs.

"Your research partner," his mother went on, when he didn't say anything. "She never believed what they said about you. Not for one week. She started asking questions, pulling old files, finding people who used to work in that lab and had since disappeared."

"She kept going for years," Maya added. "Long after everyone else gave up on you. Long after *I* gave up on you, if I'm honest." She said it like an accusation, but her voice had lost some of its heat. "She built a whole case. Names, dates, a technician who got fired right before your trial for no reason anyone could explain."

Cassian's hands had curled into a fist without him deciding to make them.

"What happened to her." He asked, his voice quieter than normal and dread filling his heart with what he was going to hear

His mother's eyes filled with tears that she didn't answer right away.

"Mom." He called softly.

"Helix found out how close she was getting." His mother's voice trembled. " So they sent someone. They didn't kill her, Cassian. They were smarter than that. They knew a body would draw questions so Instead they..." She pressed the towel to her mouth for a moment before she could finish. "They ruined her hands. Every fine nerve, gone. She'll never hold a pipette again. Never run a lab. Never work as a clinician for the rest of her life."

The silence that followed felt very heavy. Llike something physically pressing down on the room.

*She did this for me. She lost everything trying to save me.*

"She disappeared after that," Maya said quietly. "Stopped answering calls. Stopped showing her face anywhere. As far as most people know, she just gave up and vanished."

"Except she didn't vanish," their mother added, and something bitter crept into her voice for the first time. "The Rowans know exactly where she is. And tonight, they're using her."

Cassian's head came up sharply. "Using her how."

"Helix is taking the company public. There's a gala tonight. The Rowans and the Harrows, celebrating together like one big happy family now that Lucia's engaged to Julian." Maya's voice was ice. "Somebody thought it would be entertaining to invite Nora. Parade her in front of the whole city as a joke. The pathetic woman who threw her life away chasing a convicted man."

Cassian stood very still.

Every version of the man who had walked out of that prison this morning. Calm, calculating, patient went quiet somewhere deep inside him, replaced by something with no interest in patience at all.

"They're humiliating her tonight." Cassian finished.

"In about four hours," Maya said. "In front of everyone who matters in this city."

Cassian looked at his sister, like really looked at her, at the wheelchair, at seven years of anger she'd earned every right to. Then at his mother, older than she should have been, still flinching at loud noises, like as if she was expecting an attack at any moment.

He made himself a promise then, silently, the same way he'd made himself hundreds of promises in a cell that never seemed to end.

'I will heal your legs, Maya, if it takes everything I learned and everything I have left. I will fix what they broke. And Nora — I am not letting them do this to you twice.'

He turned toward the door.

"Where are you going?" his mother asked, fear already creeping back into her voice.

Maya answered before he could. Her voice was flat, but for the first time since he'd walked in, there was no venom in it, just something closer to a dare.

"Where do you think, Mom." She wheeled herself half a turn to watch him go. "He's going to the party."