Part 2: A Crime Boss Followed His Housekeeper to the Hospital and Discovered She Was Paying for His Worst Sin

The next afternoon, the pediatric wing of Bellweather Children’s Hospital was bathed in the pale glow of autumn sunlight.

Mateo Reyes was sitting on his bed, carefully coloring the crest of a Triceratops with a green crayon that had been sharpened down to a tiny stub. The door swung open softly.

He expected Nurse Sarah with his afternoon medication, or Aunt Claire sneaking in during her lunch break. Instead, a tall man walked in.

The man wore a tailored charcoal wool suit, an expensive navy silk tie, and handmade leather shoes that didn't make a sound. His face was sharp, scarred faintly along the jawline, and his dark eyes looked like they hadn't slept in a thousand years. Under his arm, he carried a massive cardboard box sealed with glossy yellow tape.

"Are you Mateo?" the man asked. His voice was deep, rumbling like distant thunder, but remarkably soft.

Mateo nodded slowly, gripping his green crayon like a weapon. "Are you a doctor? You don't have a white coat."

"No," Roman said, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him. "I’m... a friend of your aunt."

Mateo’s eyes widened. "You work for the scary man?"

Roman froze. A faint, bitter smile tugged at his mouth. "She told you about the scary man?"

"She said her boss is very serious and lives in a big castle with a lot of statues," Mateo said matter-of-factly, setting the crayon down. "She said he never smiles, but he pays on time, so we have to be polite."

"She’s right," Roman murmured, walking over to the foot of the bed. "He is very serious."

Roman set the heavy box on the chair beside the bed. "This is for you."

Mateo stared at the box. On the side was the logo of an elite robotic engineering firm in Switzerland. "What is it?"

"A new set of legs," Roman said.

He didn't explain that he had wired two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to a medical tech developer in Zurich at three in the morning to fly a prototype pediatric exoskeleton to New York on a private charter. He didn't tell the boy that the machine could stimulate spinal nerve pathways ten times faster than the clunky steel braces sitting on the nightstand.

"Does it pinch?" Mateo asked warily.

"Not this one," Roman said. "This one makes you run fast. Like a raptor."

Mateo gasped, his small hands reaching out to touch the smooth carbon-fiber casing visible through the plastic window of the box. "Aunt Claire says we can't take presents. She says people who give big presents always want something back."

The words struck Roman right between the ribs, sharp and accurate.

"Your aunt is a very wise woman," Roman said, pulling up a chair and sitting down so his eyes were level with the boy’s. "But she didn't get this as a gift. It was paid for a long time ago. By someone who owed a very large debt."

Mateo looked into Roman’s dark eyes. Children possessed an instinct for truth that adults spent decades unlearning. He tilted his head. "Did you break something of hers?"

Roman swallowed against the stone in his throat. "Yes, Mateo. I broke something that didn't belong to me."

"Did you say sorry?"