Chapter 9: Power of Attorney

Damiano got us to Northwestern Memorial in ten minutes.

The cardiac unit was on the eighth floor.

My stepmother sat in the waiting area in a cream suit, scrolling through her phone.

She looked up when I came off the elevator and didn't bother getting up.

"He's resting," she said. "Danielle's with him. He doesn't need a crowd."

"I'm his daughter."

"And he's asked for Danielle."

I walked past her.

Room 812 had its door half shut.

Through the gap I could see my father propped up in the bed with wires on his chest and an oxygen line under his nose.

His face was gray and his eyes were glassy.

Danielle sat on the edge of his bed in pale pink with a leather folder open on her knees and a pen in her hand.

She was guiding his fingers around the pen.

"Just here, Clifton," she was saying softly. "It's only so I can sign the payroll while you rest."

I knew that folder.

In my first life she'd brought him one just like it, a month before the arrest.

A power of attorney.

With it she'd signed his name on everything, and when the police came, every signature was his.

I pushed the door open so hard it hit the wall.

Danielle jerked, and the pen skidded across the page.

"Odessa," she said. "You scared him."

"Put the pen down."

"This is a family matter."

"I know," I said. "I'm family."

A nurse in navy scrubs came in behind me, drawn by the bang.

She looked at the folder, the pen, and my father's slack face.

"What's going on in here?"

"My stepsister is asking my father to sign a power of attorney," I said clearly. "What has he had in the last hour?"

The nurse looked at his chart, then at Danielle.

"Morphine and a sedative," she said. "He's not signing anything legal today. Ma'am, I'm going to need you to put that away."

Keep reading free with an account. Start This Time I Choose Mr. Mafia from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.