They Called Me a Fraud, So I Walked Into the Don's House novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Prize
Gregory takes her therapy and calls her a fraud in front of four hundred phones, and Lenora walks to a mafia gate where she learns she is already named as the boss's doctor.
Gregory Schultz walked onto the stage with my green lab notebook under his arm and waved at table nine.
Four hundred people in the hospital ballroom stood up and clapped for him.
My handwriting was on the cover, and my coffee ring was still on the corner.
I stood by table nine in a blue dress with his ring on my finger.
Ten minutes earlier, he had caught me in the hallway and kissed my forehead.
"Stay quiet through the toast, Len," he said. "Tonight I fix everything. Trust me."
I had trusted him for six years, and I had lived in his apartment for two.
For three of those years I had worked on a cure for marrow failure.
It kills healthy people within a year.
I built it. Gregory signed the grant applications.
On the stage, he adjusted the microphone and smiled at the room.
"The Founders Prize belongs to my entire team," he said. "Sadly, one member of that team falsified data."
The ballroom went quiet.
"Dr. Lenora Finley, the board has asked you to leave the hospital tonight."
Heads turned toward table nine.
Phones came up all around me, dozens of them, small and bright.
Behind Gregory, the screen changed to my data table with his name typed across the top.
The board chair was already walking toward me, and two security guards walked behind him.
"I'm so sorry, Len," Gregory said into the microphone. His voice cracked. "I did everything I could to protect you."
I could have cried then. Everyone expected me to.
Instead I walked straight down the aisle, past the guards, and up the steps to the stage.
Gregory's smile stayed on his face. His hand tightened on the notebook.
I pulled it out of his fingers.
I opened it to page ninety-one and held it toward the nearest camera.
"This page is dated eleven months before Gregory read a single line of my work," I said. "Anyone who wants to check can come and check."
A guard took my arm.
I slid the ring off my finger with my other hand and dropped it into Gregory's champagne glass on the podium.
"Keep the prize, Gregory," I said. "You'll need something to hold."
Then I let the guard walk me out.
My key card did not work at Gregory's building.
A doorman I knew by name handed me two plastic bags of my clothes.
He would not meet my eyes.
I sat in my car in the garage with the engine off.
Under the spare tire in the trunk was the one thing Gregory had never found.
It was a steel case with a combination lock, and it held my original samples and the first pages of my notes.
Three weeks earlier, Gregory had asked me to do him a favor.
He gave me the blood results of one private patient, a man listed only as A. Carbone, and asked me to look over the numbers.
"A second pair of eyes, Len. He's important, and I don't want to miss anything."
I read those results every night for weeks.
By the end I knew exactly what was happening in that man's blood.
I knew he had perhaps three months left.
The only person I could tell was the man who had just thrown me out of my own life.
So I did not tell Gregory.
At seven on Monday morning, I stood in the rain outside a black iron gate at the edge of the city.
I had a printed sheet of numbers in one hand and the steel case in the other.
A camera on the gatepost turned to follow me.
A man in a dark coat came out of the gatehouse holding an umbrella.
"Dr. Finley," he said.
I had not given my name.
"I'd like to see Mr. Carbone," I said. "His platelets will be under ten thousand in eleven weeks if nobody changes his treatment. The numbers are on this page."
He took the page and read it without hurrying.
Then he nodded at the case. "What's in that?"
"That stays with me."
He held out his hand. I did not move.
"Then you stay with me," he said, almost politely. "Arms out, please."
He searched my coat, my bag and my phone. He gave the case back without trying the lock, though I saw him look at it twice.
"My name is Rocco," he said. "This house has one rule."
He waited until I looked at him.
"If you lie to Mr. Carbone about anything, you don't drive home."
I caught my face in the wet black steel of the gate. My hair was soaked, but my eyes were dry.
"I'm not lying," I said.
"Good." Rocco pushed the gate open. "Because a letter came from Dr. Schultz's office last week. It names you as the doctor in charge of Mr. Carbone's care."
I stopped in the gateway.
"You've been his doctor for a month, Dr. Finley," Rocco said. "So tell me what you've done to him."
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