Chapter 7 - THE PSYCHIATRIST’S FORM
Dr. Harris was exactly the kind of man Ethan collected around himself.
Polished.
Measured.
Mildly paternal.
Dangerous in a professional tone.
He sat in the clinic conference room with a folder on the table and concern arranged carefully across his face. When Anna entered with Nikolai and Dr. Levin, Harris rose as though greeting a frightened patient instead of a legal target.
“Anna,” he said gently, “I’m relieved you’re all right.”
“I don’t remember asking you to come.”
“You didn’t need to. Ethan called because he was concerned.”
Dr. Levin sat opposite him.
“You filed an emergency psychiatric stabilization request.”
Harris folded his hands.
“Ms. Miller has a recent history of anxiety, disorientation, missed medications, and now a public collapse. She also appears to have attached herself to an unrelated third party during an episode of distress.”
Nikolai smiled without warmth.
“I caught her when she fell.”
Harris turned toward him.
“And you are?”
“Nikolai Volkov.”
That seemed to mean nothing to Harris, which made him briefly the most honest man in the room.
He continued, “My concern is that Anna may currently lack the judgment required to assess her own safety.”
Anna stared at him.
“In whose notes?”
“In mine.”
“You saw me for twelve minutes last month.”
“And your husband has provided additional observations.”
There it was.
The partnership.
Dr. Levin placed the toxicology results on the table between them.
“She has been over-sedated.”
Harris barely glanced at the page.
“That may have been unintentional adjustment overlap.”
“By whom?” Levin asked.
Harris shrugged lightly. “Patients often misunderstand dosage.”
Anna almost laughed.
That was the genius of people like Ethan. He never needed perfect lies, only plausible fog.
Nikolai spoke for the first time in nearly a minute.
“If you proceed with that petition, doctor, I will request full disclosure of every communication you have had with Ethan Miller and every prescription change you authorized in the last six months.”
Harris turned his full attention toward him now.
“This is not your matter.”
Nikolai’s expression did not change.
“It became my matter when a frightened woman collapsed in public with her husband’s marks on her throat and a trust approaching maturity in five weeks.”
Harris’s eyes flicked to Anna.
Just once.
But it was enough.
He knew about the trust too—or at least enough to understand why that date mattered.
Anna saw it.
So did Nikolai.
Harris leaned back slowly.
“I think Ms. Miller is being fed a financial narrative during a vulnerable moment.”
Dr. Levin answered before Anna could.
“And I think you are attempting to pathologize her resistance.”
Harris closed the folder.
“Then perhaps this can wait.”
No one believed he was retreating permanently.
Only tactically.
After he left, Anna remained standing beside the table because sitting suddenly felt too much like surrender.
“They’re all connected,” she said.
“Yes,” Nikolai answered.
“How many people know?”
“More than should.”
“Who else?”
Nikolai hesitated.
Too long.
Anna looked at him sharply.
“Who else?”
He finally said, “The executor of your father’s estate. Adrian Chase.”
Anna stared.
“My father’s executor introduced me to Ethan.”
“I know.”
The room became very quiet.
Dr. Levin looked from one to the other and wisely left without comment.
Anna turned back to Nikolai.
“You knew Ethan wasn’t random.”
“I suspected it.”
“And you didn’t say that last night.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you had just fainted in a grocery store and I was prioritizing the man currently bruising your throat over the man who may have placed him in your life.”
Anna’s anger flared anyway.
“Do not decide for me what order the betrayal arrives in.”
Nikolai accepted that without argument.
“Fair.”
Her phone buzzed again.
This time it was a text from an unknown number containing only a photograph.
A mahogany safety deposit box.
A brass key.
And a note in Ethan’s handwriting:
You forgot your mother left things in my house too.
Anna’s blood went cold.
Because she knew that key.
She had seen it once in childhood in her mother’s jewelry case.
The case that vanished after her mother died.
May you like
And below the picture came a second message.
Sign the transfer, or I open the box before you do.
