Chapter 7 - THE DATE CIRCLED IN RED
The red circle turned an ordinary prenatal appointment into a date everyone feared. Natasha was thirty-one weeks pregnant when Naomi showed her the copied schedule. The appointment was still more than a week away. She wanted to tear the paper in half and forget it existed. Instead, she asked for a clean copy, wrote the time and method of receipt on the back, and handed it to the investigator.
"I am not canceling my medical care because someone tells me to," she said.
Naomi agreed, though she recommended coordinating with the clinic and police about the threatening message. Natasha also agreed to alter the appointment arrangements if her doctor advised it. There was a difference between refusing intimidation and pretending danger wasn't real.
At home her mother was assembling the crib. She had ignored the instruction manual and arranged the pieces by size along the living room floor, declaring that anyone who needed fourteen pages to explain four wooden sides had probably designed them badly.
"The manufacturer's instructions are there for a reason," Natasha said.
"So are grandmothers."
Mara leaned through the doorway with a bag of groceries. "Please tell me neither of you is going to improvise structural engineering around my honorary niece."
They ended up following the instructions together, arguing cheerfully over bolts and discovering one slat had been installed backward. The finished crib stood beside a soft green chair Natasha had found at a resale shop. She ran her hand along the rail and felt something shift inside her chest. The room was small. The child would outgrow it. But it was a room built with cooperation rather than orders.
Leo was facing a different kind of construction in Chicago: the slow dismantling of a structure he had once believed would last forever. Independent management had frozen the questionable consulting agreements. Former employees were being interviewed. Lawyers argued over access to records. Every time Leo opened the newspaper, a new headline described Tomlin Consolidated's troubles in language that implied he had either failed to know what happened or chosen not to care.
Both possibilities were painful because both contained truth.
Ruth Anders advised him to stop attending the office. "The audit is working," she said. "Your presence makes employees afraid to speak."
Leo looked around the conference room he'd occupied for years. His name was carved discreetly into the brass plate beside the door.
"Then I won't come back until you ask," he said.
Ruth seemed surprised. "Thank you."
He drove home without security, stopped at a roadside diner, and ate a plate of eggs he had ordered himself. The waitress did not recognize him. She called him honey, refilled his coffee, and told him the pie was terrible that week because the new supplier couldn't get the crust right. He found himself grateful that she spoke to him as though he were an ordinary customer.
When he returned home, Donovan was waiting with news. Grant Sloane, the security contractor whose voice appeared on Natasha's voicemail, had given investigators records of assignments he claimed came from Victor. Some of those assignments involved watching Natasha. Others concerned June Dorsey's clinic and Peter Vale. Grant had sought counsel and was cooperating. His statements needed corroboration, but several dates matched the invoices and vehicle footage already collected.
"Victor knows?" Leo asked.
"He knows Grant has spoken."
"Then he may get desperate."
Donovan folded his arms. "There are men who will ask how you want to handle that."
"Tell them I don't want anyone approaching him. The investigators have the evidence."
"They'll call it weakness."
"Then they'll have to learn a new word."
That night Leo took out Carlo's letter and read it again. He wondered if his uncle would have made the same choice with enemies closing in. He doubted it. Carlo had learned regret but died before he had to put it into practice. Leo had the crueler assignment of living long enough to face what he'd done.
He sent Natasha a short note through Naomi asking whether he could write to the baby. He did not request an ultrasound photograph or a response. Natasha read the question over breakfast and spent the day thinking about it.
Finally she wrote: You may write a letter. I will decide when and whether to give it to her.
The letter arrived in an ordinary white envelope. Natasha expected something extravagant, a story about the Tomlin family, a promise of wealth, perhaps an apology addressed to a child too young to understand it. Instead Leo wrote about growing up above the lake, about getting lost in a public library at eight, and about how his father taught him to tie a necktie but never to say he was frightened.
I hope you learn sooner than I did that being strong doesn't mean being obeyed, he wrote. If you are angry with me someday, I hope you know you can say so. I want to become the kind of father who listens when you do.
Natasha reread those lines in the quiet of the bedroom. She did not forgive him. But she placed the letter in a folder beside the ultrasound pictures, because it was the first thing he'd given their daughter that asked nothing from her in return.
At thirty-two weeks, her blood pressure rose again during a routine visit. Dr. Shah ordered additional monitoring and explained that they might need to adjust plans if signs of a pregnancy-related hypertensive disorder developed. Natasha took the information home, wrote down her questions, and called the next morning when a headache worried her. Some tests remained reassuring. Other findings required closer follow-up.
"I wish I could promise you every part of the next few weeks will go exactly as planned," Dr. Shah said. "But that isn't how pregnancy works. We'll make decisions with the information we have."
Natasha trusted her more for refusing to offer certainty she couldn't give.
The threatening date arrived on a gray Thursday. Natasha went to the clinic with her mother and a police officer assigned through the ongoing investigation, who remained outside the examination area. The waiting room contained magazines, an elderly man sleeping behind a newspaper, and a child arguing about whether dinosaurs could swim. No one leaped from a hallway. No black sedan waited outside.
The appointment went ahead. The baby moved well on the monitor. Natasha's readings again required follow-up but no immediate delivery. By evening the day had passed without an attack.
At first she felt relief. Then she felt anger so sharp she had to sit down. Someone had stolen weeks of peace from her without even needing to appear. The threat itself had become the weapon.
Naomi called with another development. Investigators were examining whether Grant's messages and Victor's payments supported charges involving harassment and intimidation, while financial investigators continued tracing the diverted relief-fund money. The threat to Natasha might have been designed to pressure Leo into withdrawing cooperation before the company's board finalized access to disputed accounts.
"So I was a lever," Natasha said.
"That's one possibility the evidence suggests."
"They didn't have to touch me to make the point."
"No. But the point is now part of the record."
The next morning, Victor appeared on local television with a statement claiming the investigation was a family power struggle driven by Leo's personal life. He suggested unnamed outsiders had manipulated his cousin and refused to answer questions about the medical fund. Natasha watched fifteen seconds before turning the screen off. She refused to let another rich man's version of her life become the only version that existed.
She worked with Naomi to prepare a brief public statement confirming that she had reported threats and a suspected privacy violation. She did not reveal her address, medical details, or plans for the birth. She asked that attention remain on the people whose healthcare funding had disappeared. June Dorsey offered to speak about the clinic's experience separately.
The statement ran in several local reports. Natasha hated seeing her name online, but she was relieved that she had chosen the words. Leo read them in his study, understood why she had never wanted his spokesman to tell her story, and sent no comment of his own.
That weekend Natasha folded baby clothes beside her mother and found herself suddenly short of breath after walking upstairs. She rested, then called the maternity team as instructed because the sensation came with a persistent headache and swelling that seemed more pronounced than before.
At the hospital, new tests raised concerns. Dr. Shah explained that the condition might be developing into preeclampsia and recommended admission for monitoring and treatment. Natasha listened to the risks and the choices. Her mother's hand was warm around hers. The baby's heartbeat remained reassuring, but the numbers on the screen no longer permitted them to pretend every day would be routine.
"How long will I be here?" Natasha asked.
"We'll reassess frequently. Our first goal is to keep you and your daughter safe."
Natasha looked toward the window. Outside, streetlights flickered over wet pavement. She had spent months fighting men who wanted to choose her future. Now she faced a threat no one had caused and no one could order away.
She called Naomi and asked her to notify Leo that she was in the hospital. Then she took the phone herself.
"Are you okay?" Leo asked, his voice tight.
"I'm being monitored. I don't know what happens next."
"Do you want me there?"
She closed her eyes. Once, he would have been in a car before she could answer. She could hear him waiting now, frightened and motionless, leaving the decision where it belonged.
"Not in the room yet," she said. "But you can come to Milwaukee. Stay nearby. If something changes, I'll call."
"All right."
"And Leo?"
"Yes?"
"Don't bring an army."
She heard a broken little laugh. "Just me."
He arrived in Milwaukee after midnight and checked into a hotel five blocks from the hospital. He did not ask which room she occupied. At two in the morning Natasha woke to the sound of a nurse adjusting the monitor. The baby moved beneath the straps, restless and alive.
She placed her palm over the curve and whispered, "We're going to meet soon, Little Star. I just need you to be patient a little longer."
May you like
Outside her window a fine autumn rain began to fall, softening the hospital lights beyond the glass.
For the first time in months, the danger she feared most did not have a human face. And that made it no less real.
