His Brother's Ruin

Chapter Four: The File

The pack clinic felt different when I walked through the doors, knowing I might never walk through them again.

Two days had passed since Daniel filed the anonymous complaint. My licence was suspended pending investigation, and every patient I had spent years caring for now belonged to someone else. The receptionist, a young woman named Clara who used to bring me coffee in the mornings, would not meet my eyes when I approached the front desk.

"I'm here to collect my files," I said. "Personal records only."

Clara nodded and slid a visitor badge across the counter. "Third floor… You have thirty minutes."

The elevator ride felt longer than usual. I kept my back straight and my face neutral, but inside, my wolf paced restlessly, sensing danger in ways my human mind could not quite name. She had been more active since the pregnancy, stirring at moments when I least expected it, reminding me that the power I had buried for so long was still there, waiting.

I pushed her down and stepped off the elevator.

The third floor held the patient archives, rows of cabinets filled with medical histories and treatment plans, and the quiet details of lives I had touched over the past five years. I found my personal drawer and began transferring files into the bag I had brought, moving quickly but carefully.

A referral log caught my attention.

The entry was six months old, a patient visit to a private care facility I did not remember. The patient's file had no name, only a medical identification number and a notation that read transferred care, healer discretion.

I stared at the number. Something about it nagged at the edges of my memory, a detail I could not quite place.

I photographed the entry with my phone and finished packing my files.

That evening, I spread the photograph across the dining table in Casmir's estate and watched Valour cross-reference the medical number against the financial records he had been pulling for the inheritance case.

The match came back fast.

"Crestwood Private Care," Valour said. "It is a long-term care facility registered to a shell company. The shell company traces back to Daniel's personal accounts."

Casmir leaned forward sharply. "Daniel has been paying for a patient at Crestwood for two years. No name on the file, no external contact, complete isolation."

"Who would he hide like that?" I asked.

Neither of them answered, but I noticed a shift in the cashier's expression.

"I need to go there," I said.

"No." Casmir shunned me. "Not until we know what we are walking into."

"My credentials still work for another forty-eight hours. After that, Daniel's review board shuts me out completely." I met his eyes and held them. "If there is something at that facility that can help us, I need to find it now."

Valour looked at us with a thoughtful expression. "She has a point."

"She has a death wish."

"I have a brain and a medical licence that Daniel has not destroyed yet." I stood and grabbed my coat from the back of the chair. "I’m going…You can help me, or you can stay here and worry."

Casmir's jaw tightened, but he did not stop me.

The cab dropped me at Crestwood Private Care an hour later, a stone building tucked into a quiet corner of the city where old money hid its secrets. I signed in at the front desk using my healer credentials and followed the nurse through corridors that smelled like antiseptic and silence.

The east wing held long-term patients. I moved through the halls with quiet purpose, checking room numbers until I found the one at the end of the corridor. The door was unmarked, but the medical number matched the entry in my log.

I pushed the door open.

The man in the bed was old and thin, his skin paper-white against the hospital sheets. But his eyes were sharp, alert in a way that did not match his frail body. He looked up when I entered, and something in his face changed.

"You have her eyes," he said. "Your mother's eyes."

I almost lost my breath.

"My name is Valentina; I’m a healer with the Silverstone Pack."

"I know who you are." His voice was rough but steady. "I have been waiting for someone to find me. I didn’t expect it to be Helena's daughter."

Helena! My mother's name.

"How do you know my mother?"

The old man's eyes filled with something that looked like grief and relief tangled together. "She was the pack healer who treated me years ago. She told me things that no one else dared to say."

"Who are you?"

He lifted one trembling hand and pointed to the nightstand beside his bed. A photograph lay face down on the wooden surface. I picked it up and turned it over.

Two young men stared back at me. One dark-haired and sharp-featured, barely out of his teens but already carrying the weight of something heavy in his eyes. The other golden-haired and smiling, his arm thrown around the first boy's shoulders like they were brothers by choice rather than circumstance.

I recognized the dark-haired boy immediately. Younger, softer around the edges, but unmistakably Casmir.

"His name was Solomon," the old man said. "I was the head of the Hartwell Pack for forty years. And Daniel has kept me locked in this room for two years because I tried to bring my real son home."

The photograph slipped from my fingers.

Solomon Hartwell! Casmir's father. The man Daniel claimed died fourteen months ago in a private ceremony that Casmir was not allowed to attend.

"You are supposed to be dead," I whispered in fear.

"Daniel forged the death certificate himself." Solomon's eyes burned with a fury that seemed too large for his frail body. "He committed me to this facility when I tried to reverse Casmir's exile. He has been paying to keep me silent ever since."

My mind raced through the implications. Daniel did not just exile Casmir. He stole his inheritance, accused him of a crime he did not commit, and imprisoned their father to prevent the truth from coming out.

"I need to tell Casmir," I said.

"Tell him I never stopped fighting for him." Solomon's hand found mine, his grip weak but desperate. "Tell him his father never believed Daniel's lies. Tell him I am sorry it took so long for someone to find me."

I squeezed his hand and promised to return.

The cab ride back to the estate felt like a fever dream. I kept seeing Solomon's face, his sharp eyes, the photograph of two boys who grew into enemies. Daniel had built his entire empire on lies and stolen legacies and the silence of a father too weak to fight back.

And Casmir had spent six years believing his father chose Daniel over him.

I burst through the estate doors and found Casmir in the study, Valour standing beside him with a tablet in his hands. They both turned when I entered, and whatever they saw in my face made Casmir go very still.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Your father is alive."

The words landed like a bomb in the silence.

Casmir did not move. He did not blink. He stood perfectly still while the information settled into his bones, and then something in his expression shifted, a crack in the ice that revealed the devastation underneath.

"Where?" His voice came out rough, broken.

"Crestwood Private Care. Daniel has been paying to keep him hidden for two years." I crossed the room and put the photograph in his hands. "He told me to tell you he never stopped fighting for you."

Casmir looked down at the photograph of two boys who used to be brothers. His jaw tightened, and his hands trembled, and for one brief moment, the most controlled man I had ever met looked like he might shatter into a thousand pieces.

Then the control returned, colder than before, sharpened into something that looked like war.

"Valour," he said. "File the emergency welfare application tonight. Use my father's real name."

"Daniel will know within hours."

"Good." Casmir set the photograph down and turned toward the window. "Let him know. Let him understand that everything he built is about to burn."

The fire in the hearth crackled and popped. Outside, the night pressed against the windows like something waiting to be let in.

I watched Casmir's reflection in the glass, and for the first time since I walked into that bar, I saw the man beneath the monster everyone else believed him to be.

A son who never stopped loving a father he thought had abandoned him.

And a man who was about to destroy his brother for everything he had stolen.