13

Jerome ran his fingertips along the edge of the USB drive twice before slowly inserting it into the laptop's port. He had assumed it was another partner's data, but the next second, the screen didn't display a data table—instead, it showed the corridor of that mental hospital on the outskirts of the city. Almost the moment the image appeared, his breath caught in his throat. The camera shook violently, clearly a covert recording, yet it captured the slender figure in the hospital gown with precision— it was Queena. She was being held by the arms by two orderlies, her hair disheveled and stuck to her sweat-soaked forehead, her face as pale as paper. “Behave yourself!” One of the orderlies shouted impatiently, raising his hand to slap her face. A sharp crack echoed as Queena’s head jerked to the side, and blood quickly seeped from the corner of her mouth. Jerome’s fingers clenched the edge of the table, his fingertips sinking into the wood grain. He watched as the people in the video dra