Page 12 of Psychotic Faith
I start with the basics. Birth certificate pulls up immediately: born at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, seven pounds three ounces. School records next. Straight A student through elementary, brief dip in middle school, then back to perfection by high school. Medical files show standard childhood vaccinations, broken wrist at age nine from falling off a bike, anxiety medication prescribed at thirteen.
Thirteen. After whatever happened at twelve.
The death certificate loads slowly, as if the system itself hesitates to show me. There it is, her mother's full name. Jenna Bailey Winters, died 2014. Cause of death listed as "suspicious circumstances"—not homicide, not accident, not natural causes. Just suspicious. What kind of death defies classification?
The juvenile records are sealed, locked behind legal walls that would stop normal people. But I've never been normal, and the encryption they use might as well be tissue paper. My chemistry background helps—understanding systems, breaking them down to components, finding the weak molecular bonds. My fingers fly across the keyboard, breaking through layers of protection. Someone wanted this buried. Someone with money and connections.
I dig deeper. Hospital records from that time. Jenna Winters worked as a nurse at Chicago Memorial, night shifts in the cardiac unit. Trent Neumann was on the hospital board. The connection feels important, electric in my fingers as I type. T.N. The initials from Faith's journal.
T.N. is Trent Neumann. The pharmaceutical executive. The one she's been circling.
The door opens without warning. Only family enters my workspace uninvited.
"Missed you at dinner." Nico stands in the doorway, still in tactical gear from whatever enforcement he handled tonight. Blood spatter decorates his left sleeve in a pattern that suggests close-range work. "Third time this month."
"Been busy." I don't look away from the screens as code scrolls past.
"I can see that." He moves closer, and I feel him stop when he sees what fills my monitors. Her driver's license photo, her library employment records, her mother's death certificate. "The blonde from the restaurant? The boss had eyes there. Said you made contact."
Of course the boss knows everything. Our oldest brother has this city wired like his personal nervous system. Nothing happens without his knowledge, including my first real interaction with her.
"Define contact," I murmur, pulling up Neumann's business records. Neumann Pharmaceuticals. Major contracts with hospitals across Illinois.
Nico pulls up a chair, settling in with the patience of someone who's waited through plenty of my obsessions. "The construction worker from Tuesday. The barista from last week. The businessman from Friday. All connected to her?"
"They looked at her wrong." I show him what I've found. "But this one—Trent Neumann—he did more than look."
"Neumann?" Nico leans forward. "I did security assessment for his company last year. Place was locked down tight, but there were irregularities. Missing inventory that didn't match the books. Settlements that got buried."
"So what’s the connection? Why is Faith getting close to him? I saw her name on some charity rosters—she volunteers at everything his family touches."
"She's hunting him," Nico breathes.
"Legally,” I hiss, nodding. “Through the system. That's what all her legal research is for."
The door opens again. Sofia enters still wearing an evening dress from whatever society function she attended tonight, looking like she stepped from a magazine.
"Boys plotting without me?" She drapes herself over a chair, but her eyes are sharp. "I'm hurt."
She glances at the screens and goes very still when she sees Neumann's photo.
"Trent Neumann?" Her voice drops an octave. "That piece of garbage tried to touch me once. Two years ago at the medical charity auction. Kept talking about how I reminded him of someone, kept trying to get me alone."
The temperature in the room drops twenty degrees. My vision fractures into possibilities: Neumann's hands removed at the wrists, his fingers fed to him one knuckle at a time, his eyes taking a tour of other people's faces. Sofia. My baby sister. The one we all protected after the massacre, and this fuck put his hands on her.
"Why is he still breathing?" My voice sounds like gravel in a blender.
"Alessandro handled it. Convinced Neumann that touching Rosetti women would be unhealthy. Made some deal about pharmaceutical distribution that kept him away from me. He backed off."
"Alex should have let me handle it." My hands curl into fists, imagining everything I would have done to Neumann for daring to touch Sofia. Everything I will do to him for whatever he did to Faith.
"Your girl's been patient," Sofia observes, studying what I've pulled up, quickly figuring out the scene. "Years of getting close.Teaching his kids at Sunday school, befriending his wife at charity events. She's been playing a long game."
"And tomorrow?" Nico asks quietly. "Neumann's coming to the gala. Major donor—two hundred grand this year alone. The boss can't refuse him without cause."
My blood stops moving. Tomorrow, Faith walks into my family's hotel ballroom. Tomorrow, Trent Neumann will be there. The man she's been hunting.
"She doesn't know he'll be there," I say slowly. " She has no idea she's walking into—"
