Irresistible Boss Succumbing to Your Touch (Maria Anita) novel Chapter 3

Breno’s POV

I was quite excited about this unofficial investigation that Flavian had asked me to do. The whole thing seemed strange, yet everything had been treated as natural and considered mere coincidence.

It was Saturday morning when I arrived very early in that small town and took a drive around to get a better look at the area. It was a small urban area with very extensive rural surroundings. It would be very difficult for a doctor to make house calls in many places, but the farm where the pregnant woman died during childbirth was only twenty minutes from town, with a good road leading there.

I went back downtown, walked around the square, had lunch at a nice little restaurant, and chatted with some of the older residents, saying I was thinking of moving to the area, but no one said anything useful. It seemed like a place where nothing ever happened.

Finally, I went to the small medical clinic. There was a young woman at the reception, no more than twenty years old, certainly not who I was looking for. But I introduced myself, not as a police officer - the idea was to stay under the radar, especially since I was conducting an unofficial investigation.

"Miss, I need to speak with a nurse, I believe she's the most senior nurse here, what's her name again?" I pretended to try to remember, and the helpful young woman assisted me.

"Oh, that would definitely be Rosalia." The girl smiled and spoke in a lower voice. "I think she's been here since before the town was built."

I smiled at the girl and thanked her for her help, claiming that my memory wasn't what it used to be, and she smiled sympathetically.

"A friend, knowing I'd be in the area, asked me to speak with her because she might know where to find someone. Would it be possible for me to talk to Rosalia?" I asked, trying to be very friendly and justifying my search for the old nurse, as I knew I would be the talk of the town - the only news around here in a long time.

"Well, she's not on duty today, but you can go to her house, it's very close by." The young woman proved more helpful than I'd expected. She gave me detailed directions to the nurse's house and mentioned that she lived alone.

It really wasn't far - it was a charming but small house, with a low wall in front and a little gate that came up to my waist, full of flowers hanging by the door. I clapped my hands, and soon a stern-looking woman of indeterminate age, who was certainly who I was looking for, appeared at the window and invited me in, coming to receive me at the door.

" Rosalia?" She confirmed with a nod. "My name is Breno, I'm here at the request of a friend who wants to find someone and thinks you might know their whereabouts."

"Come in." She let me through and pointed to the sofa where I sat down. She took a seat in a nearby armchair. "Who are you looking for?"

"A nurse who worked with you about twenty years ago. She used to care for people in the rural areas of the city..." I did not need to finish.

"That snake Gisele?" The lady scoffed. "Why would you want to find her? That woman is worthless."

"Look, I don't know my friend's reasons." It was not convenient to reveal my motives.

"She would extort money from those poor people, telling them the doctor would not see them, but she would help. She would provide medications that only a doctor could prescribe. But the doctor had no idea what was happening - there are many hard-to-reach places around here, lots of farms and smallholdings. You know how it is." The elderly nurse clearly had no fondness for this Gisele.

"I see. Does she still live in town?" I asked.

"No, she left about twenty years ago. That was when the doctor discovered what she was doing."

"How did he find out?"

"Yes, Orlando's wife went into premature labor."

"What a coincidence! And the doctor saved the one who arrived nearly dead - what happened that he couldn't save the other?"

"Oh, my child, one of those terrible accidents! They lived on a farm, not too far away, but that day the wife was home alone with a maid. Instead of getting the doctor, the maid called some midwife - I don't even know who she was. When Orlando arrived, he found his wife and baby dead. It was a girl."

"How horrible!"

"Yes. I always thought the lucky break for the woman the doctor saved was the other one's death, because if he had gone to the farm, he wouldn't have been at the clinic when the woman in labor arrived. It was very tragic. I never understood why the maid didn't come get the doctor. But, well, that maid died shortly after anyway."

"My goodness! So much tragedy! How did the maid die?"

"She drowned in Hat Lake. Which is strange too, because nobody swims in that lake - it's very dangerous, they say there's sand at the bottom that swallows people up. Look, I'll make us some coffee so we can continue talking. I get so lonely that when someone visits, I get carried away."

"But I'm loving our conversation, Rosalia." The lady smiled; the grumpy expression she had when I arrived was completely gone.

I left Rosalia's house after dinner, with lots of interesting information and the whereabouts of that nurse Gisele. The more I investigated this case, the more certain I became that something was very wrong with it. I had a lot to discuss with Flavian.