Chapter 9 - The Price of Silence
The settlement offer demanded confidentiality about the assault and the disputed fetal-monitoring reports.
It also required Khloe to withdraw her cooperation with any civil investigation connected to Rossi Medical, to the extent the law permitted.
"They bundled my baby's injury with their business contract," Khloe said.
Her attorney, Dana Price, set the papers down.
"The confidentiality provisions don't erase criminal liability, but the offer tells us what they care about."
"Isabella?"
"And possibly the people who approved the monitor deal. We need evidence before drawing conclusions."
Marcus arrived while Dana was still there.
He glanced at the offer and looked sick.
"I never asked them for this."
"I believe you," Khloe said. "That doesn't make it harmless."
Dana advised them not to contact Claudio directly.
The foundation's independent committee had already suspended consideration of the Rossi contract pending an outside technical review.
That afternoon, a hospital technician named Luis Romero came forward through counsel.
He had serviced the Aster fetal monitors at a partner clinic.
"Three months ago, I reported that some devices stopped sounding warnings after a network interruption," he told investigators.
"What happened?" Brooks asked.
"They told us to mark the problem as user error. But I kept the original logs."
He handed over a storage device through his attorney, who documented the transfer.
Dana called Khloe with the news.
"Your reports weren't isolated," she said.
"How many patients?"
"We don't know yet. The review has to determine which incidents were actually related."
"So why did Isabella come after me?"
"Because you asked the question nobody wanted answered."
That evening, Claudio Rossi appeared at the hospital with a television crew waiting outside.
He told reporters his daughter had been unfairly targeted by a jealous wife.
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Then he made an announcement.
He was withdrawing the Rossi family's funding for the neonatal unit where Willa was receiving care.
