Chapter 2 - THE MAN IN THE DOORWAY
The click behind me was soft.
Barely louder than the antique clock ticking above Renato’s fireplace.
But I knew what it was.
I had heard enough television through the thin walls of our apartment to recognize the sound of a gun being readied.
Dr. Chen’s face went white.
Renato didn’t turn around.
That frightened me more than if he had jumped.
“Marco,” he said calmly.
“I see him.”
I looked toward the doorway.
Marco stood beside the wall with a pistol pointed past me.
Not at Dr. Chen.
At the man who had just entered the library.
He was around sixty, thin, silver-haired, dressed in a dark suit beneath a white physician’s coat.
His hands slowly lifted.
“Renato,” he said, “tell your guard to lower that.”
Renato finally turned.
Something changed in his face.
Not fear.
Recognition.
“Dr. Salvi.”
The doctor swallowed.
Dr. Chen still held the laboratory results.
I looked from her to the man in the doorway.
“Is that him?” Renato asked.
Dr. Chen nodded.
“The prescription bottle was filled under Dr. Matteo Salvi’s authorization.”
Renato stared at Salvi.
“You told me these were ordinary cardiac tablets.”
“They were.”
“Were?”
Salvi’s mouth tightened.
Dr. Chen stepped forward.
“The bottle contains digitoxin at a concentration high enough to accumulate over several doses. Depending on his metabolism, he could have collapsed within days.”
The room became impossibly quiet.
Renato walked toward Salvi.
“You treated my father.”
Salvi looked down.
“You signed his death certificate.”
“Yes.”
“You told me his heart failed.”
“It did.”
“Because of poison?”
Salvi said nothing.
Renato’s voice dropped.
“Look at me.”
The doctor slowly raised his eyes.
I had thought Renato looked terrifying when I warned him outside the hospital.
I had been wrong.
Now he looked like a man holding eight years of grief behind his teeth.
“Did you kill my father?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly.
Too quickly.
Renato took another step.
“Then explain why the same poison appears in my medicine.”
Salvi glanced toward me.
That was when I knew.
He recognized me.
“You,” he whispered.
My stomach twisted.
“You were behind the hospital.”
His face changed.
Marco noticed.
“You’ve seen the kid before?”
Salvi backed toward the door.
Marco raised the gun slightly.
“Don’t.”
Renato turned toward me.
“Was he one of the voices?”
I closed my eyes.
I replayed the conversation I had heard while digging through the hospital recycling bins the night before.
One voice had been low and rough.
The other softer.
Nervous.
I remembered a cough.
A strange little clearing of the throat after almost every sentence.
Dr. Salvi had done it twice since entering the room.
My eyes opened.
“Yes.”
Salvi’s face collapsed.
Renato moved so fast that I barely saw it.
He grabbed the doctor by the front of his coat and slammed him against the wall.
My mother’s voice suddenly came from behind Marco.
“Stop!”
Mom rushed into the library.
She had been downstairs speaking with one of Renato’s security people because she had refused to let me stay inside a mafia boss’s mansion without her.
She crossed straight toward me.
“Grace.”
That was me.
Grace Carter.
Eight years old.
Three feet ten inches of bad timing and curiosity, according to Mom.
She pulled me against her.
“You’re okay?”
“I’m okay.”
Then Mom looked past me.
Her entire body stiffened.
“Dr. Salvi?”
Salvi stared at her.
His face drained even further.
“Dana?”
Renato released him.
“You know each other?”
Mom did not answer immediately.
I looked at her.
“Mom?”
She had the same expression she wore when bills arrived marked FINAL NOTICE.
Except this was worse.
“I worked at St. Andrew’s eight years ago,” she said.
Renato’s attention sharpened.
“What job?”
“Medical records.”
Salvi whispered, “Dana, don’t.”
Mom looked at him.
“Don’t what?”
“Say something you don’t understand.”
“I understood enough to lose my job.”
Renato turned fully toward her.
“What happened?”
Mom held me tighter.
“When your father died, the hospital received a toxicology request.”
Renato stopped breathing.
Salvi closed his eyes.
Mom continued.
“I processed it myself. Antonio Moretti had been admitted after collapsing at dinner. One physician requested a toxin screen because his symptoms didn’t match a normal cardiac event.”
“Which physician?” Renato asked.
“A resident. Dr. Samuel Harris.”
“Where is he?”
“He left St. Andrew’s two weeks later.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Mom looked at Salvi.
“But the toxicology request disappeared before the laboratory ran it.”
Renato’s eyes returned to the doctor.
“Who canceled it?”
Mom answered.
“Dr. Salvi.”
Marco cursed under his breath.
Salvi shook his head.
“I was ordered to.”
“By whom?” Renato demanded.
Salvi said nothing.
Renato moved toward him again.
Dr. Chen stepped between them.
“If you scare him into shutting down, we learn nothing.”
Renato looked as though he disliked hearing that.
But he stopped.
Salvi sank into a chair.
For several seconds, the only sound was his breathing.
Then he whispered, “I didn’t administer the poison to Antonio.”
“But you knew?” Mom asked.
“Not until afterward.”
“Liar.”
Salvi looked at her.
“I suspected.”
“You destroyed the toxicology request.”
“I was afraid.”
Renato laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“My father died and you were afraid?”
Salvi’s eyes suddenly filled.
“You don’t know what your family was like then.”
“Try me.”
The doctor rubbed both hands over his face.
“Antonio had discovered money missing from several Moretti companies. Tens of millions. He believed someone inside his own family was stealing.”
“Who?”
“He never told me.”
“Convenient.”
“He told me he planned to confront the person after dinner.”
Renato went completely still.
“The night he died?”
“Yes.”
Salvi nodded.
“After Antonio collapsed, someone came into the emergency department before you arrived.”
“Who?”
“I can’t.”
Marco stepped forward.
“You can.”
Salvi’s voice broke.
“They’ll kill my daughter.”
Renato’s anger changed.
“You have a daughter?”
“She lives in Boston. Medical residency.”
“Who threatened her?”
“I received photographs three weeks ago. Her apartment. Her hospital. Her car.”
“Who sent them?”
“No name.”
“Then how did you know what they wanted?”
Salvi looked toward the poisoned bottle.
“They told me to replace Renato’s medication.”
My skin felt cold.
“You did it anyway,” I whispered.
Everyone looked at me.
Salvi’s face twisted.
“I thought I could buy time.”
“You said three days,” I told him.
He flinched.
“That’s what you said behind the hospital. ‘Three days, maybe seven.’”
My mother squeezed my shoulder.
Salvi stared at the floor.
“I was supposed to switch the bottle yesterday. Then I was supposed to confirm he took the first dose.”
Renato’s voice turned quieter.
“And the second man?”
Salvi looked terrified.
“He was watching me.”
“Name.”
“I don’t know his real name.”
“Describe him.”
“Late forties. Heavy build. Scar on one hand. He wore hospital scrubs over a suit.”
I remembered something.
“A ring.”
Everyone turned toward me again.
“What ring?” Marco asked.
“The other man kept tapping it against the wall.”
I grabbed my notebook.
I had drawn it while eating oatmeal that morning without realizing why.
A circle.
Inside it, a bird with spread wings.
Renato saw the drawing.
His face changed.
Marco whispered a curse.
Mom looked between them.
“What?”
Renato took my notebook.
“That isn’t a bird.”
“What is it?”
He stared at the symbol.
“A falcon.”
“And?”
Marco slowly lowered his weapon.
“It’s the crest of the Moretti family foundation.”
Renato turned toward the darkened window.
Only a handful of people wore the old foundation signet.
His father had.
Renato did not.
But someone else still did.
“My uncle,” he said.
Marco looked at him sharply.
“Vittorio?”
Renato’s father’s younger brother.
The man who had helped raise Renato after Antonio died.
The man Renato reportedly trusted more than anyone alive.
Mom whispered, “Could he have been at the hospital eight years ago?”
Salvi began shaking.
Renato looked at him.
“You know the answer.”
Salvi closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
The room seemed to shrink.
“He came into the emergency department twenty minutes after your father died.”
Renato stared at him.
“What did Vittorio say?”
Salvi opened his eyes.
“He told me Antonio’s death was a tragedy.”
A pause.
“Then he placed the missing toxicology order in his pocket.”
Nobody spoke.
Salvi swallowed.
May you like
“And told me that if I ever requested another test, my family would need a doctor next.”
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