Chapter 6 - THE ROOM WHERE ANTONIO DIED
Renato ordered Mom and me to stay at the mansion.
Mom agreed.
For approximately thirty seconds.
Then she said, “We’re going.”
Renato stared at her.
“No.”
“You need someone who knows St. Andrew’s.”
“I have Marco.”
“He knows security. I know the hospital.”
“You haven’t worked there in eight years.”
“I fold laundry there every night.”
That silenced him.
Because that was the strange thing about Mom losing her medical-records career.
She had spent eight years trying to escape St. Andrew’s and somehow ended up working around it again through a contractor because the night shift paid two dollars more an hour.
She knew which elevators stalled.
Which stairwell alarms didn’t work.
Which basement doors housekeeping employees propped open because nobody wanted to walk around the building.
Renato looked at me.
“You stay.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I found the first clue.”
“Grace.”
“I found the box.”
“Grace.”
“And I know what the man sounds like.”
Mom crouched in front of me.
“Honey, this part is dangerous.”
“So was the trash.”
Her eyes closed.
That had apparently been the wrong argument.
Renato crouched beside her.
“Grace, you already saved my life.”
I looked at him.
“I don’t need you to save it twice tonight.”
His voice was different.
Not commanding.
Afraid.
For me.
Nobody besides Mom had ever been afraid for me like that.
I nodded.
“Okay.”
Marco left two guards with me at the mansion.
Mom went with Renato.
I hated every minute.
I walked around the library.
I drew.
I tried watching television.
Nothing worked.
Finally, Renato called through the secure video system.
Mom appeared beside him.
“We found Vittorio.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yes.”
Mostly.
He had been discovered unconscious inside an unused recovery room on the hospital’s seventh floor.
No serious injuries.
Someone had injected him with a sedative.
When he woke, he told them what happened.
Gabriel called saying Renato had been poisoned.
He asked Vittorio to meet at St. Andrew’s because “history was repeating itself.”
The moment Vittorio entered a private corridor, somebody attacked him from behind.
Gabriel wanted him unavailable.
Maybe dead.
Maybe simply silent long enough to finish whatever he planned next.
Then Renato showed Vittorio Antonio’s recording.
For the first time in eight years, the brothers’ surviving family stopped distrusting each other.
“Why did Dr. Salvi say Vittorio stole the toxicology request?” I asked.
Mom looked toward Salvi, who was now cooperating under guard.
“Because he saw a Moretti foundation ring and assumed it belonged to Vittorio.”
“But it was Gabriel’s.”
“Yes.”
The rings looked nearly identical from several feet away.
One tiny misunderstanding had protected Gabriel for eight years.
Marco appeared on screen.
“We found something else.”
He held up a key card.
It had been recovered from the recovery room where Vittorio was found.
GABRIEL RUSSO.
Security footage showed Gabriel entering the seventh floor.
He had made his first undeniable mistake.
Renato finally had evidence.
But not enough for Antonio’s murder.
Then Dr. Chen called from the laboratory.
She had compared the poisoned pills to preserved tissue samples from Antonio’s autopsy.
The samples had been retained because of an unrelated medical-research project.
The digitoxin profile matched.
Same rare manufacturing impurity.
Same supplier.
Bellaforte Medical Imports.
A company Gabriel controlled through a hidden trust.
Renato stared into the camera.
“Can you prove it in court?”
Dr. Chen answered carefully.
“I can prove the compound source is highly consistent. I cannot prove who administered it.”
That was the missing piece.
Gabriel.
His role.
His hand.
His order.
We had clues.
Money.
Records.
Access.
But no confession.
Then I remembered the trash.
“Wait.”
Everyone looked at me.
“The men threw something away.”
“What?” Mom asked.
“When I heard them.”
I closed my eyes.
I had been collecting aluminum cans from the bins because my class was raising money for a museum trip and I was embarrassed that Mom couldn’t afford the twenty-five-dollar fee.
Behind the hospital, I heard voices.
I hid beside a dumpster.
When the men left, I looked through the trash.
That was when I found the torn pharmacy label that made their conversation seem real.
But there had been something else.
A paper cup.
A pair of gloves.
And a plastic badge sleeve.
“I put it in my backpack.”
Mom stared.
“You kept hospital trash?”
“I was going to show you.”
“Grace…”
“Where is the backpack?” Renato asked.
“At home.”
Our apartment.
Forty minutes later, Renato’s men entered our building with Mom’s key.
My backpack was beneath my bed.
Inside the front pocket they found the torn pharmacy label.
And the clear plastic badge sleeve.
Inside the sleeve was a fingerprint.
Maybe.
I didn’t understand all the science.
But the lab did.
Two hours later, Renato called me again.
“Grace.”
He looked strange.
“What?”
“You did it.”
“Did what?”
“The print.”
My stomach flipped.
“It belongs to Gabriel.”
The badge sleeve had been discarded after he and Salvi spoke behind the hospital.
Gabriel had worn temporary hospital identification over his clothes.
It placed him directly at the scene where Renato’s poisoning was discussed.
Combined with Salvi’s testimony, prescription access, and Antonio’s recording, investigators finally had enough to move.
But Gabriel was already gone.
His house was empty.
His phone was off.
Three of his bank accounts had been emptied.
A private aircraft he sometimes used was being prepared at a regional airport.
“He’s running,” Marco said.
Renato shook his head.
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Gabriel never runs before he punishes someone.”
Mom’s face changed.
“Who?”
Renato looked toward the screen.
Then at me.
“He blames people.”
Antonio.
Vittorio.
Salvi.
Dana.
And me.
Then every light in Renato’s mansion went out.
The video died.
I screamed.
One of the guards outside the library shouted.
A second later, something heavy crashed downstairs.
The emergency lamps did not activate.
Someone had disabled them.
I grabbed my notebook.
My heart hammered.
“Grace,” one guard whispered from the doorway, “come with me.”
Then a familiar voice drifted from the darkness behind him.
“No.”
The guard froze.
I knew that voice.
I had heard it behind the hospital wall.
Gabriel Russo stepped into the faint moonlight.
He looked at me.
And smiled.
May you like
“The child comes with me.”
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