Chapter 3 - THE MAN INSIDE THE WALLS
Within seven minutes, Lakeshore Memorial Hospital became the most secure building in Chicago.
Luca did not bring an army through the front doors.
He did something quieter.
Every entrance was watched by men in plain clothes. Every employee entering Elena’s floor was verified against hospital records. Security footage from the previous forty-eight hours was copied before anyone could erase it.
Luca made no threats.
He did not need to.
People who knew his name understood that silence from Luca Moretti was more dangerous than shouting.
The woman in the nurse’s uniform survived long enough to be placed on life support, but Sofia believed the capsule she had bitten contained a fast-acting poison. She remained unconscious under police guard.
The vial she had carried contained enough potassium chloride to stop Elena’s heart within minutes.
The bullet in the pistol would have been unnecessary.
Luca stood outside Elena’s room listening to Sofia explain this to Marco.
His face revealed nothing.
Inside, Elena was awake. A real nurse had adjusted her medication, and the baby’s heartbeat had returned to a stable rhythm.
Luca wanted to sit beside her.
Instead, he remained in the hall because Elena had asked for ten minutes alone.
He counted every second.
Marco lowered his voice. “The ring could be a copy.”
“It isn’t.”
“You saw it for two seconds.”
“I know the weight. I know the engraving. The originals were made by Bellandi in Milan. The crest on a copy would face the wrong direction.”
Sofia folded her arms. “Which six people have them?”
“Me. Sofia. Marco. My uncle Vittorio. My cousin Dante. And my father.”
“Your father has been dead for nine years,” Sofia said.
“His ring was buried with him.”
Marco looked toward the room containing the unconscious attacker.
“Unless it wasn’t.”
Luca pulled out his phone. “Open my father’s tomb.”
Sofia stared at him. “You cannot be serious.”
“Someone walked into this hospital wearing his ring.”
“I am not allowing you to desecrate our father’s grave based on jewelry.”
Luca looked at her.
“Our father would tear the coffin open himself if Elena and his granddaughter were in danger.”
Sofia did not argue again.
Marco made the call.
A detective arrived twenty minutes later, but the conversation ended quickly when Luca insisted that the attack involved private family matters. The detective reminded him that attempted murder was not private.
Luca reminded the detective that a woman had entered a major hospital carrying an unregistered weapon and poison while using forged credentials.
If the police wanted the truth, Luca said, they should begin by asking how she passed four levels of security.
The detective left with a warning.
Luca ignored it.
When Elena finally allowed him inside, she was sitting upright against the pillows.
“You frightened every patient on this floor,” she said.
“I was quiet.”
“You turned the hallway into a funeral procession of men in dark suits.”
“They are not armed.”
Elena raised one eyebrow.
“Most of them are not armed,” he corrected.
She looked toward the window.
Snow had started falling beyond the glass, dusting the rooftops and streetlights with white.
“The woman knew about the baby.”
“Yes.”
“She knew which room I was in.”
“Yes.”
“She knew what medication Sofia had ordered.”
Luca pulled the chair closer to the bed.
“Someone inside the hospital helped her.”
“Or someone inside your family did.”
He did not deny it.
Elena watched him carefully. “You already suspect someone.”
“I suspect everyone.”
“That was always your problem.”
“Suspicion kept me alive.”
“It also left you alone.”
The words landed cleanly.
Luca rested his forearms on his knees. “You said you knew I lied during the divorce. How?”
Elena was silent for so long he wondered if she would answer.
Then she opened the drawer beside her bed and removed a small digital recorder.
“I received this six months after I left.”
“From whom?”
“Your former housekeeper, Rosa.”
Luca’s head lifted.
Rosa Alvarez had worked for his family for almost twenty years. She retired shortly after the divorce and moved to Arizona.
“She told me she found it under the desk in your father’s old study,” Elena continued. “She was cleaning the room after I left. Someone had been meeting there.”
Elena pressed a button.
Static filled the room.
Then came the sound of two male voices.
The first was unfamiliar.
“The car will remain outside the house until Moretti notices it.”
A second voice answered.
“And the photographs?”
“Delivered tomorrow. His wife leaving the market. His wife at the church. His wife visiting her sister.”
“Good. Luca will believe the DeLuca family is preparing to strike.”
The second voice was older, calm, and unmistakable.
Luca had heard it at birthday dinners, funerals, and family meetings his entire life.
Vittorio Moretti.
His father’s younger brother.
“Once Luca believes Elena is the target,” Vittorio said on the recording, “he will do what frightened men always do. He will destroy what he loves before someone else can take it.”
The recording ended.
Luca did not move.
Elena studied him. “You recognize the voice.”
“Yes.”
“Your uncle created the threat that made you divorce me.”
“Yes.”
“And you never investigated.”
“I investigated the DeLucas.”
“Because that was where Vittorio told you to look.”
“Yes.”
The honesty seemed to hurt Elena more than an excuse would have.
She turned toward the window.
“Rosa was afraid to give me the recording at first. She had a grandson in college. Someone threatened him. She waited until she moved away.”
“Why didn’t you bring this to me?”
“I considered it.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I had spent six months waking from nightmares because of what you said to me. I had stopped eating. I had stopped answering my sister’s calls. I could barely walk through a grocery store without remembering how you used to reach for my hand.”
Her voice cracked, but she continued.
“Then I learned you had never stopped loving me. Do you know what that did? It did not heal me, Luca. It made everything worse.”
He bowed his head.
“I believed you would come after Vittorio. There would be blood. Retaliation. More funerals. And somehow you would call it justice.”
“I would have protected you.”
“You had already protected me once.”
He looked up.
Elena’s eyes were wet.
“I could not survive another act of your protection.”
The baby moved beneath Elena’s hospital gown.
Her expression softened instantly, and she pressed a palm against the movement.
Luca stared.
“May I?”
The question sounded awkward coming from him.
Elena hesitated.
Then she took his hand and placed it on the right side of her stomach.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Luca barely breathed.
A small, firm kick pressed against his palm.
His face changed.
The man who could order a room into silence with a glance suddenly looked lost.
“Mia,” Elena whispered. “Your father is finally paying attention.”
Another kick followed.
Luca’s thumb moved gently over the fabric.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Elena looked at him.
He did not know whether he was speaking to her or the child.
Perhaps both.
A knock interrupted them.
Marco entered holding a tablet.
“We found the security footage.”
Luca removed his hand slowly.
Marco placed the tablet on the rolling table.
The video showed the false nurse entering through the underground parking level at 11:42 p.m. She used an employee access card belonging to a respiratory therapist who had reported it missing two weeks earlier.
The woman entered an elevator.
For several seconds, she was alone.
Then the doors opened on the administrative floor.
A man stepped inside.
His face remained turned away from the camera, but he wore a camel-colored overcoat and walked with a polished wooden cane.
Elena stopped breathing.
Luca’s expression turned to stone.
Vittorio Moretti had used a cane since a hunting accident twenty years earlier.
The footage showed him speaking to the woman. He handed her something small.
The Moretti ring.
Then he stepped out before the elevator reached Elena’s floor.
“He came here?” Elena whispered.
Marco nodded. “The front desk records show he visited a donor reception in the east wing. He left ten minutes after the attack.”
Luca stood.
“No,” Elena said immediately.
He looked at her.
“You are not going after him tonight.”
“He tried to kill you.”
“And if you walk out with that look on your face, Mia may lose her father before she ever sees him.”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
“What do you expect me to do?”
“Use the law.”
A humorless laugh escaped him. “The law has been bought by men like Vittorio since before I was born.”
“Then give it something it cannot ignore.”
Marco spoke carefully. “The recording, the footage, and the attacker may be enough for an arrest, but Vittorio will claim the audio was fabricated and the hospital meeting was innocent.”
Elena reached for her phone.
“There is more.”
Luca looked at her. “What?”
“For the past year, I’ve been working as a forensic accountant for the Salvatore Children’s Foundation.”
Marco’s expression sharpened.
The foundation was one of the Moretti family’s most respected charities.
It was also controlled by Vittorio.
Elena unlocked her phone and opened a file.
“I found payments sent through the foundation to a security company that does not exist. The same company paid for surveillance on my apartment, the fertility clinic, and Lakeshore Memorial.”
Luca stared at the transactions.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“I did. Two days ago, I arranged to meet a federal prosecutor.”
Marco looked alarmed. “Who?”
“Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Hargrove.”
The name silenced the room.
Hargrove had spent years building cases against organized crime in Chicago.
“When is the meeting?” Luca asked.
“Tomorrow morning.”
Marco’s phone vibrated.
He checked the screen.
The color drained from his face.
“What is it?” Luca demanded.
Marco turned the phone toward them.
A news alert filled the screen.
ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY DANIEL HARGROVE KILLED IN LATE-NIGHT VEHICLE EXPLOSION.
Below the headline was a photograph of the burning wreckage.
Elena covered her mouth.
Luca looked at the time of the explosion.
11:58 p.m.
Two minutes before the hospital called him.
Vittorio had not merely discovered Elena’s investigation.
He was erasing everyone connected to it.
Then Elena’s phone lit up with a message from an unknown number.
Luca picked it up before she could.
The message contained a photograph taken through the hospital window.
It showed Luca sitting beside Elena’s bed with his hand over their unborn child.
May you like
Underneath were seven words.
NEXT TIME, THE BABY DIES FIRST.
