Chapter 5 - THE PRICE OF A MORETTI HEIR
Luca reached the service elevator seconds too late.
The numbers above the door descended from six to five, then four.
He pressed the call button.
Nothing happened.
“Override it,” he ordered.
A security technician worked frantically at the control panel.
“They disabled local access.”
Luca looked toward the stairwell.
Marco appeared at the end of the corridor with two guards.
“The underground cameras just went dark,” he said.
“Seal the garage.”
“Already done.”
A gunshot echoed from somewhere below.
Luca entered the stairwell and ran.
He took the steps three at a time, Marco following close behind.
By the time they reached the underground level, smoke was spreading through the garage. A black sedan had crashed through the exit barrier, leaving one guard wounded near the security booth.
The sedan’s rear lights vanished up the ramp.
Luca raised his weapon, but the angle was gone.
Marco stopped beside him. “We have the plate.”
“It will be stolen.”
“Traffic cameras can still follow it.”
Luca turned toward his injured guard.
“Did you see Elena?”
The man pressed a hand to his shoulder.
“They transferred her into the sedan. She was conscious. One man had a gun against the doctor.”
“Sofia?”
The guard shook his head. “Not Dr. Moretti. Another woman.”
Elena’s nurse.
Luca called Sofia.
She answered, still breathless. “I’m fine.”
“Can Elena survive being moved?”
“She was already bleeding again.”
The words chilled him.
“How long?”
“I cannot answer that without examining her.”
“Give me an estimate.”
“An hour. Perhaps less if the abruption worsens.”
Luca closed his eyes for half a second.
When he opened them, Marco had the traffic system open on his tablet.
“The car turned west on Roosevelt.”
“St. Catherine’s,” Luca said.
Vittorio wanted the ledger.
He would take Elena to the place where it was hidden.
Marco looked at him. “We cannot storm the building. If Vittorio sees us coming—”
“I know.”
Sofia stepped out of the elevator wearing a fresh coat over her hospital scrubs. She carried a medical bag.
“You are not coming,” Luca said.
“Elena may need an emergency delivery.”
“It is not safe.”
“She is my patient and my family.”
“Sofia—”
“You do not get to make decisions for women tonight.”
Marco almost smiled despite the circumstances.
Luca did not argue.
They left through a secondary garage in an unmarked vehicle.
During the drive, Marco contacted Detective Sullivan and sent the location. Luca objected until Marco reminded him that Elena had demanded they use the law.
“Police stay two blocks away until we confirm she is inside,” Luca said.
Sofia looked at him from the back seat. “You are actually listening to her.”
“I should have started three years ago.”
Across the city, Elena woke beneath a broken ceiling light.
Her hospital bed stood in the center of an old delivery room. Dust covered the floor. Rust stained the sink. The air smelled of mildew and antiseptic left over from another century.
Her wrists were secured to the bedrail with soft medical restraints.
A nurse named Camille lay unconscious in a chair across the room.
Elena tried to sit up.
Pain tore through her abdomen.
She gasped and pressed her head back against the pillow.
“Easy,” a voice said from the doorway.
Vittorio Moretti entered wearing his camel coat and carrying his polished cane.
He looked exactly as he had at family dinners years earlier—silver hair, expensive shoes, and the reassuring smile of a beloved uncle.
Elena had once trusted him.
He had raised a glass at her wedding and called her the daughter their family had been missing.
“You nearly killed us at the hospital,” she said.
“If I wanted you dead, we would not be speaking.”
“You sent poison into my room.”
“I sent an unstable woman with instructions to frighten Luca. She became ambitious.”
Elena knew immediately that he was lying.
Men like Vittorio never accepted responsibility for failure.
“Why bring me here?”
“You know where the ledger is.”
“I know it exists.”
“You accessed the foundation server. You followed the archive trail.”
“I never found the room.”
Vittorio approached the bed.
“You were always smarter than Luca realized.”
“Luca never believed I was stupid.”
“No. He simply believed love made you fragile.”
Elena looked him directly in the eyes.
“You taught him that.”
“I taught him to survive.”
“You taught him to destroy anything he could not control.”
Vittorio’s smile faded.
A contraction tightened across Elena’s stomach.
She fought to keep her breathing even.
Vittorio noticed.
“How much time do you have?”
“Longer than you.”
He chuckled softly.
“You believe Luca will rescue you.”
“I believe you are afraid of him.”
“I raised him.”
“You manipulated him.”
“I made him powerful.”
“You made him lonely.”
Vittorio struck the floor once with his cane.
The sound echoed through the empty building.
“You and that child will take control of everything my brother built. Luca will place the company in trust. He will make you untouchable while men who spent decades protecting the Moretti name become your employees.”
“You stole from that company.”
“I preserved it.”
“You moved charity money into private accounts.”
“Money is never charitable. It is only temporarily misdirected.”
Elena shifted her hand along the side of the mattress.
During the abduction, she had felt someone place a phone in the pocket of her hospital gown. Perhaps one of Luca’s guards had managed it. Perhaps Camille had.
The phone remained there.
She needed to reach it without Vittorio seeing.
“You killed Daniel Hargrove,” she said.
Vittorio’s eyes narrowed.
“An unfortunate accident.”
“And the woman at the hospital?”
“Another accident.”
“What about the men who followed me?”
“Employees.”
“The car outside our house three years ago?”
For the first time, Vittorio looked pleased.
“That was my finest work. I never imagined Luca would make the separation permanent. I expected him to send you abroad for a year.”
“You underestimated how much he loved me.”
“No. I understood exactly how much he loved you. That was why the lie worked.”
Elena moved her fingers into her pocket.
The phone screen lit beneath the fabric.
She pressed the emergency button five times.
A faint vibration confirmed the signal had been sent.
Vittorio leaned over her.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying not to give birth in your abandoned hospital.”
He studied her, then turned toward Camille.
“If the nurse wakes, she can help.”
“She is injured.”
“She is replaceable.”
Elena’s expression changed.
Vittorio smiled. “That is the difference between you and our family. You assign value to every life. It makes you predictable.”
“No,” Elena said. “It makes you weak.”
His hand tightened around the cane.
Outside, Luca’s phone vibrated.
An emergency location appeared on the screen.
Elena.
Her signal came from the north wing of St. Catherine’s.
“She’s alive,” Marco said.
Sofia studied the building through binoculars. “There are at least four entrances.”
Luca handed Marco his phone.
“Send the location to Sullivan. Tell him to approach from the river.”
“And you?”
“I go through the chapel tunnel.”
Marco stared at him. “That tunnel was sealed when the hospital closed.”
“My father used this building for meetings. Nothing he sealed was ever truly sealed.”
Luca found the tunnel entrance beneath an old church storage room across the street. He, Marco, and Sofia descended into darkness.
The passage smelled of wet stone.
At the end, Luca forced open a rusted metal door that led into the hospital basement.
They moved silently through the lower level.
Above them, footsteps crossed the floor.
Marco pointed toward a security monitor connected to a portable power source. One camera showed Elena’s room.
Vittorio stood beside her bed.
Two armed men guarded the corridor.
Another screen displayed the archive vault.
Vittorio’s chief accountant was entering a code.
“The ledger is still here,” Marco whispered.
Luca watched Elena’s face on the monitor.
She was in pain.
He could see it even though she tried to hide it.
Sofia touched his arm. “We need to move now.”
Luca nodded.
Marco disabled the hallway lights.
Darkness swallowed the north wing.
One guard shouted.
Luca entered the corridor before the man could raise his weapon. He struck the gun away and drove him into the wall. Marco disarmed the second guard near the stairs.
Inside the delivery room, Vittorio grabbed Elena by the hair and pressed a pistol beneath her jaw.
Luca stopped in the doorway.
Elena’s face was pale, but her eyes remained fixed on him.
“Let her go,” Luca said.
Vittorio smiled. “You came without the ledger.”
“I came for my family.”
“You never understood what family meant.”
“I understand now.”
Luca lowered his weapon and placed it on the floor.
Vittorio’s pistol remained against Elena.
“You were supposed to lead,” Vittorio said. “Instead, you let a woman and an unborn child turn you sentimental.”
“They made me human.”
“They made you weak.”
“No. You mistook fear for strength, and I believed you.”
Police sirens sounded in the distance.
Vittorio’s smile disappeared.
Elena twisted suddenly, driving her elbow into his injured leg.
Vittorio cried out.
Luca lunged.
The pistol fired.
The bullet struck Luca beneath his collarbone, spinning him sideways.
Sofia screamed.
Marco fired once into Vittorio’s shoulder. The older man collapsed, his weapon skidding across the floor.
Luca landed beside Elena’s bed.
Blood spread through his shirt.
Elena reached for him, but another contraction seized her.
She cried out and folded over her stomach.
Sofia rushed into the room.
“Elena, look at me. Where is the pain?”
“Everywhere.”
Sofia pulled back the blanket.
Blood soaked the sheet beneath Elena.
“We need an operating room now.”
Luca forced himself upright despite the wound.
“I’m fine.”
“You were shot,” Elena gasped.
“And you are having our baby.”
Sofia placed a monitor against Elena’s abdomen.
For one terrible moment, the machine remained silent.
She moved it.
Nothing.
Elena’s eyes widened.
“Sofia?”
“Stay calm.”
“Why can’t I hear her?”
Sofia searched again, pressing harder.
Elena grabbed Luca’s hand.
“I can’t feel Mia moving.”
May you like
The police entered the building as Sofia looked at her brother with terror in her eyes.
“We have minutes,” she said. “Maybe less.”
