Chapter 4 - The Poisoner's Alibi
The silence lasted two seconds.
Then came the emergency alarm—a muted, rhythmic pulsing tone that meant the penthouse’s secondary power grid had failed to engage.
“Dante!” Luca’s voice barked in the darkness.
“I’m here, boss. Don't move.”
The distinctive sound of steel sliding from leather echoed in the room. Dante pulled a heavy tactical flashlight from his utility belt and clicked it on. The harsh, white LED beam sliced through the darkness, illuminating Luca’s cold, unblinking face and the IV pole beside the bed.
“Auxiliary generator should have kicked in instantly,” Dante said, his voice tense. “Someone cut the primary cables in the basement electrical vault. It’s an inside job.”
“Where is Marco?” Luca asked.
“Downstairs. In the private armory, checking the perimeter guards.”
“Get him up here. Now.”
Before Dante could take a step toward the heavy suite door, a scream tore through the corridor outside. It was high, piercing, and unmistakably female.
“Luca! Help me! Oh god, someone help me!”
It was Vanessa.
Dante swung the flashlight beam toward the open bedroom door.
Down the hallway, illuminated by the flashing red strobe of the emergency exit signs, Vanessa was crawling along the parquet floor. Her silk dress was torn at the shoulder, her blonde hair tangled and damp with sweat. Her face was smeared with dark soot, and blood dripped from a jagged cut across her collarbone.
“Luca!” she sobbed, dragging herself toward the master bedroom. “They broke into the holding room! There are men in the service stairwell! They have silencers—!”
Dante raised his weapon, keeping the flashlight pinned on her. “Stay where you are, Vanessa! Hands where I can see them!”
“Don’t shoot me! Dante, please!” she wailed, collapsing onto her stomach ten feet from the bedroom threshold. “They’re coming! They killed the guards at the elevator!”
I stepped closer to Luca’s bed, my hand instinctively dropping to the heavy stainless-steel shears in my medical pouch.
Something was wrong.
My eyes darted across Vanessa’s crawling figure. In trauma bays, you learn to read wounds before you read people. Blood from an active arterial bleed pulses; venous blood oozes dark and steady. The red streak across Vanessa’s collarbone was bright, but it wasn't bleeding anymore. It was already clotting, congealed around the edges like a superficial scratch made with a manicure file thirty minutes ago.
And there was no soot in the penthouse. There had been no explosion.
“Mr. Moretti,” I whispered leaning down toward his ear. “Look at her clothes.”
Luca didn’t move. His eyes narrowed to slits as he watched his fiancée sob on the floor.
“Dante,” Luca commanded softly. “Search her.”
“Luca, no!” Vanessa wept, lifting her hands in surrender. “How can you suspect me? I just survived them! The Valenti family—they’re inside the building! They came for you! I tried to warn the guards—!”
Suddenly, the heavy double doors at the far end of the grand hall blew inward with a deafening crash.
Three figures dressed in tactical black gear, wearing ballistic masks, burst through the smoke. The unmistakable *thwack-thwack-thwack* of suppressed automatic submachine guns shredded the silence.
Plaster exploded from the hallway walls. High-velocity rounds tore through the priceless oil paintings, shredding antique canvas into confetti.
“Down!” Dante screamed, throwing his massive frame across the doorway and firing his heavy .45 into the smoke. The muzzle flash strobed like lightning, blinding the corridor.
One of the masked men spun backward, his chest plate taking the brunt of Dante’s fire, crashing into the glass display table.
“Emma, get down behind the bed!” Luca ordered. He ripped the IV needle out of his own arm, ignoring the blood that welled from the vein, and reached under his mattress.
When his hand came out, he was holding a customized nickel-plated Colt 1911.
He didn’t look like a dying invalid anymore. He looked like the apex predator who had conquered Chicago’s underworld with blood and iron. Even with his motor skills operating at seventy percent, his grip was ironclad.
“Vanessa!” Marco’s voice roared from the service stairwell behind the attackers.
A second gun battle erupted in the hall. Marco and two surviving soldiers had flanked the hit team from the rear, catching the masked shooters in a devastating crossfire. The hallway became an echo chamber of violent, rhythmic percussions, deafening reports, and the metallic clatter of spent brass casing raining against marble.
Within forty-five seconds, it was over.
The three masked attackers lay motionless on the shredded carpet, pools of dark blood spreading beneath their tactical vests.
The air was thick with the suffocating stench of cordite, drywall dust, and copper.
Marco stepped through the smoke, his shotgun lowered, his face spattered with red droplets. “All clear! Hallway is locked down!”
Vanessa, still lying on the floor between the two fires, let out a choked sob and reached toward Marco’s boots. “Marco... thank god... they tried to kill us...”
Marco looked down at her, then up at Luca, who was standing tall in his silk robe, gun raised, standing right next to me.
“Found something interesting on the leader’s radio, Luca,” Marco said, holding up a cracked tactical communication device.
“What?” Luca asked, his voice deathly calm.
Marco pressed play on the recorded loop from the radio.
A raspy, distorted voice hissed through the speaker: *“Target is incapacitated by the medical consultant. Dr. Sterling's girl says the boss will be comatose by midnight. Secure the nurse. Frame her for the overdose, then clear the penthouse.”*
The room went dead silent.
Marco pointed his shotgun directly at me.
May you like
“The nurse,” Marco growled. “She wasn’t trying to save you, Luca. She was the inside operative. She bought time for the hit team to breach the lower perimeter. Look at her—she’s standing right next to you with a scalpel in her hand!”
***
