Chapter 2 - The Woman in Room 417Alessandro did not move.
For three seconds, neither did anyone else.
Rain tapped against the hospital doors.
Emma swung her legs beneath the chair.
“She’s sick,” the child said. “Can we see Mom?”
Alessandro looked at the nurse.
“Room.”
“Four seventeen.”
“Who authorized her admission?”
The nurse hesitated.
“No one unusual. It came through emergency.”
“Did anyone visit her?”
“Two nurses. A doctor. And a man claiming to be a relative.”
Alessandro’s eyes sharpened.
“What man?”
“Tall. Black coat. He said his name was Daniel Delgado.”
Emma suddenly looked up.
“Dad?”
Alessandro turned.
“You recognize that name?”
She nodded.
“That’s my father.”
Something shifted inside Alessandro.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
Emma looked down.
“At Christmas.”
“Does he live with you?”
She shook her head.
“Mom says he’s dangerous.”
Alessandro went still.
The nurse cleared her throat.
“We should move upstairs.”
They reached Room 417.
Sophia Delgado lay unconscious beneath white sheets.
An IV ran into her arm.
A ventilator assisted her breathing.
Emma pressed both hands against the glass panel.
“Mommy…”
Alessandro stood beside her.
Sophia looked exhausted.
Too exhausted.
He had seen men shot and left for dead who looked healthier.
A doctor approached.
“We found traces of aconitine in her blood.”
“What?”
“An old plant-derived toxin. Small amount, but enough to worsen respiratory failure.”
“Someone poisoned her?”
“Yes.”
Alessandro looked at Sophia.
“Who knew she was sick?”
“Hospital records.”
“No.”
He turned toward Marco.
“Who knew before she entered this hospital?”
Marco pulled out his phone.
“Her employer. Her daughter. Ambulance staff.”
“And anyone inside our house.”
Marco understood.
Alessandro looked through the glass.
Emma stood against it with her forehead pressed to the window.
“She needs her mother.”
Alessandro walked toward the little girl.
“We’re going to keep her safe.”
Emma looked up.
“Can you make Mom wake up?”
Alessandro paused.
“No.”
The girl’s lower lip trembled.
“But you’re powerful.”
The sentence contained no accusation.
That somehow made it worse.
Alessandro crouched.
“I can make sure nobody hurts her again.”
Emma stared into his eyes.
“Promise?”
He had promised very few people anything in his life.
But he said it.
“I promise.”
That night, Alessandro transformed the Moretti mansion.
Security doubled.
Hospital staff were screened.
Every employee was interrogated.
Every camera was reviewed.
But there was one problem.
Sophia had not been poisoned at the hospital.
She had been poisoned before the ambulance arrived.
Which meant the attack began at the Moretti estate.
Marco found something in the security footage.
A woman entering through the service entrance.
Face hidden.
Height approximately five feet seven.
Twenty-three seconds later, she left.
Marco froze the image.
The woman held a cleaning bag.
Alessandro leaned closer.
“Zoom.”
The image sharpened.
A gold bracelet appeared on her wrist.
Alessandro recognized it.
“So did Rosa.”
Her voice came from behind them.
“That belonged to Isabella Moretti.”
Alessandro turned slowly.
Isabella was his younger sister.
Dead for twelve years.
The room went silent.
“That’s impossible,” Marco said.
Rosa shook her head.
“No.”
She looked at Alessandro.
“I buried that bracelet with her.”
Emma stood in the doorway.
She had been listening.
She walked toward the frozen screen.
Her face changed.
“Mom said she saw that woman.”
Alessandro’s heartbeat slowed.
“What woman?”
“The night before she got sick.”
“Where?”
Emma swallowed.
“In our apartment.”
“Did she say who she was?”
“No.”
The girl looked at the screen again.
“She was crying.”
Alessandro stared at the bracelet.
His dead sister.
A poisoned employee.
A frightened child.
And a woman wearing jewelry that should have been six feet underground.
Then Marco’s phone rang.
He answered.
His expression turned white.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“We checked Sophia’s apartment.”
“And?”
“Someone searched it.”
“Looking for what?”
Marco’s voice dropped.
“We found a photograph.”
He handed Alessandro his phone.
The picture showed Sophia standing beside a much younger Alessandro.
And holding baby Emma.
Alessandro stared.
His blood turned cold.
Emma was not six in the photograph.
She was an infant.
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And Alessandro had never met Sophia before the day she entered his household.
Or so he had believed.
