Chapter 2 - The Device in the Dark
The silence in the hallway was thick enough to choke on.
Dominic Romano did not raise his voice. He did not reach for the gun hidden beneath his tailored charcoal coat. He simply stood with his shoulders squared against the ornate mahogany molding, his slate-gray eyes fixed on his fiancée.
"I said," Dominic repeated, his tone dropping into a register that made the two armed guards against the wall lower their chins, "not you."
Victoria’s hand remained frozen three inches from the open bedside cabinet. Her knuckle bore a flawless five-carat diamond—a stone Dominic had placed on her finger six months ago at an engagement dinner attended by two state senators and three federal judges. Now, the light catching that diamond seemed sickly and cold.
"Dominic, darling," Victoria began, forcing a musical laugh that died before it reached her eyes. "You’re acting as if this maid’s frantic nonsense means something. She’s panicked because she got caught. The guards found three full vials of your father’s heart medication in her cleaning cart down in the service corridor. Look at her—she’s terrified because she knows what happens to thieves in this house."
Dominic didn’t look at Victoria. He looked down at the floor, where his seventy-eight-year-old father still had two trembling, vein-corded fingers hooked into the cotton fabric of Emily Carter’s gray uniform sleeve.
Antonio Romano’s breathing was a wet, ragged rattle. Yet the old man’s knuckles were white. He was not clinging to Dominic. He was not reaching for his future daughter-in-law.
He was holding on to the twenty-four-year-old maid whose belly pressed against the coarse linen of her apron, shielding her unborn daughter with her other hand.
"Emily," Dominic said quietly.
Emily looked up. Her eyes were wide, rimmed with red, but behind the exhaustion was an unyielding, stubborn spark. "Yes, Mr. Romano?"
"Can you reach the cabinet without moving my father?"
"Yes, sir."
"Dominic, no!" Victoria snapped, her voice slipping out of its polished society register. "That room is a crime scene! If she touches anything else—"
"Victoria," Dominic whispered. The name landed like a guillotine blade. "Another syllable out of your mouth before my father is in that ambulance, and I will have Marco lock you in the wine cellar until I decide what to do with you."
Victoria’s mouth snapped shut. Her chest rose and fell beneath her cream silk dress, her throat working convulsively.
Emily didn’t hesitate. Keeping her left hand anchored under Antonio’s frail wrist so she wouldn't tear his fragile skin, she reached her right arm upward. Her fingertips brushed the cold mahogany of the lower shelf, slipped past a folded wool cardigan that smelled faintly of lavender and stale medicine, and closed around the cool, rectangular frame of the device.
It was an eight-inch tablet with a ruggedized rubber casing, the kind issued by specialty speech pathologists for stroke patients who had lost the use of their vocal cords. The screen was black, smeared with a thin film of dust, but the emergency power LED in the corner was blinking an amber distress signal.
She pulled it out and held it up toward Dominic.
Antonio let out a broken groan—a sound that carried the desperate, agonizing relief of a man who had been screaming beneath five feet of water for almost a year.
"Give it to Marco," Dominic instructed, gesturing to the broad-shouldered man in a dark suit standing at the head of the hallway.
Marco, Dominic’s head of private security and the only man permitted to carry a firearm inside the family’s private quarters, stepped forward with gloved hands. He took the tablet carefully, placing it into a clear evidence pouch.
The paramedics were already lifting Antonio onto the collapsible gurney. The lead medic, a man with sweat beading on his forehead who clearly knew whose house he was standing in, looked at Dominic with urgent eyes.
"Mr. Romano, his blood pressure is sixty over forty. His pulse is irregular—he's in ventricular tachycardia. We need to move him now, or he will go into full cardiac arrest before we clear the driveway."
"Take him to St. Jude’s," Dominic ordered, not blinking. "Use the trauma bay on the fourth floor. Dr. Mercer is already on his way. My men will escort the rig."
"Wait!" Emily cried out, stumbling to her feet as the paramedics began wheeling the gurney down the hall.
Dominic’s hand shot out. His fingers gripped Emily’s upper arm. His touch was firm, like iron wrapped in wool, but he didn't squeeze hard enough to bruise. "You stay right here, Miss Carter."
"Mr. Romano, listen to me," Emily pleaded, turning her face toward his. Up close, she could smell the cold air clinging to his wool coat, mixed with the sharp scent of cedar and expensive tobacco. "His dosing schedule on the nightstand—it says he was given twelve milligrams of digoxin at seven this morning. But his chart from last week had him on zero-point-two-five! That’s nearly fifty times his normal dose! If they give him an antiarrhythmic without knowing he's in digitalis toxicity, they'll stop his heart completely!"
Every paramedic stopped in their tracks.
The lead medic turned pale. He lunged back toward the nightstand, snatched the handwritten medication card sitting beside the glass of water, and read it.
"Jesus Christ," the medic breathed, looking up at Dominic with terror in his eyes. "If she hadn't said that, we would have administered amiodarone in the ambulance. It would have killed him within two miles."
Victoria took an involuntary half-step backward toward the master suite corridor.
Dominic’s gaze remained locked on Emily. His thumb rubbed once over the fabric of her sleeve, feeling the violent tremor running through her arm. She was pale, her lips chapped, her breathing shallow from carrying seven months of new life inside her tired body.
Yet she hadn't run. She hadn't looked at the door. She had looked at the medicine.
"Where did you learn digitalis dosing?" Dominic asked.
"My mother," Emily whispered, tears finally escaping her lower lashes and tracing hot paths down her cheeks. "She had a valve replacement four months ago. I sat by her bed in Albany for ninety days. I had to learn every pill, every microgram, because the understaffed night nurses kept making mistakes. I know what that drug looks like, Mr. Romano. And whoever wrote that card wanted your father's heart to stop beating."
Dominic turned his head slowly toward Victoria.
Victoria was already shaking her head, backing away toward the heavy draperies at the end of the hall. "She's lying! Mrs. Whitmore handles the charts! I don't touch his medicine! Dominic, you cannot believe a girl we pulled out of a bargain agency over your own fiancée!"
"Marco," Dominic said softly.
"Boss?"
"Have two men escort Miss Sterling to the west library. Take her phone. Take her watch. Disconnect the landline. If she attempts to exit that room through a door or a window, break her ankles."
Victoria let out a shrill, outraged gasp. "Dominic! You can't do this to me! My father sits on the governor’s financial board! You touch me, and the entire southern district will come down on your operations!"
Dominic didn't even look back as Marco stepped forward, his massive frame blocking Victoria from view.
"Miss Sterling," Marco said, his voice flat and clinical. "The library. Now."
Dominic turned back to Emily. He looked down at her swollen belly, then down at her scuffed service shoes. One of the seams on her left shoe was splitting, revealing the white thread beneath.
"You're coming with me," Dominic said.
"To jail?" Emily asked, her voice cracking as she instinctively wrapped both arms around her stomach. "Mr. Romano, please. My mother... if I get arrested, they'll stop her rehabilitation therapy. The state takes over, and they put her in a county home, and she'll die. I didn't steal anything. I swear on my baby’s life, I didn't steal those pills."
Dominic reached down, took her trembling hand, and pulled her gently toward the private elevator.
May you like
"Not to jail, Emily," he said, the sound of her first name on his lips sending a shiver through her spine. "To the hospital. Because if my father wakes up, the only person he wants to see in that room is you."
***
