Chapter 4 - The Poison in the Veins
The intensive care unit on the ninth floor of Northwestern Memorial was eerily quiet when we arrived at 2:15 a.m.
Gabriel had used an underground service entrance, flashing a black security badge that bypassed the hospital’s primary reception desk. He had left Eleanor in the care of a trusted, retired trauma surgeon living in an undisclosed apartment in Lincoln Park—an old friend of Antonio’s who asked no questions and owed the Moretti family his life.
Now, it was just Gabriel and me.
My scrubs were splattered with mud and dust. My hair was disheveled, and my heart was beating in my throat. I clutched the yellowed manila envelope tightly against my chest.
Two armed guards in tailored suits stood outside Room 914. When they saw Gabriel, they immediately lowered their hands from their jackets.
“Gabriel,” one of them muttered, nodding curtly. “Doctor Whitmore was here twenty minutes ago.”
My stomach dropped through the floor. “Whitmore? Was he alone?”
“He came with two hospital administrators,” the guard replied, frowning. “He claimed he needed to transfer Mr. Moretti to a private psychiatric and detox facility under an emergency medical conservatorship signed by Isabella Moretti.”
“Where is Vincent now?” Gabriel demanded, his voice dropping into a register that made both guards flinch.
“Still inside. The floor attending physician refused to authorize the transfer until the tox panel came back. Whitmore was furious. He went down to the administrative offices to force the paperwork through.”
Gabriel didn't wait. He shoved the door to Room 914 open, and I hurried in behind him.
The room was filled with the rhythmic, mechanical hum of life-support monitors.
Vincent Moretti lay in the center of the bed, stripped of his tailored suit and dressed in a pale hospital gown. Several intravenous lines ran into his forearms, and a nasal cannula delivered oxygen to his pale face. His dark hair was damp with sweat, clinging to his forehead.
He looked vulnerable. For a man whose name struck terror across the Midwest, he looked devastatingly human.
As the door clicked shut, Vincent’s eyelids fluttered open. His dark eyes were bloodshot, clouded with residual sedation, but as soon as they focused on me, a spark of fierce consciousness ignited within them.
“Miss… Cole,” he rasped, his voice rough and dry.
I immediately walked to the side of the bed, dropping the nurse facade and slipping straight into clinical mode. I checked his pulse at the carotid artery—stronger than before, around sixty-eight beats per minute, regular rhythm. The monitors confirmed his oxygen saturation had climbed back to ninety-seven percent.
“You’re alive, Mr. Moretti,” I said softly.
He tried to sit up, groaning as the abdominal monitors pulled tight against his skin. “What… did you do to my doctor?”
“I saved your life from him,” I said plainly. “And then his accomplice—your sister—tried to execute me, Gabriel, and your mother.”
Vincent went completely rigid.
The heart monitor beside him beeped with a sudden spike in rhythm, leaping from sixty-eight to ninety-four in three seconds. He gripped the metal bed rail, his knuckles turning porcelain white.
“Say that again,” Vincent whispered. The vulnerability in his face vanished, replaced by a cold, terrifying stillness that made the temperature in the room feel like it had plummeted ten degrees.
Gabriel stepped forward. “It’s true, boss. Isabella locked down the estate. She brought in external contract hitters. We barely got Mrs. Moretti out through the old bootlegger tunnel. Isabella has been dosing your IV bags with Dr. Whitmore. She was doing the same thing to your mother.”
Vincent’s gaze moved slowly from Gabriel to me, searching my face for any hint of deceit.
“My mother…” Vincent’s voice cracked slightly, the only crack in his armor. “Where is she?”
“Safe,” I replied. “At Dr. Vane’s residence. But she’s frail, Vincent. She’s been receiving these infusions for weeks. Her kidneys and heart are under massive strain.”
Vincent closed his eyes for a long, agonizing moment. A single muscle in his jaw twitched violently. When he opened his eyes again, all trace of the sick, dying patient was gone. In his place was the apex predator of Chicago’s underworld.
“Why?” Vincent asked, looking at the ceiling. “Why would Isabella do this?”
“Because of this,” I said, placing Antonio Moretti’s envelope directly onto his lap.
Vincent looked down at the faded handwriting. His breath hitched. He reached out with trembling, IV-bruised fingers and touched the red wax seal.
“Father’s seal,” he whispered.
“Eleanor told us where to find it,” Gabriel said. “Behind the family portrait above the fireplace. Antonio hid it before he died.”
Vincent broke the wax seal without hesitation. He pulled out a stack of folded documents, handwritten letters, and several bank ledger printouts dated three years prior.
I watched his eyes scan the pages. With every sentence he read, the color seemed to drain further from his cheeks, replaced by an expression of pure, unadulterated fury.
“It wasn't heart failure,” Vincent muttered, reading aloud in a dead, hollow monotone. “Father discovered that Isabella had formed an off-the-books partnership with the Marcone syndicate in New York. She was laundering untracked cartel cash through our European shipping lines. When Father threatened to disown her and remove her from the family trust, Whitmore altered his cardiac medication.”
Vincent slammed the papers down onto the bed sheets.
“Father knew he was dying,” Vincent said, his voice trembling with suppressed rage. “He didn't have the proof in time to stop them, so he gathered what records he could and hid them. He thought… he thought I would find them if he died suddenly. But Whitmore convinced me it was natural. And I believed him.”
Vincent looked at me, his gaze piercing directly into my soul.
“For three years, I let the man who murdered my father sit at my dinner table. I let him treat my mother. I paid him millions.”
Before I could answer, the door handle rattled.
The heavy lock clicked. The door swung open slowly.
Dr. Samuel Whitmore walked in, accompanied by two men in dark security uniforms bearing the Northwestern Memorial private security logo. Whitmore was holding a leather clipboard, his silver hair neatly parted, his expensive suit immaculate.
“Vincent, my boy,” Whitmore said with a soothing, patronizing smile. “You shouldn't be agitated. Your sister has arranged for a much more comfortable environment for your recovery—”
Whitmore stopped dead in his tracks.
He saw Gabriel standing by the window.
Then his eyes dropped to the bed, landing on the yellowed manila envelope and the open documents scattered across Vincent’s lap.
The smile vanished from Whitmore’s face.
May you like
“Howard,” Vincent said quietly, using the personal nickname he had used since childhood. His voice was terrifyingly calm. “Tell me something. Does digitalis taste bitter when it enters the bloodstream, or does it just feel cold?”
***
