Chapter 1 - The Cold Truth|
The hardest part about pretending to be unconscious was the itch.
Vincent Costa lay perfectly still beneath the high-thread-count sheets of the private medical wing inside his estate. Beside him, a monitor produced a faint synthetic beep in time with his heartbeat. The rhythm was steady and unthreatening, carefully calibrated by Matteo, his personal physician and the only man in the syndicate who knew the truth.
To everyone else, Vincent Costa, head of the Costa family, had suffered a sudden massive stroke and fallen into a deep, irreversible coma.
In reality, Vincent remained fully conscious behind closed eyelids. The only paralysis came from his own discipline and the mild localized muscle relaxant Matteo administered every six hours to prevent involuntary movement.
The room smelled of antiseptic and ozone from the machines. At the moment, it also smelled overwhelmingly of Baccarat Rouge 540.
Camila was there.
Vincent did not need to open his eyes to follow his fiancée across the room. Her Christian Louboutin heels struck the hardwood in a sharp, restless rhythm. It was not the pacing of a woman grieving the man she loved; it was the pacing of someone calculating how quickly she could escape a collapsing arrangement.
"Look at him," Camila said, her velvety tone from public dinners completely vanished. "The doctors say it’s a waiting game. A game. As though we have the luxury of time."
"Keep your voice down," a man muttered.
Lorenzo. Vincent’s underboss.
Vincent kept his breathing steady despite the surge of cold anger inside him. Camila and Lorenzo, together in his room. The betrayal was not entirely unexpected—Vincent had created the coma because the numbers in the south-side ledgers had stopped making sense, and Camila had shown far too much interest in his shipping routes.
"He can’t hear us," Camila scoffed, ice striking crystal as she poured a drink. "He’s a vegetable, Lorenzo. By Friday, the Romano family will move on the docks unless we act."
May you like
"Vincent would put our heads on spikes if he knew," Lorenzo warned softly.
"Vincent is a ghost," Camila declared. "Start drafting the transfer papers."
