Chapter 4 - The Second AttackVivienne heard the alarm before Dante’s phone rang.
She knew that sound.
A pediatric cardiac monitor.
She ran.
Dante followed her through the hospital corridor as nurses rushed toward Leo’s room.
A physician intercepted them.
“You need to stay outside.”
“That’s my nephew,” Dante snapped.
Vivienne ignored both men and looked through the glass.
Leo’s heart rate had collapsed.
Doctors surrounded him.
One nurse removed an IV bag.
Another shouted for medication.
Vivienne’s eyes locked onto the IV tubing.
“Disconnect the line!”
The attending physician heard her through the open doorway.
“What?”
“The IV!”
He hesitated.
“Disconnect it!”
Something in Vivienne’s voice convinced him.
The nurse clamped the line.
Leo’s numbers slowly changed.
Not normal.
But improving.
Vivienne turned to Dante.
“Someone put something into his IV.”
“You can’t know that.”
“His decline started too suddenly.”
The attending emerged five minutes later.
“She may be right.”
Dante went still.
“What happened?”
“Possible contamination. We’re sending the bag to toxicology.”
Hospital security sealed the pediatric floor.
Detective Shaw arrived twenty minutes later.
This time nobody argued when she ordered every employee in Leo’s care team questioned.
Security footage showed a nurse entering his room twelve minutes before the cardiac episode.
The problem?
No nurse matching her description worked at the hospital.
Dante stared at the grainy footage.
A woman in blue scrubs.
Mask.
Cap.
Nothing visible except her eyes.
Vivienne leaned closer.
“Pause it.”
Shaw froze the image.
“What?”
“Her neck.”
A thin silver chain disappeared beneath the scrub collar.
Attached to it was the tip of a wing.
A swallow.
Dante’s blood turned cold.
“They can reach him here.”
“They can reach anyone,” Vivienne replied.
Leo needed to be moved.
Not to another hospital.
To a secure pediatric medical facility Dante owned through one of his charitable foundations outside the city.
Shaw initially objected.
Vivienne supported it.
“If somebody can impersonate hospital personnel, keeping him in a publicly accessible building is more dangerous.”
By midnight Leo was transferred under police escort.
Dante ordered twenty guards.
Vivienne reduced the number to eight.
“Twenty uniforms announce exactly where he is.”
For the first time since the nursery, Dante listened without argument.
That mattered.
Not enough to repair what he had done.
But she noticed.
The following morning they gathered at Moretti Tower.
Dante, Vivienne, Nico, Detective Shaw, and Dante’s longtime attorney, Samuel Beckett.
A wall of screens displayed the known victims.
Elena Moretti.
Tyler Gaines.
Fake Clara Bell.
Dr. Celeste Armand.
Gabriel Moretti.
Or rather, Gabriel’s supposed death.
Vivienne stood before the photographs.
“There’s a pattern.”
Samuel crossed his arms.
“All I see is people connected to your family.”
“That is the pattern.”
She pointed at Tyler.
“My patient was the son of Jonathan Gaines.”
Dante recognized the name.
“Federal prosecutor.”
“Former federal prosecutor,” Shaw corrected. “He resigned after Tyler died.”
Vivienne nodded.
“Jonathan had been investigating money laundering tied to private hospitals.”
Dante looked toward her.
“You never told me.”
“I didn’t know until yesterday.”
Next came Elena.
“She worked for the Moretti Foundation before marrying Marco.”
Dante remembered.
“Accounting.”
“She discovered irregular transfers.”
“Why would Marco not tell me?”
“Maybe he never knew.”
Vivienne pointed toward herself.
“And I operated on Tyler when someone needed him dead.”
Nico frowned.
“So you were selected.”
“Yes.”
“To take the blame?”
“Exactly.”
The room fell silent.
Dante suddenly understood.
Vivienne’s destroyed career had not been collateral damage.
It had been useful.
A respected surgeon was transformed into a disgraced one.
If she later questioned unusual deaths, nobody listened.
“Clara knew you’d recognize the poisoning,” Dante said.
“She knew I might.”
“So they framed you in the nursery.”
Vivienne nodded.
“If Leo died while I held the blade, you would have killed me or handed me to the police. Either way, I disappear as a threat.”
Samuel looked uneasy.
“Why kill Leo?”
Everyone looked toward Dante.
The answer was obvious.
Inheritance.
Marco had owned twenty-seven percent of Moretti Holdings.
After Elena’s death, Leo inherited it in trust.
If Leo died before reaching adulthood, the shares reverted according to Marco’s estate plan.
“To whom?” Shaw asked.
Samuel hesitated.
Dante turned.
“Samuel.”
“I need to verify.”
“You wrote the estate documents.”
Samuel’s face had gone pale.
“To the surviving paternal grandparent.”
Silence swallowed the room.
Gabriel.
Dante slowly sat down.
“If my father is legally dead—”
“The clause never activates,” Samuel said.
“But if he returns?”
“It becomes complicated.”
“How complicated?”
“If Gabriel proves his death was fraudulently recorded and restores his legal identity, he could assert rights under the estate.”
Nico cursed.
“So the baby is worth billions.”
“Approximately 2.4 billion in equity,” Samuel said.
Dante stared at Leo’s photograph.
His father was trying to murder his own grandson for ownership.
Vivienne shook her head.
“No.”
Dante looked at her.
“No?”
“That explains motive for Leo. Not Tyler. Not the fake deaths. Not the Swallows.”
Shaw agreed.
“This is bigger than inheritance.”
Dante walked to the window.
Chicago spread beneath them.
His father had once stood in this office and told him that cities belonged to men willing to take what weaker people were too afraid to defend.
Dante had believed him when he was young.
Later, he spent a decade undoing those lessons.
Apparently not enough.
A phone rang.
Not anyone’s personal phone.
The conference room telephone.
Dante looked at it.
Nobody outside the building had the direct number.
He answered.
“Moretti.”
A familiar voice came through.
Older.
Rougher.
But unmistakable.
“Hello, son.”
Dante stopped breathing.
Gabriel.
Vivienne watched his face.
Nico whispered, “Who is it?”
Dante activated speaker mode.
Gabriel laughed.
“Good. Let everyone hear.”
Dante gripped the table.
“You tried to kill Leo.”
“Careful with accusations.”
“You murdered Elena.”
A pause.
“Marco chose badly.”
Vivienne closed her eyes.
Dante’s fury exploded.
“You touch that child again—”
“What?”
Gabriel interrupted.
“You’ll kill me?”
Dante said nothing.
Gabriel laughed again.
“I taught you that threat.”
“What do you want?”
“My family returned to me.”
“You don’t have a family.”
“Leo carries my blood.”
“You poisoned him.”
“Necessary pressure.”
Vivienne stepped forward.
“Why Tyler Gaines?”
The line became silent.
Then Gabriel spoke differently.
“Dr. Cross.”
Vivienne stiffened.
“I hoped Dante would save us the inconvenience of dealing with you.”
Dante’s eyes dropped.
Gabriel knew exactly where to cut.
Vivienne replied, “You altered Tyler’s medication.”
“No.”
“Then who did?”
“My associates.”
“The Swallows?”
Gabriel laughed.
“You think they work for me?”
That answer shifted the room.
Dante looked at Shaw.
“What does that mean?”
Gabriel continued.
“I work for them.”
Nobody spoke.
Gabriel Moretti had spent his entire life acting as if he answered to no one.
The idea that another organization controlled him seemed impossible.
“What are the Swallows?” Vivienne asked.
“A door you should never have opened.”
“Too late.”
“Yes.”
Gabriel sounded almost regretful.
“It is.”
The lights went out.
Every screen died.
Nico immediately drew his weapon.
Emergency lighting activated.
Shaw shouted into her radio.
No response.
Signal jammed.
Dante turned toward Vivienne.
“Stay behind me.”
She looked irritated.
“This is not the time to become protective.”
Glass shattered somewhere outside.
Then gunfire erupted three floors below.
Dante’s security staff responded.
More gunfire.
Someone was attacking Moretti Tower.
Not secretly.
Not quietly.
An assault in broad daylight.
Dante grabbed Vivienne’s hand.
“This way.”
They moved toward a secure stairwell.
Samuel followed.
Shaw covered the rear.
Nico opened the door.
He was shot immediately.
Nico crashed backward.
Vivienne screamed.
A masked attacker stepped through.
Dante fired.
The man fell.
Another appeared.
Shaw returned fire.
Smoke filled the hallway.
Dante dragged Nico behind the conference table.
Blood spread across his shirt.
Vivienne dropped beside him.
“Entry wound high shoulder. He’s conscious.”
Nico grabbed Dante’s sleeve.
“They knew the safe route.”
Dante understood.
Only six people had access to the emergency evacuation plan.
Two were standing in the room.
One was bleeding.
Three others were downstairs.
And one—
Dante slowly turned.
Samuel Beckett had disappeared.
The attorney was gone.
Shaw searched the adjoining office.
An open service door led toward the private elevator.
Dante felt betrayed in a way even Gabriel could not match.
Samuel had served his family for twenty-five years.
He had written Marco’s will.
He knew every Moretti account.
Every company.
Every secret.
Then Dante remembered something.
Samuel had personally overseen Clara Bell’s employment paperwork after a staffing agency recommended her.
“Nico.”
Nico grimaced.
“What?”
“Who authorized Clara’s background check?”
He closed his eyes.
“Samuel.”
Dante felt the pieces lock together.
Samuel had cleared the assassin.
Samuel knew Leo’s inheritance.
Samuel knew Gabriel’s grave.
Samuel knew the evacuation route.
The gunfire suddenly stopped.
Then Dante’s phone received a message.
Unknown number.
A photograph.
Samuel Beckett stood beside Gabriel Moretti.
The picture had been taken within minutes.
Behind them was a private helicopter.
Gabriel’s message appeared beneath it.
You always trusted the wrong people.
Vivienne looked over Dante’s shoulder.
“No.”
“What?”
She zoomed in on the photograph.
Then pointed.
Samuel was not standing freely beside Gabriel.
A hand pressed against his back.
His face was terrified.
“Samuel isn’t escaping with him,” she whispered.
“He’s being taken.”
Dante stared again.
She was right.
Which meant Samuel might not be the traitor.
And the person who had opened the tower to Gabriel’s gunmen was still inside.
A moment later, Dante’s security radio crackled back to life.
A voice came through.
“Mr. Moretti, Leo’s transport team has been compromised.”
Dante went cold.
“What does that mean?”
May you like
There was a pause.
“The child is missing.”
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