Chapter 3 - SECURING THE HEIR
The third-floor medical suite was a sterile island within the opulent Duca mansion. Lorenzo walked down the hallway, his footsteps silenced by the thick, plush carpet. Two heavily armed guards stood outside the double doors of Lucas’s room. They straightened as their boss approached, their faces impassive.
"Has anyone been in or out in the last hour?" Lorenzo asked quietly.
"No, sir. Miss Vivian retired to her quarters at eleven, as usual. The night nurse checked his vitals at midnight. All clear," the guard on the left replied.
"Dismiss the night nurse. Send her to the staff wing and tell her she is confined there until morning. If she tries to make a phone call, break her fingers."
The guard blinked, surprised by the sudden, brutal directive, but nodded instantly. "Yes, Boss."
Lorenzo opened the door to the suite and stepped inside. The room was bathed in the soft blue glow of medical monitors. An IV stand dripped a clear saline solution into the thin, bruised arm of his six-year-old son. Lucas was so pale he almost blended into the white sheets. His breathing was shallow, his chest rising and falling with agonizing slowness. His dark hair, once thick like Lorenzo’s, was thin and patchy against the massive, soft pillow beneath his head.
Lorenzo approached the bed. He looked down at the boy who held his entire heart, the boy he had sworn to protect on his wife's deathbed.
He reached out and gently slid his hand beneath Lucas’s neck, lifting the boy just enough to slide the pillow out from under him. Lucas let out a soft, pained whimper but did not wake. Lorenzo laid his son’s head flat on the mattress and carried the pillow to the small sitting area across the room.
He pulled a switchblade from his pocket and pressed the button. The steel blade clicked open with a sharp snap.
Carefully, meticulously, Lorenzo sliced along the inner seam of the heavy silk pillowcase. He peeled the fabric back, exposing the dense memory foam core. He ran his fingers along the foam, feeling for anomalies.
There.
A small, perfectly cut slit in the foam, glued back together. Lorenzo sliced it open. Inside were four more identical waxed paper packets, arranged in a grid pattern exactly where the child's face would rest. As Lucas tossed and turned in his feverish sleep, his weight would crush the packets, releasing microscopic plumes of the toxin into the fabric for him to inhale, priming his body for the purple syrup the next morning.
Lorenzo closed his eyes, fighting a wave of nausea. He took out a biohazard bag from the medical cart and sealed the pillow inside.
He pulled a secure, encrypted radio from his belt. "Daniel. Bring a medical transport team to the third floor. We are moving Lucas to the sub-basement panic room."
"Sir? The medical equipment—"
"Tear it out of the walls if you have to. Move every monitor, every IV stand, every oxygen tank. I want him in the bunker in ten minutes. And Daniel?"
"Yes, Boss?"
"Bring Sarah Carter and her daughter to the bunker as well. They do not leave my sight from this moment forward."
Within fifteen minutes, the opulent medical suite was stripped bare. Lorenzo carried his frail son in his arms, ignoring the tangle of wires and tubes, descending deep into the reinforced concrete bowels of the estate. The panic room was built to withstand a military siege. It had its own air filtration system, backup generators, and enough medical supplies to run a small trauma center.
He laid Lucas gently onto the tactical medical bed in the center of the room. Sarah and Emma were huddled in the corner, watching with wide, terrified eyes.
Lorenzo turned to Sarah. She was a young widow, having lost her husband in a car accident two years prior. She had taken the housekeeper job to provide for Emma, keeping her head down and cleaning the marble floors.
"Sarah," Lorenzo said, his voice echoing slightly in the concrete room. "I need you to listen to me very carefully. You are no longer the housekeeper of this estate. As of tonight, you and Emma are family. You will be protected by my men with their lives. But I need you to do exactly as I say."
Sarah nodded, clutching Emma tighter. "What is happening, Mr. Duca?"
"Someone has been poisoning my son. The woman claiming to be his caregiver, Vivian, is an assassin planted in my home. Tomorrow morning, she is going to wake up expecting to continue her work. I am going to let her believe she is safe. But I need to know everything you have seen her do in the kitchen."
May you like
Sarah’s eyes widened in realization. "The purple syrup. She makes it every morning at seven. She insists on doing it herself. She locks the pantry door."
"Good. Tomorrow, she will make it again. And tomorrow, we will see exactly how much poison Vivian Chen can swallow."
