Chapter 4 - THE PRICE OF A NAME
The silence in the safe room was absolute, save for Lily’s ragged, whistling breaths.
Dr. Vance was frantically working over the stroller, injecting a broad-spectrum antibiotic into a tiny butterfly catheter in Lily’s arm, but the baby’s eyelids remained tightly shut, her small fists clenched in agony.
Victor stared at the monitor, his knuckles white as he gripped the edge of the steel desk. The man on the screen—Julian—had vanished down the hall, but his chilling words lingered in the air like poison gas.
"Who is he?" I demanded, my voice trembling with a mixture of terror and white-hot fury as I stepped up to Victor. "Why is he hunting my baby? What does Julian have to do with my mother?"
Victor slowly turned his head to look at me. The ruthless aura of the New York crime boss had fractured, revealing a man burdened by decades of dark secrets.
"Julian Vance," Victor said, his voice flat and heavy. "Not related to our doctor here. Julian is the head of the Syndicate—the European arm that tried to overthrow the Moretti family twenty-five years ago. Back then, your mother, Elena, was the daughter of a rival syndicate boss who tried to broker a peace treaty through our marriage. Julian wanted total control of the shipping lanes. He wanted Elena for himself. When she chose me, Julian planted the bomb that leveled our safehouse."
I stared at him, my mind spinning. "If he thought we died in the fire... why is he here now?"
"Because of the locket," Victor said, pointing a steady finger toward the stroller where the silver necklace rested against Lily’s blanket. "That locket isn't just an heirloom. It’s an encrypted mechanical key. Inside the casing is a microscopic microchip containing the master ledger of every offshore account, shipping manifest, and government bribe Julian used to launder money out of Europe. Your mother took it with her the night the safehouse burned. Julian has spent twenty-five years looking for it."
A cold sweat broke out across my neck. My mother had given me that necklace on her deathbed three months ago, whispering, 'Never take it off, Hannah. It’s your shield.' She hadn't meant emotional protection. She had meant a target.
"So my baby is sick and dying," I whispered, the horror crashing over me in suffocating waves, "because I carry a key to a war I didn't even know I was fighting."
"You are a Moretti by blood," Victor said, his voice hard as iron. He reached out, his large hand gently resting on my shoulder for a fraction of a second before he drew his weapon and checked the magazine. "And in this family, we don't surrender."
Before I could answer, a loud, metallic clang echoed from the ceiling above us.
Dr. Vance gasped, dropping a syringe. "They're in the ventilation shafts," he whispered in panic. "They're bypassing the biometric security doors entirely."
Victor didn't hesitate. He spun around, grabbing a heavy tactical breaching shotgun from the wall rack and tossing it to his guard.
"Secure the perimeter of this room," Victor commanded. He turned back to me, his eyes burning with an intense, desperate resolve. "Hannah, listen to me. There is an underground drainage tunnel fifty yards past the east garden wall. It leads straight to the Hudson River, where my boat is waiting. You take Lily and run the second I open that door."
"And you?" I asked, my voice catching in my throat.
May you like
Victor smiled—a grim, humorless smile that reminded me of the monster the newspapers claimed he was. "I have an old debt to settle with Julian. It's time I showed him what happens when he steps into a Moretti house."
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