Chapter 3 - THE PROTECTOR'S DEBT
Dante spun around, his fist already raised, but the man standing behind him didn't flinch.
It was Michael Grant, his own head of security. But Michael wasn’t looking at Dante with the usual deference. He looked at him with quiet resignation.
“Don’t do it, boss,” Michael said, his voice low. “The hospital is surrounded. Silas Vance’s men hold every exit. If you throw a punch, you won’t leave this building alive.”
“Where is she?” Dante demanded, grabbing the lapels of Michael’s jacket. “Where did Silas take her?”
“I don’t know,” Michael lied smoothly, though his eyes betrayed a flicker of guilt. “Vance’s people moved in ten minutes after you left for the hotel. They had their own medical transport. They took the baby in a mobile incubator.”
Dante’s breath hitched. “The baby... she’s alive?”
“A girl,” Michael said softly. “But she’s fragile, Dante. And your wife nearly bled to death.”
Dante let go of Michael’s jacket, staggering back against the empty hospital bed. The reality of his failure was a suffocating weight. He had chosen the empire over his family, only to find the empire was a trap, and his family was gone.
Fifteen miles away, in the secure wing of the Evanston Private Clinic, Lucia opened her eyes.
The room was dim, quiet, and smelled of expensive lavender rather than harsh bleach. Sitting in the leather armchair beside her bed was a man with silver hair and a tailored charcoal suit.
Silas Vance.
“You look terrible, mia farfalla,” Silas murmured, though his dark eyes were bright with unshed tears.
“Where is she?” Lucia rasped, trying to sit up. Pain flared in her stomach, forcing her back down.
“Safe,” Silas said, standing up and pressing a button on the wall. The opaque glass window to her left slowly turned transparent, revealing a state-of-the-art NICU room next door.
Inside a specialized incubator, a tiny, fragile chest rose and fell beneath a web of wires.
Tears finally spilled over Lucia’s eyelashes, tracking hot and fast down her cheeks. “She’s so small.”
“She is a Vance. And a Moretti,” Silas said, his voice hardening on the last word. “She will survive. The question is, what are we going to do about the man who put her in that box?”
“I filed for divorce,” Lucia said, her voice shaking but resolute. “Gerald is pushing the paperwork through the emergency channels.”
“Divorce is paperwork,” Silas countered gently. “Claudia Moretti tried to have you killed tonight, Lucia. Do you really believe the placental abruption was natural?”
Lucia’s heart pounded. “What are you saying?”
Silas reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, amber prescription bottle. He set it on her bedside table. “Your prenatal vitamins. My people retrieved them from your kitchen. They were laced with Misoprostol. Enough to induce violent labor and severe hemorrhaging.”
Lucia stared at the bottle, nausea rolling over her. Claudia. Dante’s mother had always hated her, but to try and kill her own grandchild?
“Dante didn’t know,” Lucia whispered instinctively, hating herself for defending him.
“No, he didn’t,” Silas agreed. “But he left you to die all the same. And now, Claudia is making her move. She is filing an emergency petition to take custody of the child, claiming you are mentally unstable and have kidnapped the infant.”
“She can’t do that!”
“She already has a judge in her pocket,” Silas warned. “And Dante is tearing the city apart looking for you. If he finds you before we have proof of the poisoning, he will take the baby back to the Moretti estate. Into Claudia’s hands.”
Lucia looked through the glass at her daughter. The vulnerability of that tiny life snapped something deep inside her. The woman who had compromised, who had waited up late, who had accepted Dante’s silences—she died on the operating table.
“I need my laptop,” Lucia said, her voice turning to ice. “And I need Michael Grant.”
Silas raised an eyebrow. “Dante’s security chief? He’s loyal to Dante.”
“No,” Lucia corrected, looking at a small, silver compass sitting on her belongings tray—a gift she had given Michael years ago. “He’s loyal to the truth. Bring him to me.”
Two hours later, the door to the clinic room opened. Michael walked in, looking exhausted. When he saw Lucia, he let out a breath he seemed to have been holding for hours.
“You scared the hell out of me, Mrs. Moretti.”
“I’m sorry, Michael,” she said. “But I need you to do something that constitutes treason against Dante.”
Michael looked at Silas, then back at Lucia. “I already did. I slipped a tracking bug into Dante’s coat pocket before I left the hospital. I know exactly where he’s going.”
May you like
Lucia frowned. “Where is he?”
Michael’s expression turned grim. “He didn’t go to the police. He didn’t go to his mother. He went to the shipyard. He’s walking straight into the cartel exchange.”
