Chapter 3 - The Doctor’s Betrayal
"Drop the weapon, Liana!" Dr. Moretti hissed, his face pale and slick with sweat under the dim yellow emergency lights of the tunnel. His gold-rimmed glasses were crooked, and his hand shook visibly.
Marcus groaned on the floor, reaching for his fallen weapon, but Moretti kicked it out of reach down the dark hallway.
"You ruined everything!" Moretti snarled at Liana. "If you hadn't shown up at the gates like a begging ghost, Matteo would have believed the boy was his forever! Donati paid me five million dollars to eliminate the Varric bloodline! I was supposed to deliver a dead child to Matteo, but when your boy was born healthy in the adjacent room, I saw an opportunity to save my own skin!"
"You stole my baby," Liana whispered, her finger tightening against the trigger of the pistol Matteo had given her. "You let me mourn him. You let me bury an empty coffin."
"Your husband was a nobody!" Moretti spat, taking a step closer, raising his gun directly at Nico’s head. "A poor mechanic who died in debt! Why should your worthless child inherit poverty when his existence could secure my retirement in Switzerland? Give me the boy, Liana! Donati wants him dead so the Varric line ends tonight!"
Nico wailed loudly, burying his tiny face into Liana’s neck.
"You will never touch him again," Liana said, her voice dropping into a register of chilling certainty.
"I will shoot you where you stand!" Moretti threatened, his eyes wild with desperation. "I am a doctor, I know exactly where to put a bullet to make you bleed out in seconds!"
"And I am his mother," Liana replied.
BANG.
Liana didn't hesitate. Before Moretti could squeeze his trigger, she disengaged the safety and fired twice.
The first bullet struck Moretti in the shoulder, knocking him backward against the damp concrete wall. The second bullet tore through his knee, sending him collapsing to the floor with a agonizing shriek of pain. His silenced gun clattered against the stone tiles.
Marcus, despite his bleeding shoulder, dragged himself across the floor, scooped up Moretti’s gun, and slammed the butt of it across the doctor’s jaw, knocking him cold.
"Nice shooting, Miss Graves," Marcus panted, pressing a hand against his wounded shoulder.
Liana stood frozen, the barrel of her gun smoking in the cold air, her heart pounding against her ribs. She lowered the weapon, dropping to her knees beside Marcus to check his wound.
"You're hurt," she said, her hands already moving to strip a strip of cloth from her apron to fashion a tourniquet.
"I’ll live," Marcus grunted. "Get inside the vault. Lock it from the inside."
"Not without you," Liana insisted, helping the underboss pull himself into the safe room. She dragged the unconscious Dr. Moretti inside as well, kicking his legs through the doorway before hitting the manual lock button.
The heavy steel vault door slid shut with a resounding, air-tight thud, sealing them off from the chaos outside.
Inside the climate-controlled room, Liana sat down on a plush leather sofa, pulling Nico close. She unbuttoned her collar, allowing her hungry son to nurse. Nico took the milk greedily, his small hands grasping at her pink uniform, his tiny chest rising and falling in rhythmic peace.
Marcus sat against the wall, applying pressure to his shoulder wound, watching Liana with newfound respect.
"Don Matteo was right about you," Marcus said softly over the sound of the air scrubbers. "You aren't just a maid."
"I was a nurse before I married my husband," Liana said, her eyes fixed on her feeding son. "I know how the world works, Marcus. Men with power think they can buy and sell human lives like cattle. But they forgot one thing."
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"What’s that?" Marcus asked.
"A mother will tear down an empire to protect her child."
