Chapter 1 - The Diagnostics of Fear
The silence in the small garden cottage was thick enough to choke on, broken only by the raspy, uneven breaths of Sophia Rossi.
Alessandro stood by the wooden frame of the door, his imposing figure casting a long shadow across the worn linoleum floor. He looked at the medical bag sitting on the small kitchen table—a sterile, expensive intrusion into Sophia’s private world.
He had called Dr. Vincent Harris, a man who had spent the last twenty years extracting bullets from the shoulders of Moretti soldiers and signing death certificates with creative causes of death. But Harris was also a brilliant diagnostician, a man who had trained at Johns Hopkins before the darkness of New Orleans and the high-society debts of Chicago had dragged him into the Wolf’s pocket.
"She’s burning up, Alessandro," Harris said, adjusting his glasses as he pulled his stethoscope away from Sophia’s chest. "Her lungs are congested, and her temperature is peaking at 104 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s a severe, aggressive strain of bacterial pneumonia. If she had stayed in this damp cottage for another twenty-four hours without antibiotics, her organs would have begun to fail."
Sophia turned her head away, her eyes glistening with tears of sheer exhaustion and humiliation. "I have... I have medicine in the cabinet. Over-the-counter."
"Over-the-counter aspirin won't fight an infection that has settled into both lobes of your lungs, Miss Rossi," Harris said, his voice surprisingly gentle. He turned to Alessandro. "She needs intravenous antibiotics, high-flow oxygen, and round-the-clock monitoring for at least the next seventy-two hours. I can arrange a private room at St. Jude’s under an assumed name."
"No," Alessandro said. His voice was a low rumble that brooked no argument. "She stays here."
Sophia’s breath caught in her throat. "Mr. Moretti, please. If I am too sick to work, I can leave. I can take Emma to my sister’s apartment in Queens. You don't have to—"
"You are not going to Queens, Sophia," Alessandro interrupted, stepping closer to the bed. He looked down at her, his dark eyes unreadable but fierce. "And you are not going to a hospital where my enemies can look at a patient registry and find a vulnerability. You will be moved to the main house. The east wing has a guest suite with its own ventilation. Harris, set up the equipment there. Hire private nurses. Anyone who speaks a word of this outside these walls will find out how deep the East River really is."
Harris nodded, familiar with the absolute authority of the Moretti patriarch. "I’ll have the equipment delivered within the hour under the guise of commercial gym machinery."
"Please," Sophia whispered, her voice cracking as she tried to reach for Emma, who was sitting quietly at the foot of the bed, her small thumb tucked securely into her mouth. "Don't do this. I am just the maid."
Alessandro looked at Emma, whose dark, solemn eyes were locked onto him. The little girl had not let go of the dry towel he had wrapped around her shoulders.
"You were the maid yesterday, Sophia," Alessandro said, his tone dropping to a level of quiet gravity that made the room feel very small. "Today, you are under my protection. There is a difference."
He stepped toward the bed, slid his arms beneath Sophia’s trembling, feverish body, and lifted her as easily as if she were made of feathers. She gasped, her hands instinctively clutching the lapels of his expensive, charcoal-grey suit jacket, leaving damp, wrinkled prints on the fine wool.
May you like
"Emma," Alessandro said, not looking back. "Grab your mother’s slippers. We are moving."
The three-year-old scrambled off the bed, her small hands clutching the worn pink slippers to her chest as she trotted behind the giant of a man who held her entire world in his arms.
