Chapter 2 - The Midnight Heist
By 1:45 AM, the storm outside the oceanfront mansion was raging with full force. Rain lashed against the tall glass windows, and thunder rattled the brass fixtures in the hallways.
Inside Victor’s master suite, the air was heavy with the artificial hum of medical equipment.
Tessa stood in the dark adjoining bathroom, watching the hallway through a crack in the door. The night shift nurse, a quiet woman named Elena who had been hired six weeks ago by Victor’s younger brother, Julian Rossi, had just stepped down to the kitchen to fetch fresh ice.
Tessa moved swiftly.
She walked to the side of Victor’s bed. His eyes were open, glittering in the soft green light of the heart monitor.
"Are you ready?" she whispered.
Victor gave a microscopic nod.
Tessa unpocketed a sterile butterfly needle and a vacuum blood tube she had stolen from the medical supply closet earlier that evening. With deft, practiced fingers, she tied a rubber tourniquet around Victor’s emaciated forearm, found a usable vein, and inserted the needle.
Dark red blood filled the glass tube.
"You're fast," Victor whispered, barely moving his lips.
"I’ve had practice," Tessa replied, capping the tube and hiding it inside a padded metal thermos in her cleaning bag.
She was just pulling off her latex gloves when the heavy oak doors of the master bedroom swung open.
Dante Cole stepped inside, flanked by two armed guards. His sharp eyes scanned the dim room, instantly catching Tessa standing unnaturally close to Victor’s IV pole.
"What are you doing in here?" Dante demanded, his hand resting instinctively on the holster at his hip. "The nurse went downstairs."
"Mr. Rossi was coughing," Tessa said smoothly, taking a step back and grabbing her cleaning rag. "I was checking if he needed his elevation adjusted."
Dante didn't look convinced. He walked slowly toward the bed, his heavy boots thudding against the floor. He glanced at the IV pump, then down at Tessa’s cleaning cart.
"Your shift ended at midnight, Harper," Dante noted, his voice low and menacing. "Why are you still on the third floor?"
"There was a spill near the study," she lied without blinking. "I was finishing the cleanup."
Dante stared at her for five agonizing seconds. The tension in the room was so thick that even the thunder outside seemed muted. He reached out his hand toward her cleaning bag. "Let me see what’s in the tote."
Tessa’s heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. The thermos with the blood sample and the poisoned tea was sitting right at the bottom beneath three dirty rags.
Before Dante’s fingers could touch the canvas bag, Victor let out a violent, wet cough from the bed. He convulsed, grabbing his chest, his eyes rolling back as the heart monitor began to beep frantically.
"Dante!" Victor gasped out, saliva stringing from his lips. "Air... I can't... breathe..."
Dante immediately turned away from Tessa, stepping to the bed. "Boss! Stay calm! Get the nurse! Get Dr. Lipton!" he shouted to the guards.
The guards rushed out into the hallway. Dante leaned over Victor, trying to adjust his oxygen mask.
In the chaos, Tessa grabbed her tote bag, slipped out the open bedroom door, and glided down the service stairwell into the shadowed lower levels of the estate.
She didn't use the main driveway. She knew the perimeter security cameras had a forty-second blind spot near the eastern greenhouse wall where the high-voltage fence met the ocean sea wall.
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Soaked to the skin within seconds, Tessa scaled the wet stone wall, dropped onto the slippery rocks below, and sprinted toward an old, rusted sedan parked under a broken streetlight two blocks away.
She threw her bag into the passenger seat, started the sputtering engine, and sped off into the blinding Florida rain, knowing that if Dante realized what she had taken, there wouldn't be a place in the state deep enough for her to hide.
