Chapter 2 - Shadows in the Corridor
Roman did not yell. He did not slam his fist against the concrete wall. Instead, the air around him seemed to freeze solid. The color drained completely from his face, leaving his harsh, sculpted features looking like carved granite.
"Repeat that," he said, the command so low it was almost a whisper.
Elena handed him the two footprint cards, pointing out the distinct anatomical discrepancy. "I've handled hundreds of newborn prints, Mr. Bolaro. Babies lose weight, their skin changes color when they're sick, but their bone structure doesn't change like this in less than three weeks. And there's more."
She pulled a small vials rack out of her pocket. "I snatched a secondary blood sample from the line right before Sloan noticed me. If I take this to an off-site lab, I can prove the genetic mismatch within four hours."
Roman stared at the small blue ink marks on the card. His breath came slow and heavy through his nose. For nineteen days, he had watched a baby wither away in an incubator, believing his dead wife's last gift to him was dying. For nineteen days, his soul had been crushed by a despair he could not shoot or bribe his way out of.
"If this isn't Nico," Roman said, his dark eyes snapping up to meet hers with a terrifying, incandescent heat, "then where is my son?"
"I don't know," Elena admitted. "But Dr. Sloan knows something. He's been managing the IV fluids personally. No other nurse was allowed to mix the TPN bags for Incubator Four. I thought he was just being an overbearing chief of medicine. Now I think he's been poisoning this child to simulate a metabolic collapse."
Roman’s hand closed into a fist so tight his knuckles popped like gunshots. He reached inside his jacket, but Elena grabbed his forearm before he could draw whatever weapon was hidden there.
"If you kill him now, you will never find your real son," Elena said fiercely, looking directly into the eyes of Chicago's most feared man. "He won't talk if he's dead. And if the people behind this realize we know, they'll destroy every trace of the real Nico."
Roman looked down at her small hand gripping his coat sleeve. Anyone else who touched him like that would have lost the hand. But he saw no fear in her eyes—only a fierce, stubborn determination to save a child that wasn't even hers.
"Four hours," Roman gritted out, his voice laced with deadly promise. "You get your test result. My men will lock down every exit of this hospital without making a sound. If Sloan tries to leave, he won't make it to his car."
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"Keep acting like the grieving father," Elena urged. "Don't let him suspect you know."
Roman let out a dark, ragged laugh. "I don't have to act, nurse. I am a grieving father. But now... now I have something to hunt."
